Watch anyone perform at the very top of their capability – an Olympian, a team clearing a target everyone called impossible, a kid playing the game of her life against the best side in the league – and the same question surfaces: what is actually fuelling that?
The dominant answer comes from positive psychology. Study elite athletes and you find imagery, anxiety control, deep concentration, and a deliberate cultivation of strength, gratitude and confidence. It’s well-evidenced and it works – for some people. This article, written by a master-certified coach and trained psychotherapist, argues it’s only half the picture. Across fifteen years of working with clients’ histories, a second pattern keeps appearing: people forged through hardship who return to that hardship for fuel, and who perform extraordinarily once they’re given permission to treat it as a source of power rather than something to move past. The useful question isn’t which approach is better. It’s which one you are.
