How to Manage Feedback Like An Olympic Athlete

While I was supporting the USA women’s volleyball team as a performance psychologist during the 2012 London Olympics, Nicole Davis, a key member of the team, opened up about the relentless feedback system that governed her every move as an Olympian: “For eight years, every ball I’ve touched or didn’t touch, every decision I made on the court, every hour I showed up in the gym has been observed and statted. It has been transformed into a measure of my progress, and my potential to stand on the Olympic podium.” Her life was a proverbial fishbowl.