Feel It. Then Find Your Way Back!
- Julie Jones
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
Want to up your team's mental game? Check out information on how we can build a program specifically for you HERE!
We are getting closer to selling our parents’ house. Last week, my sister and I took home the things that mean the most to us. And a few days ago, I dropped Jen…and her boxes of keepsakes…off at her home in Arkansas.
Whew…is this a process. My sister walked out of the house our great-grandfather and grandfather built in 1936 for the very last time on Thursday.
Neither of us grew up in this house. To us, at first, it was our grandparents’ house. Then it became our kids’ grandparents’ house. Either way, it’s been a part of our whole lives.
We knew this was coming. We’ve been working toward it for months. I thought I’d been preparing myself day by day. And, yet, too many times to count, I picked up something that, to anyone else, would have looked completely ordinary.
And just like that...I wasn't standing in that house anymore.
I was standing in my childhood.
The memories came flooding back. Christmases. Birthdays. Watching my dad mow and manicure the lawn. Family dinners. Conversations I hadn't thought about in years. For a few moments, I wasn't sorting boxes. I was reliving a lifetime.
And it reminded me how incredibly powerful our brains are.
One smell, one song, one object or one place can instantly activate an entire network of memories and emotions. Neuroscientists call this associative memory. Our brain is constantly connecting the present to our past, and when something important is linked to love, loss or joy, those emotional memories are stored especially well. If we want to get technical for a minute, it’s because of the interaction between the hippocampus, where memories are organized, and the amygdala, which helps tag emotionally significant experiences.
In other words...sometimes our heart shows up before our thinking brain has a chance to catch up.
Maybe you've experienced it too. A song comes on the radio. You catch the smell of your grandma's perfume. You drive by your childhood home. Or you walk into an empty house that used to feel full.
Suddenly your attention isn't on what's happening now. It's somewhere else entirely.
And that's completely normal.
One of the biggest misconceptions about mental performance is that mentally strong people somehow don't experience these moments.
Nothing could be further from the truth. We watched Lionel Messi show a TON of emotion after yesterday’s World Cup Final. I’m sure he was disappointed in the loss…but I’d imagine there was so much more going on in his head (and heart) thinking about his career. I’m sure his memories came flooding back, just like ours did as we moved through our parents' house for the last time together.
I’m so glad Messi gave us such a great example of the fact that the strongest people don't suppress emotion.
They allow it.
Psychologist Susan David, who has spent years studying emotional agility, reminds us that "Emotions are data, not directives."
Think about that for a second.
Your emotions are giving you information. They are not telling you what you have to do next.
That's an incredibly important distinction.
Because while we can't always control what we feel, we can influence what we do with our attention once we notice it.
As I stood in my parents' house this week, I had a choice…over and over. I could stay in those memories...or I could gently remind myself, "You'll come back to this. Right now, the next box needs to be packed."
Not because I wanted to ignore my grief. Not because I loved my parents, grandparents or that place any less. But because there was work that still needed to be done.
That isn't suppressing emotion. That's regulating attention. And those are two very different things.
James Gross, one of the world's leading researchers on emotion regulation, has shown that healthy emotional regulation isn't about pretending feelings don't exist. In fact, trying to push emotions away often makes them stronger. Instead, resilient people acknowledge what they're feeling while intentionally choosing behaviors that align with what's most important in that moment.
Notice the feeling. Accept that it's there. Then decide where your attention needs to go next.
This is exactly what happens in sport.
You strike out with the bases loaded, make the error, you miss the putt or give up the goal…the disappointment is real!!
Ignoring it rarely works and living in it doesn't help AT ALL!
The best performers I've worked with don't ask themselves, "How do I stop feeling this?"
Instead, they ask, "What does this moment require from me?"
That question shifts us from emotion to intention and from reaction to response. It keeps us from being carried away by our feelings and allows us to choose our next action.
Researcher Michael Posner describes attention as one of the brain's executive systems.
Where we intentionally direct our attention influences what we notice, what we think about and ultimately how we perform. Every time we redirect our attention, we're strengthening that mental skill.
