Why Your Ego Might Be the Biggest Thing Standing Between You and Your Best Performance
Have you ever walked out of the arena after a run that didn't go the way you planned and thought — that is not who I am?
I have. More times than I'd like to admit.
And for a long time I thought the problem was physical. More practice. A better horse. A different approach. But no matter what I changed on the outside, something on the inside kept getting in the way. Something I couldn't quite name.
What I eventually figured out — through years of studying the mental game, experimenting with strategies, and learning what actually worked in competition — was that my best performances always had one thing in common. I was completely present. Focused on my process, my cues, my next move — not on the outcome, not on what people would think, and not on the last time things didn't go my way.
And my worst performances? Almost without exception, my mind had left the present. I was either living in the future — worried about the outcome, the pressure, what a miss would mean — or I was dragging the past into the arena with me, replaying a previous attempt that didn't go well.
It took me a while to understand that this wasn't a focus problem or a confidence problem. It was an ego problem. And before you close this tab because you're thinking I'm not an egotistical person — stay with me. Because what I've learned about the ego changed everything about how I compete, how I coach, and honestly, how I live.
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THE EGO ISN'T WHAT YOU THINK IT IS
In the context of mental performance, the ego has nothing to do with arrogance. It's not about thinking you're better than everyone else. It's something far more subtle — and far more universal.
The ego is the part of us that is constantly trying to protect our self-image. It's the voice that needs to prove, to perform, and to be approved of. And every single one of us has one.
Jim Murphy, author of Inner Excellence and one of the most respected mental performance coaches in the world, describes it as the false self — the version of you that's always checking whether you're measuring up, always scanning for signs of approval or rejection, always tying your worth to how you did.
Think about a five year old drawing a picture. She's not worried about whether it's good enough. She's just drawing. But somewhere along the way — as we grow older and become more aware of how we're being evaluated — we stop simply doing the thing we love and start performing it for judgment.
That's the ego waking up. And from that point on it becomes an engine that's always running — always asking am I enough? Did I do well enough? What do they think of me?
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THE FEAR OF FAILURE LOOP
Here's where it gets really personal for competitors.
Jim Murphy knows this territory intimately — not just as a coach, but as someone who lived it. Before he became one of the most respected mental performance coaches in the world, he was a young outfielder in the Chicago Cubs organization. And he describes how his entire sense of self-worth and identity revolved around his performance. He was obsessed with becoming a star — but underneath that obsession was a deep fear of failure.
He says his entire identity, his entire life, was riding on it.
Does that sound familiar?
Here's the insight that stopped me in my tracks. Jim Murphy says that most people don't actually fear failure. What they fear is what failure means about them.
It's not missing the steer that terrifies us. It's what missing the steer says about us — that we're not good enough, not talented enough, not worthy of being here.
When our ego fuses our self-worth with our performance, it creates what he calls the fear-of-fear loop. Our mind becomes hypervigilant — scanning for everything that could go wrong, obsessing over outcomes, second-guessing every decision. And if you know anything about how the brain works, you already know what happens when your focus locks onto fear and failure. You find exactly that.
This is the root of choking. This is the root of burnout. This is the root of that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach when you're sitting in the corner waiting to go.
I didn't have language for this when I was competing — but I felt it. Every time I left the present moment and started thinking about the outcome, or about the last run that didn't go well, my performance suffered. Every single time. And every time I stayed locked into my process — my cues, my routine, my next move — I gave myself the best possible chance of riding my best.
The ego was the thing pulling me out of the present. I just didn't know it yet.
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THE SELF-PREOCCUPATION TRAP
I want to get personal with you here — because this is the piece that hit me hardest when I finally understood it.
Author David Foster Wallace gave a commencement speech at Kenyon College in which he talked about our natural, basic self-centeredness. His insight was this: everything we see, hear, and experience is interpreted through our own lens. We are, by default, the center of our own universe.
And when I looked honestly at my own life through that lens — I realized that most of my anxiety, my agitation, my worst mental days — happened when I was completely preoccupied with myself. My performance. My to-do list. What people thought of my run. How everything was affecting me.
Jim Murphy puts it this way: when we are preoccupied with ourselves, our vision narrows, our growth is limited, and our failures are amplified.
I've tested the antidote and it works. The moment I recognize that self-preoccupation creeping in and I intentionally shift my focus outward — go do something for someone else, serve, give, show up for another person — the anxiety lifts. Almost immediately. Because when I get the focus off myself, there's suddenly so much more room.
