Why the Mind runs ahead: faith performance and the fear of the unknown
Sunday at Mass, the deacon spoke about anxiousness and our tendency to become consumed with the future. The readings were Isaiah 5:1–7, Philippians 4:6–9, and Matthew 21:33–43, but the part of the homily that stayed with me was much simpler: how often we worry about what is coming next instead of returning to the plan that is already in front of us.
That immediately connected with the work I do in sport and performance psychology.
When We Start Living in the Future
One of the things I see regularly with performers is that anxiety often has very little to do with what is actually happening in the moment. The performer may physically be standing on the field, court, stage, or in some other performance environment, but mentally they are already somewhere else. Their mind is trying to predict what is going to happen five minutes from now, at the end of the game, after the performance, or even days later.
What if I mess this up? What if we lose? What if I do not perform the way I know I can? What is my coach going to think? What are my teammates going to think? What are my parents or the people watching going to think?
The mind starts building a future that has not happened yet.
From a performance standpoint, we often call this anticipatory anxiety. There can also be a strong outcome-based component to it. Instead of focusing on the action that is actually required right now, attention shifts toward an outcome that cannot yet be known. The performer starts trying to mentally solve something that has not happened. I think that is part of why the message at Mass caught my attention.
From a faith perspective, I can do the same thing. I can spend so much time worrying about where something is going, whether an opportunity will work out, whether a decision is the right one, or what the future is supposed to look like that I stop paying attention to what God has already placed in front of me.
faith and performance: Trust Does Not Mean Knowing the Outcome
Philippians 4:6–9 obviously speaks directly to anxiety, but what stood out to me after hearing the homily was not simply the instruction not to be anxious. It was what follows.
St. Paul redirects attention:
Prayer
Thanksgiving
What is true
What is honorable
What is just
What is worthy of attention.
Then he tells them to continue doing what they have learned.
That last part feels incredibly practical to me.
In performance psychology, we spend a lot of time helping people return to what they already know how to do. Preparation has taken place. Skills have been trained. A plan has been developed. Yet, anxiety can convince a performer that they somehow need to solve the entire performance before it happens.
They do not.
They need to return to what they have trained. The next decision, next movement, next conversation, next pitch, next possession, and the next action that is actually available to them.
Faith requires something similar from me, although at a much deeper level. Trusting God does not mean I suddenly know how everything is going to turn out. It does not mean the uncertainty disappears. It means I am willing to continue moving forward without demanding that God show me the entire plan first.
I also think about David during the years he was fleeing Saul. He had already been anointed, yet much of what followed probably looked nothing like the future he expected. He was hiding in caves, being hunted by a king, separated from any obvious path toward what God had promised him. The Psalms connected with those periods do not read like someone who always understood what God was doing. David cries out, questions, asks God to hear him, and openly describes his fear and distress. There is a very human sense of, Why is this happening? Where are you in this? How long is this going to continue?
What I appreciate about David is that those questions did not automatically mean an absence of faith. He could be afraid, frustrated, confused, and still return to God. He did not have to understand the entire plan in order to remain within it.
That feels important because sometimes we talk about trust as though it means never questioning anything. I do not think that is realistic. There are moments when “Why, God?” may be the most honest thing we have. The question is what we do after asking it. Do we allow uncertainty to completely pull us away, or do we continue returning to what God has placed in front of us even when we cannot yet see where it leads?
That can be difficult because anxiety wants certainty. Faith often asks for trust.
Sometimes the Fear Is Really About Judgment
There is another part of this that I think is important from a performance perspective. Sometimes performers are not necessarily afraid of the mistake itself. They are afraid of what they believe the mistake will mean.
A missed opportunity becomes, “My coach is going to think I cannot handle this.”
A poor performance becomes, “Everyone is going to think I am not good enough.”
A mistake becomes something much larger than the actual mistake because the performer begins attaching judgment, identity, and future consequences to it.
I think this is one reason outcome-based thinking can become so heavy. The person is no longer simply concerned about whether something goes well. They are trying to manage how everyone else might interpret what happens.
That is an exhausting way to perform and if I am being reflective about my own faith, it is also an exhausting way to live. How much of our anxiety comes from trying to control not only the future, but also how other people will respond to us within that future?
That is a difficult question because there are plenty of times when I probably care too much about how something will be received, whether people will agree with a decision, or whether something I am working toward will produce the result I think it should. The more I try to control all of those things, the farther I move away from what is actually mine to do.
Tend the Vineyard in Front of You
That is where the vineyard imagery in Isaiah and Matthew started to connect for me.
The vineyard had been prepared. Something had been planted. Something had been entrusted to people. There was responsibility involved, and there was an expectation that the vineyard would be cared for and produce fruit. I keep coming back to the idea of being entrusted with something. There is a difference between being responsible for tending the vineyard and believing I own the vineyard.
In performance, an athlete is responsible for preparation, effort, attention, choices, response to adversity, communication, and execution. Those things matter enormously. But the athlete still cannot completely control the final outcome.
The same is true in life.
I have responsibilities. I have work to do. I have people I am called to serve. I have decisions I have to make and opportunities I have to act on. Trusting God does not remove any of that responsibility. If anything, it makes that responsibility more meaningful. Now I am starting to see more clearly that faithfully tending what has been placed in front of me is different from trying to control everything that comes from it.
Maybe that is one of the places where faith and performance psychology overlap for me.
Both continually bring me back to the present responsibility.
Prepare well. Pay attention. Do the work. Respond to what is actually happening. Stop trying to live an outcome before it arrives.
From the spiritual side, trust that God sees a much larger picture than the one I am currently trying to figure out. The future is still unknown and that is awesome. The outcome is still uncertain and that is awesome. The next step, however, is usually much closer than we make it seem.
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