Thus, attention isn't just something we have. It's something we train. This doesn’t
mean we don’t feel. It means we can feel and still get things done!
One thing I've learned over these past few months is this. Grief doesn't disappear. It simply asks for different amounts of your attention on different days.
Some days it whispers. Some days it screams. And some days it completely catches you off guard.
None of these is wrong. But life doesn't always stop while we're grieving, just as the game doesn’t stop when we’re lamenting a mistake or missed opportunity!
Teams still practice. Children still need us. Bills still need paid. The might still be in play.
Teammates still depend on us to do our jobs!
The world continues asking us to show up…no matter what happened! And we can.
Not because we're ignoring our feelings, but because we're learning to move between feeling and functioning.
These two things aren't opposites…they're partners.
The ability to return to baseline after an emotional moment, to recover, regather and reconnect with what's in front of us, is one of the most important performance skills we can develop. It's back to our familiar skill, emotional regulation, and research consistently links it to greater resilience, better decision-making, improved relationships and higher performance across sport, business and life.
The next time emotion catches you by surprise, try this. It’s not our Notice ->Truth ->
Narrow tool, but it’s close!
First…we simply NOTICE because SELF-AWARENESS IS OUR SUPERPOWER!
And instead of saying “I'm sad” or "I'm overwhelmed”, say “I’m feeling sad” or “I’m feeling overwhelmed”. Or even better, speak like an Irishman and say, “Sadness has come upon me”. Because you’re not sad, you’re you! I’m not sad about closing up my parents’ house. I’m Julie…but I sure do feel sad about it!
It may sound like semantics, but it isn't. One makes sadness part of my identity. The other reminds me that it is an experience I'm moving through. Like every emotion, it came. It will stay for a while. And eventually, it will leave again. I love that because it reminds us that emotions are visitors, not permanent residents. They deserve to be welcomed, listened to and respected, but they don't have to move in forever.
Emotions are transient brain-body states. They are constantly changing as your nervous system updates information from your body and your environment. Gross' work, along with Lisa Feldman Barrett's, on constructed emotion both support the idea that emotions are dynamic experiences. Not fixed traits.
What we need to recognize is that language plays a powerful role in how we experience and regulate those emotions. That's why becoming more precise and flexible with emotional language tends to improve emotional regulation.
Next, we NAME IT! In past Tips, we’ve talked about how research shows that simply labeling an emotion reduces activity in the amygdala while increasing activity in areas of the prefrontal cortex responsible for self-control and decision-making. Dr. Matthew Lieberman's work refers to this as "affect labeling." In short, if you can name it, you can begin to manage it.
After we notice it and name it, a good ‘ole deep breath is a great next move! One slow physiological sigh or a long exhale tells our nervous system that we're safe enough to think clearly again.
And finally, we ask, "What does this moment require of me?" Or, “What does the game demand of me now? Not what my emotions want. Not what happened one play ago. What does this game need from me in this moment?
That's exactly what elite performers do. They don't perform according to their emotions.
They perform according to the information in front of them.
The questions are similar…one is for life and the next for performance. The difference is simple. Require implies there may be options…which we normally have in situations like the one my sister and I were in last week.
But demand implies there is one best response dictated by the environment. That may be a better question when we’re trying to be our best!
Either way, our emotions tell us how we feel. The moment tells us what to do.
So, we notice, name it, ask and then do the next right thing. Not forever. Just next.
Maybe that's the lesson my dad's house gave me last week. We don't have to choose between feeling deeply and functioning well. We can honor our emotions without allowing them to completely hijack our attention.
Because performance isn't about pretending life doesn't hurt. It's about learning how to return to what matters after it does.
And maybe that's one of the greatest skills any of us can develop…to feel fully, to recover intentionally and to keep showing up for the people and purposes that still need us.
I’m not saying it’s easy. Nor is it not okay for Messi to sit on a pitch for what seemed like forever after a very meaningful game and let the emotion flow. But if we can, when needed, find a way to feel it and find our way back, we will feel better and perform better in the long run!
Julie
Julie Jones
Mental Performance Coach
SSB Performance
juliej@ssbperformance.com • 234-206-0946
Comments