Fear of Winning: Why Preparation Alone Is Not Enough

What sport psychology already understands — and music still avoids.

Sit comfortably on a chair, an armchair, or a sofa. Close your eyes and imagine that everything in your life has turned out exactly as you wanted. You are living in the place you were dreaming of, and your private life is exactly as you wished.

Your career is exactly as you wanted it to be. On stage, you feel confident and free, able to show the audience all the art and beauty of the music you discovered. People respond to it — and you feel joy. Sitting there in your imagined life, try to really feel it, both in your mind and in your body.

…and then open your eyes.

So my question is: did you feel calm and relaxed, or was there a sense of tension somewhere in the back of your mind? Did something in your body feel off — a subtle discomfort, anxiety, or even fear? What you may have just experienced has a name. In sport psychology, this is known as the fear of winning — a moment where success itself becomes the source of pressure.

Fear of winning – what sport already knows

Sports psychology speaks very clearly about the fear of winning. Athletes preparing for the Olympics dedicate years of their lives to one goal. Day after day, they follow strict routines: fixed sleep schedules, meals, planned training sessions, and structured programs that span months and years. They believe this discipline will take them to the top — to Olympic gold.

They are ready — physically and mentally — often at a level where they could win. Eventually, they reach the final and stand among the best in the world. The gold is within reach.

Then, just before the start or in the middle of performance, a thought appears: What happens next? In that fraction of a second, everything can change. A performer who was brilliant, a clear favourite, suddenly collapses under the weight of that moment.

The same mechanism in music

In the music world, we see exactly the same pattern. The first round goes well, the second even better. People start congratulating you. Suddenly, you are in the spotlight, and the media begin to name favourites. You see your name — and something shifts. Not in your technique, but deeper, in how your system reacts to what is coming.

Pressure begins to build, and in the final, mistakes appear. Years of work seem to collapse in a single moment. At this level, failure is no longer the main danger — success is, because success changes everything.

Often, we don’t understand what happened. Everything was going well, and we felt stronger with each performance. Yet somewhere in the background, a quiet voice appears: What if I win? What if this actually works? The more we try to silence that voice, the stronger it becomes — appearing at the exact moment when we no longer have time to think, only to play.

“Fear of success can be just as powerful as fear of failure.”

— The Champion’s Mind, Jim Afremow

After the performance

A few months after the Olympics, sports psychologists have the most work. The competition is over, but this is when the first thought finally breaks through: I failed because I was afraid. The performance replays in the mind like a film.

This is not an exception — it is a pattern, a normal psychological process.

Music — the missing conversation

In classical music, we rarely name this process. We describe the symptoms — stress, pressure, inconsistency — but not the mechanism behind them. We win competitions if our psyche allows us to, and our lives begin to change.

However, we are often not prepared for that change. Carried by adrenaline and external validation, we function for a while, but soon the pressure grows: performing at the highest level again and again, week after week. Without tools or understanding, this pressure becomes overwhelming.

We already play well enough. The problem is not how we play, but what happens to that playing under pressure. The mind, facing an unknown future, often chooses safety over growth. And sometimes, that safety looks like failure.

What can we do

Sport already offers tools that support the nervous system: future visualization, meditation and present-moment focus, journaling, structured pre-performance routines, mental rehearsal of post-success scenarios, and building a narrative beyond the performance itself.

These methods may seem simple, but in crucial moments they either support the system

— or take the result out of our hands.

“Every game is composed of two parts, an outer game and an inner game.”

 —  The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey

My experience

When I first heard about the fear of winning, I was shocked. I had played the cello my whole life — how could I be afraid of winning? Everything changed when I heard one sentence: the mind is afraid because it thinks this is the end and does not know what comes next.

A few years earlier, I went to an audition for a place I had dreamed of — my ideal life. I was very well prepared and knew the repertoire months in advance. The first page of the concerto went beautifully, better than ever before. Everything worked, and I thought: this might actually happen.

Then came tension. What if it works? Two seconds later, the first mistake appeared, then another, and everything began to fall apart. A few minutes later, I heard: “Thank you.”

Only months later did I understand what had happened. It was fear — fear of change, of a new life, of not being ready. Today I know that a few simple mental tools would have been enough. But no one teaches us that.

Conclusion

Today I know that this fear is normal. We all feel it.

But here is the difficult truth: you can be prepared, you can play at the highest level — and still not win. If your mind does not know what comes after success, it will try to protect you from it. It will distract you, create tension, and interrupt what you already know how to do.

Not because you are not prepared — but because you are not prepared for what comes after being prepared. And this changes everything.

If your mind doesn’t know what comes after success, it will do everything to stop you from reaching it.

Learning how to prepare not only for performance, but also for what follows it, is a skill — one that can be trained. Yet in music education, this area is still rarely addressed.