What Do Parents and Olympic Athletes Have in Common?

“When you make friends with fear, it can’t rule you.” –Anne Lamott

For the past several weeks, we’ve been hearing stories about olympic heroes and heroines overcoming obstacles.  Quietly, and just as heroically, parents have been overcoming obstacles of their own, on their own.  So, what do Olympians and parents have in common?

• They both have to overcome fear of failure 

For parents, we are, “talking about the enigma of pledging ourselves to protect the unprotectable” as Joan Didion writes in Blue Nights, her reflection on raising a daughter who died.

In our efforts to protect our children we can easily become overcome by fear. Fear of food in the grocery store, chemicals in the air and water, a child’s first bike ride down the street or worst of all, something  we say or do that will damage her… the list is infinite.  It can paralyze parents just as much as  fear can paralyze an athlete in front of millions of spectators about to dive off the high dive.

The difference is that the olympic athlete trains in “working with the mind”.  Have you noticed athletes talk to themselves before the competition? They quiet the voice of fear and replace it with positive self-talk and images of confidence. They remind themselves that they are more than this one event. They welcome setbacks. They use the breath to change their nervous system. You can see them take a long slow breath immediately before competing.

Parents can do this, too. I hope, soon, that it will be as common to see the parent in the grocery store, as it is an olympic athlete, muttering to herself and taking a long slow breath.

On the Mat

Yoga is the perfect way to train yourself to be more aware of and in control of the breath.  The more you practice, the easier it gets. After you practice on the mat, you will notice it gets easier to remember to do it when you start to feel afraid or anxious with your child.

Yoga reminds us that we are more than our momentary fear, which is after all a fleeting feeling.  As we become aware of the feeling of fear in the body and the tendency to build stories of justification to support the feeling, we free ourselves from reacting. We can pause with a friendliness.  This allows us to clearly discern real from imagined threats.

Off the Mat

Use a daily event to remind yourself to take several long slow deep breaths. It can be whenever you stop at a red light, or when you turn on the faucet. After a week or so add another cue and another, so that you are stopping to breathe regularly. This keeps the nervous system relaxed and less prone to fight or flight responses.

Use self-talk when you encounter a situation that triggers fear. Have one or two key phrases that remind you that the situation is manageable and that small setbacks are welcome. Write them down and post them on the refrigerator. Remember first, to welcome the fear, it is a sign of how deeply you care about your child. If your child falls off her bike and scrapes her knee, kiss it, clean it, bandage it, and then remind her that it is in the  falling that we learn to balance. Help her get back on her bike. Courage is contagious.

“May we all feel safe, may we all be strong, may we all get back on the bike.”