How to learn to deal with anxiety using the example of Lionel Messi

What separates the best of us from the rest?

Outstanding talent usually looks like an act of revolution: a person does something in a way that no one has ever done before. But many revolutionary talents are actually built on a foundation of evolutionary change. They occur over time, often compensating for weaknesses and anxieties that can lead less talented people astray.

Take for example an outstanding athlete, an Argentine named Lionel Messi. He received a record number of Golden Balls, which are awarded annually to the best football players. In one calendar year it scored 91 goals - more than any of the living players managed. He is the top scorer in the history of the championship of Spain and the most productive player of our time, who scores in almost every match.

However, despite all his genius, Lionel Messi is prone to anxiety. It is known that before important matches he repeatedly vomited on the football field. And although Messi himself saidthat the problem was related to malnutrition, this did not save him from criticism from another football legend originally from Argentina. After a series of defeats of the national team Diego Maradona declaredthat it is useless to try to make the leader of a person who goes to the toilet 20 times before the game.

Talent does not protect from anxiety.

Many successful people suffer from it precisely because they are too demanding of themselves. But Messi did not allow anxiety nullify his skills. He mastered a defense mechanism that also became the secret of his tactical genius.

What example is Messi giving us?

A football match lasts 90 minutes and most of the players start to actively participate in the game from the first minute. As soon as the whistle blows, they beg teammates to pass the ball to them and follow the tactics developed by the coach.

Messi is known for not playing at the very beginning of the match. This is his evolutionary change, which developed as he played football at an ever higher level. In the opening minutes, Messi is pacing back and forth in midfield and almost never interacts with teammates. While other players run and break through to the opponent's goal, he continues to walk, occasionally interrupted by run jogging.

In the first minutes, Messi does two things. First, he calms down. Discretion at the beginning is his way of fully immersing himself in the game until the final whistle. Secondly, Messi studies opponents. His legs move slowly, but his eyes flicker from player to player. He assesses their strengths, weaknesses and tactics, as well as keeping an eye on how his teammates move with and around the ball. Messi is not very valuable to his team in the early game, but such a tactical pause increases his value in the remaining 95% of the time.

Dividing a football match into "preparation" and "engagement" components, Messi relies heavily on preparation. In 2017, for the entire time that Barcelona played against Real Madrid, which became a classic, Messi ran only 4 minutes and walked more than 80. But when he was involved in the game, he was dynamic: he created nine scoring chances, scored a goal and passed the ball to another player who increased Barcelona's score by another point.

This behavior pattern is familiar to Messi. Often in the most important matches he focuses primarily in preparation. This explains his ability to be at the right time in the right place again and again. And although his positional play seems to be something supernatural, it is not a miracle. Minute by minute, he studies how a defender leaves a certain square of the field uncovered or two midfielders leave a small corner uncovered, gravitating more towards the center.

The lesson to be learned from Messi's tactics is simple: when you feel anxious, pause. Slow down. Get ready.

How to learn to apply his tactics in life

Of course, pausing and slowing down is harder than it looks. In the face of silence and anxiety, we instinctively strive to act. Psychiatrist Judson Brewer spent most of his career, thinking about how to do nothing.

About 15 years ago, Brewer developed a mindfulness approach to addiction recovery. When in moments of irresistible craving for the past habits Waves of anxiety roll in, he suggests coping with them with four steps:

1. Realize what's going on.
2. Let it exist.
3. Explore your emotions and thoughts, such as asking yourself “What is happening to my body right now?”.
4. Pay attention to what is happening at any given moment.

According to Brewer, his approach was inspired by the RAIN method, which she invented and described in her book "Radical Compassion» clinical psychologist Tara Brach. Brewer decided to try the approach on smokers who were trying to quit the habit.

Before launching the program, Brewer wanted to test everything for himself. But the problem was that he didn't smoke, and he needed to help those who feel like they're about to explode if they don't drag on a cigarette. Nicotine remains in the body for about 2 hours. And Brewer reasoned that smokers who could go 2 hours without a cigarette would gradually break the habit, stretching this time until you get rid of the desire to smoke at all.

To simulate periods of resistance, the non-smoker Brewer became meditate motionless. In moments of anxiety, he followed the RAIN method, and if he even moved a little, the time counter was reset to zero and the countdown of 2 hours began anew.

It may seem easy, but 2 hours without entertainment is a very long time. Brewer noted that the most difficult thing was not the physical pain from long inactivity, but the restlessness that shouted to him "Get up!"

For many months the psychiatrist was getting closer to the goal, but his anxiety did not let go. Until one day he finally achieved what he wanted: to sit still for 2 hours. Each successive attempt was easier because Brewer knew it was possible. Likewise, he knew that his patients might quit smoking. They just need the right tools.

Brewer was right. His approach turned out to be at least twice as effective as the usual methods of the time for dealing with addiction. A few months later, when smokers who had followed other therapies snapped and started smoking again, Brewer's mindfulness group remained clean. His subjects were five times more likely to quit smoking permanently with an approach that in fact, taught them to stop at the moment when their body very urgently demanded of them act.

The second of the four steps of Brewer's method is to allow feelings to exist is perhaps the most important. Allowing your experience to just overwhelm you seems disarmingly easy, because you don't have to do anything to do it. But that's the whole point. It is difficult, because you are forced to do nothing, although you want the opposite.

Despite all the benefits of inaction and preparation, sometimes things don't go according to plan. Messi has lost matches more than once. Not all of Brewer's subjects held their ground in the weeks and months after the experiment. Coping with the anxiety and discomfort that follows such lesions is very important. And this is one of the main differences between those who make a breakthrough and those who stay at the bottom.