When people picture elite sport, they usually imagine the glory: the medals, the anthem, the moment everything comes together. What they don’t often see is the psychological turbulence underneath those performances – the doubt, fear, shame, and self-recrimination that show up when things don’t go according to plan.
Years ago, Third Factor founder Peter Jensen was working with a Canadian national team that was, by all measures, one of the best in the world. They were perennial contenders, a program with history and swagger. And yet, in the first days of a world championship, everything came undone. They lost to their arch-rivals badly, and the shock was devastating.
We’re always navigating the gap between what is and what ought to be. That gap hurts. But the hurt is meaningful. And if we can help people explore that meaning, we unlock the very thing that allows them to grow.
By the next morning, the athletes stood in the hotel lobby looking hollowed-out. Angry. Embarrassed. Anxious. They knew the tournament was short. They knew another loss could knock them out. And they knew they were at risk of spiraling.
This is the territory we work in every day – not just in sport, but in business, education, and leadership. People experiencing disappointment, failure, or the deep discomfort of not living up to their own expectations. As psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski wrote, we’re always navigating the gap between what is and what ought to be. That gap hurts. But the hurt is meaningful. And if we can help people explore that meaning, we unlock the very thing that allows them to grow.
What follows is how Peter helped that team turn a moment of psychological crisis into the fuel that carried them to a gold medal, not despite their negative emotions, but because of them.
01.
Acknowledge the pain and help people observe it
02.
Move toward compassion, not criticism
03.
Help them find the meaning inside the pain
1. Acknowledge the pain and help people observe it
When Peter asked the players how they were feeling that morning, they didn’t hold back: awful, embarrassed, sad, angry. A typical response might have been reassurance: You’ll be fine, shake it off, don’t worry about it. But reassurance rarely helps; it often makes people feel more alone in their emotions. Instead, Peter simply said: “Yeah. You look awful.”
It may sound blunt, but it wasn’t judgmental. It was observational. It told the players: I see you. What you’re feeling makes sense. Let’s look at it together.
When the strength coach announced they’d be doing lunges at practice, Peter asked: “How are you going to look doing lunges? How will your teammates know you’re back?”
These were reflective questions not about the loss, but about how they were showing up in response to it. They invited the players to step outside themselves and observe what was happening internally.
This is the first job of a coach in hard moments: Help people dis-identify from the emotion without dismissing it and let them see the feeling rather than become the feeling.
2. Move toward compassion, not criticism
Negative emotions become destructive not because they exist, but because we weaponize them against ourselves. We interpret them as proof: I’m not good enough. I’ll never perform. I don’t belong here. A coach must interrupt that spiral.
Peter did this in an unexpected way. That morning, a staff member had told a long, mundane story about buying a T-shirt on sale. The players had zero patience for it. Peter asked the staff member to tell the story again to the entire team. Afterwards, he asked: “Why did he buy that T-shirt?”. Eventually someone answered: “Because he got a good deal.”
Peter replied: “Right. He wasn’t going to overpay. He knows what shirts are worth. You guys are overpaying right now.”
No judgment. Just compassion and perspective. The point was simple: Don’t pay more than the moment is worth.
You lost a game. It hurts. But don’t add interest by beating yourselves up. A coach helps people see the whole truth, not the narrow, distorted version they’re stuck inside.
3. Help them find the meaning inside the pain
That afternoon, the team played a weaker opponent and won only 2–0. Instead of relief, they felt further proof that they were failing. So Peter gathered them and asked each player to share what it meant to represent their country. What surfaced were stories of parents driving endless hours to practices, communities fundraising to support them, comebacks from injury, and dreams that had taken years to build. It was emotional. And it was clarifying.
The problem wasn’t that they had lost a game. The problem was that they weren’t living up to what the opportunity meant to them. And when people reconnect with meaning, they reconnect with agency. They can choose how to move forward. From that point on, Peter reinforced that meaning daily:
At practice: “An American player woke up today preparing to face you in the gold medal game. How are you preparing?”
In the weight room: “Can you improve 1% today? What will you do to show you’re getting better?”
By naming their pain and understanding its purpose the team turned the emotional energy inward, toward growth instead of self-attack. They never lost another game. They won the gold medal.
When negative feelings become a weapon
Negative emotions are not the problem. What hurts performance is when people interpret those emotions as evidence of inadequacy: “I failed, therefore I’m a failure.”
This is the voice of the critic – a destructive internal narrator that convinces us we’re incapable of growth or unworthy of success. A coach’s role is to challenge that voice by asking better questions:
- What is this feeling signaling?
- What is the conflict between what is and what ought to be?
- And what does this moment make possible?
That’s how people reclaim their will – what we call the third factor: the inner capacity to direct your own development.
The takeaway for leaders and coaches
Whether you’re leading a national team or a project team, the principles are the same:
- Acknowledge negative feelings without trying to eliminate them.
- Help people step back and observe their internal state.
- Guide them toward understanding what the discomfort is pointing to.
When we do this, people stop treating hard moments as evidence of failure and start treating them as invitations to rise.
Crisis becomes a catalyst. Pain becomes fuel. And performance becomes possible.
