Party Hard, Face the Doubt, Rise Higher
Welcome to Part 1 of our 4-part series on how to party with doubt! We are stripping away the noise to identify the lies and fears.
Photo by Usa Wrestling Party with the doubt aka “Lizard Brain” Part 1
You can’t fight the thoughts, but you can invite them to the party—and party hard. (Hey Siri, play “Ain't No Stoppin’ Us Now” by McFadden & Whitehead.)
Let’s skip the boring science lesson. Deep down in our skulls, resting right on the stem of our brains, we have a prehistoric ball that scientists back in the day called the "lizard brain." Its only job? Keep us alive and comfortable. Think of it like a smoke detector. If you grew up in a Black household, you are all too familiar with the annoyance of that random, persistent beep from the smoke detector. The thing is, it doesn't know the difference between you actually jumping off a cliff and you just stepping onto the wrestling mat—it just senses "danger" and starts signaling to get out of dodge. When we experience performance anxiety, that’s just our lizard brain beeping because we didn't change the batteries (our perspective), haha.
Our first instinct is often to suppress this fear. We try to bury it, or we overcompensate by forcing the success we want front and center. But I learned firsthand at the U.S. Open how easily that can backfire. It was my first tournament back after having Abrams, and the constant thought repeating on a loop was, "Am I capable? Am I making the right decisions?"
I tried to fight it by telling myself, "I'm going to win this." But honestly? That just opened a wormhole of doubt. My brain immediately demanded factual receipts. It was like, "Oh yeah? Where is the proof?" Suddenly, everything got louder. Every tiny mistake I made, hearing that my ranking was 7th, seeing the path of competitors I had to wrestle—all of that "evidence" just fed the anxiety.
I remember telling my coach, "Okay, after my first match, I'll be good." But I wrestled, and the doubts got louder. "Okay, after my second match, I'll be good." Nope. Even louder. I was trying to prove the voice wrong, but the lizard brain is never satisfied until you give it what it ultimately wants: absolutely no real challenge.
I realized that my brain is always going to fight its way back to being comfortable. That is just a given. You can't bury it, but you don't have to let it dictate the outcome, either. When the doubt flares up, I tell it: I hear you, I know we're uncomfortable right now. But we're doing this anyway. You will choose to be resilient. That worked for me because resilience doesn't demand a specific outcome. It just demands my best effort, and that entirely takes away the fear of the unknown.
Here is how I’ve learned to deal with that voice:
Dance with it. Acknowledge what the voice is telling you. Don't fight it; move with it. Take deep breaths to regulate your nervous system. My go-to is "box breathing": inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 4, exhale for 4, hold for 4.
Strip it. Strip the anxiety down to its core. Find the specific trigger that is causing the fear, and actively replace that fear with the truth.
Give it a seat, but no decisions. Trying to bury the anxiety or festering in it just gives it more power. Give the lizard brain a seat at the table, but do not let it make the decisions. Don't let it drive the car. Instead, make the active choice to anchor yourself in faith. As James 1:2-4 reminds us, God gives us challenges to build endurance in our faith. Invite the challenge in and anchor down, because that is how we grow, mature, and attract wisdom.
At the Open, I stopped trying to prove my capability to my doubts. I finally gave the anxiety a seat at the table. I accepted the thought and told myself: No matter what, I'm going to feel this way. I might not feel totally capable right now, but I am going to choose to be resilient in the moment and show up.
Resilience became my anchor for the entire tournament. I didn't need to fight the lizard brain for comfort; I just made the active, present decision to keep moving forward and still rise.
Even though I didn’t get the outcome that I wanted, I did show my heart, I chose to be resilient, and I stood strong in my faith. At the end of the day, that is all that matters because I will grow, and I will come back even better. So, if you ever find yourself dealing with the same things, follow these steps and just treat it as an exercise. Continue to change those batteries and grow that endurance. Because as we know, if you don't, that alarm will just keep going off.
Here’s the link to some videos that I watched it really helped and inspired my journal entry for today.
How to overcome fear by Trevor Ragan
https://youtu.be/qKCJbDOmuTI?si=L21F0PRNc3IHc5xw
Overpowering your lizard brain- Seth Godin