2 Case study: Steve Magness

Growing up as an athlete, like, I was 100% obsessive passionate. I was-- you read down Vallerand's definition, and that was me through high school and college. Identity was wrapped up in running, and that was all that mattered, and nothing else did. And eventually, that leads to this fear of failure, and your motivation shifts as you become more obsessively passionate about things.

So I think it's one of those things that is very easy in domains that are results-driven, where you actually have some way to be like, oh, this is how good I am, and you're ranked. It's very easy to fall into that pattern and let your identity become wrapped up in whatever activity you see.

And what I've seen, both with myself and then, also, in helping other individuals, is, like, those motivation qualities slightly shift over time until pretty soon, you're just stuck in a state where individuals are just afraid to lose or afraid to fail. And when you get in those spots, the anxiety that comes with it can just be mind-blowing. I've watched world-class performers sit there and get to this point, and they're about to do the thing that their world class at, and they're paralysed with fear, not because they might lose a paycheck or something like that, but because it is their identity, and it is how they're defined. So they see, if I fail at this, or if I mess up, it is assault on the soul core of myself. And when you see it at really bad levels, it's just-- I mean, it's heartbreaking in a lot of cases.