The Power of Negative Thinking for Athletic Performance
How athletes can cope when the worst-case scenario happens.
Posted April 14, 2026 | Reviewed by Kaja Perina
My husband drives cars. Fast. When I think about worst case scenarios he might encounter—well, I try not to, because I have no control over what happens in his car (let alone the cars around him). Fortunately, he does this driving on FIA-graded tracks (mostly). And he does think about worst case scenarios. And he plans for them, as in: here’s the net/ shrubbery/ cushioned wall/ gravel patch for when my brakes fail on Turn A/ B/ C/ straightaway.
Just recently he had a passenger (not me!) when his brakes failed. My husband’s passenger was not a performance driver but he was a paratrooper, and when the brakes failed in the straightaway, my husband’s passenger was just as calm as my husband was: he saw the gravel patch, he figured my husband would turn into the gravel and hockey stop. Which was exactly what happened. No sweat, no cussin’. Then off they went to fix the brakes. (In the particular case of my husband, it is during repairs and lost track time that sweat and cuss words flow).
Sometimes I get some pushback when I encourage athletes to consider oh sh*t moments. They worry that if they start thinking about undesirable possibilities, that possibility will become a self-fulfilling prophesy. And it’s true that’s possible. It’s also true that we can get injured while training. That doesn’t mean we stop training.
There are many ways to integrate oh sht planning into your practice of imagery and mental reps. One way to begin might be to acknowledge that every single athlete—including the greatest of the greats—-experiences these oh sht moments. And one thing that allows for a great performance when the sht happens is that the performer does not, in that moment, get lost a story about the meaning of the sht. (Common “stories” I’ve heard athletes telling themselves in oh sh*t moments include: There you go again, you [dunce] and/or You’ve [messed] it all up and now you better fix it all right this second and if you don’t fix it, no one will ever trust you again!)
It’s not that great athletes don’t deal with such self-critical narratives. It’s that they recognize the narrative is happening and can turn down it’s volume or choose another channel: they practice bringing their attention to what’s here now, what’s actually happening on the field of play and what they have control over in this context.
Which is why it’s so, so helpful to mentally rehearse oh sht moments, so that you can practice noticing if the self-critical narrative comes up and practice shifting your focus to what you can control. (Whereas avoiding the oh sht moment—keeping the sht out of our mental reps—tends to increase our sense of powerlessness when the sht happens.)
It’s important to acknowledge that the bodily sensations that accompany oh sht moments are the sensations of your nervous system doing exactly what it’s evolved to do, which is respond to perceived threat in a way that supports survival. Within milliseconds of the proverbial sht hitting the fan, your amygdala detects threat, cortisol and epinephrine release, your heart rate increases, your breathing may grow shallow, your pupils dilate, your muscles tense, and blood flow redirects toward large muscle groups. Your prefrontal cortex is temporarily deprioritized, so it’s harder to think critically and to make nuanced decisions.
Because we are social creatures and meaning-makers (meaning-making and social bonds matter for our survival), our instinctive responses unconsciously tilt toward narratives that might explain 1) what does it mean about me that this thing happened? and/or 2) what does it mean for my social standing? What meaning are other people making of this thing happening?
It’s not that great athletes don’t get these same unconscious questions begging for answers. It is that they’ve trained themselves to turn energy toward what they can control in this moment. (And one thing we can never control in any moment is meanings other people are making. Which doesn’t stop some people from trying to control other people’s meaning-making; see, for example, political propaganda, but those efforts run counter to athletic performance.)
And mentally rehearsing for oh sht moments does not mean you don’t also practice visualizing yourself getting it right. (Though I’d argue imagining yourself shifting your focus to what you can control in a moment of deep sht is seeing yourself getting it right!)
Imagery is your totally legal not-so-secret performance enhancer , and mental reps where you have to shift your focus from the story your brain wants to tell to attending to what’s-here-now will enhance your skills. But don’t take it from me. Take it from back-to-back Master’s champion Rory McIlroy, who regularly asks himself: what’s the worst thing that could happen, and then visualizes himself handling that worst case scenario in the most effective way possible.
Bottom line: Picture success, picture the positive, picture the postcard moment and the gold medal and the buzzer beater, game-winner, etc. But also, picture yourself controlling what you can control when conditions aren’t optimal. There may be nothing flashy or celebratory about it. It may be ugly. And it’s possible nobody ever sees or appreciates the beauty of the mental shift you made. But you can’t control what other people see or appreciate. You can control, even if only infinitesimally, how you respond to what’s actually here now. And your oh sh*t practice will support you as you paint the picture of what you do want to see.
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Margaret Smith, Ph.D., is the sport psychology provider for Team USA Wheelchair Rugby.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.