That's not just good psychology. That's the ego losing its grip.
And in competition, the same principle applies. When I stopped measuring my worth against other competitors and started measuring it against my own growth — my own process, my own improvement — everything shifted. Not overnight. But shift it did.
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THE TWO VOICES INSIDE EVERY COMPETITOR
Inside every competitor live two very distinct voices. You know them both.
The first is your inner critic. This is the ego speaking. It's the voice that replays your worst runs on a loop, catastrophizes, compares, and keeps a running tab of every mistake you've ever made. It is loud, persistent, and shows up uninvited every single time. And because it's driven by the ego's need to protect and prove, it feeds on fear, outcomes, and what other people think.
The second is your inner champion. This voice is something altogether different — it is not part of the ego at all. It is the antithesis of it. Your inner champion is the voice of your truest, most courageous self — the one that believes in you, calls you up instead of tearing you down, and speaks from a place of love, resilience, and faith in your own potential. But here's the critical difference: your inner critic shows up automatically. Your inner champion has to be intentionally developed.
And that's exactly why so many competitors struggle. The inner critic has been running unchecked for years. The inner champion has never really been given a chance.
Here's what I've noticed — in myself and in the competitors I coach. We give the inner critic complete free rein. We let it speak to us in ways we'd never allow another person to speak to us. But the moment someone suggests feeding the inner champion — saying something kind and powerful about yourself, owning your strengths — it feels uncomfortable. Like bragging. Like too much.
But nobody else is going to develop your inner champion for you. That is your work. And the way you do it is through your daily thought life — your self-talk, your power statements, what you choose to listen to and let into your mind every single day. Every intentional, positive, purposeful thought is a deposit into your inner champion. And over time — with consistency — that voice gets stronger than the critic.
The competitor who performs her best under pressure isn't necessarily the most talented one. She's the one who has been most intentional about developing the voice that serves her.
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THE ANTIDOTE — COMPETING FROM LOVE INSTEAD OF FEAR
So what's the alternative to ego-driven performance?
Jim Murphy calls it competing from love. When your motivation is love instead of fear — love for the craft, love for the process, love for the sport itself — you become nearly unstoppable. Because love doesn't need a result to justify itself. Love just shows up and gives everything it has.
And here's something I've come to understand deeply through both my own experience and my work as a coach: when you compete from love, you are in the present moment. Fully here. Fully focused. And that — that right there — is the zone. The state every competitor is chasing.
The ego lives in the past and the future. It drags your mind back to the last bad run or forward to what could go wrong. But love keeps you right here — in your process, in your body, in this run. In the present there is no judgment, no comparison, no scoreboard. There is just this.
I experienced this myself in competition long before I had the language to explain it. My best runs — the ones that felt almost effortless, the ones where everything just flowed — were always the ones where I wasn't thinking about winning or losing. I was just riding. Just roping. Just doing the thing I love. Present, free, and fully alive in the moment.
That is the zone. And it is available to every single one of us.
True confidence, Murphy says, is not believing you will win. It is knowing you will be okay even if you don't.
That is freedom. And it is available to every single one of us — not someday, but now.
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WHERE TO START
If any of this resonated with you, here are three things you can do today:
1. Name the fear behind the fear. Next time you feel performance anxiety, ask yourself — what am I really afraid of? Not the miss itself. What does the miss mean about me? Naming it takes away some of its power.
2. Notice the self-preoccupation. When you feel anxious or agitated before or during competition, ask — am I focused on myself right now? On outcomes, opinions, what this means about me? Then redirect. Come back to your process. Come back to love.
3. Feed your inner champion daily. Your inner critic feeds itself automatically. Your inner champion has to be intentionally developed — through power statements, mindset content, affirmations, and gratitude. This is not optional. This is training.
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If this is the kind of mental game work you've been looking for, I'd love to invite you to tune in to the Cowgirl Up podcast — short, 3-5 minute episodes Monday through Friday dedicated to mindset elevation. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
And if you're ready to go deeper — to build a complete mental performance toolkit designed specifically for you and your sport — I'd love to connect. Visit mentalgame101.com to learn about 1-on-1 coaching and schedule a free discovery call. No sales pitch. Just a conversation to see if it's a good fit.
You were made for more than surviving your runs. Let's go get it. 🤠
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AUTHOR BIO:
Laurie Blickenstaff is a Certified Mental Performance Coach and the founder of Mental Game 101. She works with competitors in western horse sports and beyond, helping them build the mental skills, routines, and confidence to perform consistently under pressure — in the arena and in life.
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