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In a demanding field like parkour, how you manage your internal state, your thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations, can significantly impact performance and results.
Coaches rely on it to maintain focus and ensure student progress. Athletes depend on it to move beyond hesitations and execute challenging techniques. Business owners need it to navigate operational pressures without losing perspective. In all these cases, state management is about moving from reaction to deliberate choice, allowing you to operate at a consistently high level regardless of external conditions.
The Core Insight: You Are Not What Is Going On With You
One of the fundamental skills for state management is the ability to separate who you are from what is going on with you automatically. I am asserting that what you feel, your body sensations, your emotions, your thoughts, arises mechanically and automatically.
You didn’t choose those sensations, those fleeting thoughts, or that surge of fear.
They just appear. Do they not? You didn't choose them. You didn't create them.
YOU REALLY WANNA GET THAT!!!!
Your body sensations, emotions, thoughts, those pop up automatically.
They arrived uninvited.
They’re not who you are. They’re just experiences passing through.
Yet, we often identify so deeply with these internal states that they shape our identity and actions. We think, “I’m nervous,” and act as though nervousness defines us. In reality, nervousness is simply a state passing through, something your brain generated due to past experiences (WE'LL TALK ABOUT THAT LATER), not a statement of who you are.
This matters because if you stop identifying with every little stress spike or negative comment in your head, you can handle challenges with less drama. A frustrated coach can step back and realize frustration is just a feeling, not a personality trait. An athlete can face a scary jump and think, “Nerves are here, but that’s not me. That’s just my mind’s alarm system being overzealous.” A general manager dealing with an unexpected emergency can take a deep breath and say "I am not my elevated heart rate or my anger" and respond calmly rather than frantically.
Learn to Distinguish your Internal State: A comprehensive guide
Below are working definitions for four core internal experiences. thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, and mental processes, defined in a way that highlights their nature as internal signals rather than directives you must act on. Alongside each definition, you'll find a practical method to create distance from them for more effective state management.
Thought:
A thought is an internal cognitive event, an idea, a memory fragment, a worry, or a plan, that spontaneously appears in your mind. You don’t choose to produce it; it surfaces on its own based on past conditioning and current cues.
How to Create Distance:
Label the thought as it arises: “I’m having a thought about ___.” By identifying it as a thought rather than a fact, you acknowledge it as an internal experience, not a call to action. This recognition allows you to observe it, let it be, and watch it pass, instead of treating it as a command you must follow.
Common thoughts:
Self-Doubt: “I don’t think I can make that jump.”
Comparisons: “Everyone else is progressing faster than me.”
Worries About the Future: “What if I fail again?” or “How will this affect my reputation or my business?”
Perfectionism: “If I don’t do this flawlessly, it’s pointless.”
Excuses and Rationalizations: “I’m just not in the right state of mind today,” or “The conditions aren’t good enough.”
Emotion:
An emotion is a felt experience, fear, excitement, frustration, that your system generates in response to what it perceives as significant. Like thoughts, emotions occur automatically and mechanically; you don’t decide to feel them, they just emerge.
How to Create Distance:
Name the emotion: “This is fear,” or “This is excitement.” Recognize that the emotion is separate from who you are. It’s a response, not an instruction. Seeing it this way lets you acknowledge and accept the emotion without feeling compelled to act it out. You’re then free to choose a behavior aligned with your goals rather than being driven by the emotion alone.
Common Emotions:
Anxiety or Nervousness: A sense of unease, often arising from uncertainty or perceived high stakes.
Frustration: Irritation stemming from repeated failed attempts or slow progress.
Fear: Concern over physical injury, embarrassment, or financial loss.
Resentment or Blame: Anger directed toward people, conditions, or circumstances.
Excitement: Positive anticipation that can be motivating, although it still alters one’s state.
Physical Sensation:
A physical sensation, tight shoulders, quickened heartbeat, tension in your jaw, face flushing, eye twitching etc. is an automatic bodily response to internal or external factors. Sensations arise from your nervous system and past patterns, not from conscious choice.
How to Create Distance:
Notice and describe the sensation: “My shoulders feel tense,” or “My stomach feels light.” Instead of interpreting these sensations as orders (“I must stop”), see them as data. This shift positions you to respond constructively, maybe by adjusting your posture or breathing, rather than reacting impulsively.
Common Physical Sensations:
Tension or Tightness: A feeling of rigidity in shoulders, neck, or lower back.
Increased Heart Rate: Heart pounding before attempting a challenging move.
Light Sweat or Clammy Palms: Slight perspiration due to nerves or anticipation.
Butterflies in the Stomach: Mild gut discomfort associated with anxiety.
Short, Shallow Breaths: Breathing that’s rapid and less controlled, often due to stress or pressure
Flushing of the Face: The face may turn red, typically also experienced with feelings of shame or embarrassment.
Mental Process:
A mental process is a pattern of thinking, such as rumination, planning, or daydreaming. These “loops” run in the background, triggered by context and memory. They’re not chosen, they just happen.
How to Create Distance:
Identify the pattern: “I’m caught in a worry loop,” or “I’m replaying that scenario again.” By noticing the process, you break the spell of simply going along with it. This creates room to redirect your attention, center yourself, and choose a more productive focus.
Common Mental Processes:
Rumination: Circling repeatedly around the same worry or scenario without resolution.
Catastrophizing: Imagining worst-case outcomes that blow challenges out of proportion.
Filtering: Focusing solely on negative aspects and ignoring successes or positives.
Black-and-White Thinking: Viewing efforts as either total success or complete failure, without nuance.
Intrusive Memories: Old patterns or past incidents popping up involuntarily, influencing current judgment.
Introducing “Generative Responsibility”
This approach is rooted in the idea that you, not external circumstances, govern the direction and quality of your experience. Instead of viewing circumstances as fixed and uncontrollable, you see yourself as the primary force shaping how events unfold. The term we’ll use for this is “generative responsibility”: recognizing that while you may not cause every initial event, you always retain the capacity to interpret, respond, and adjust. You define the next move.
How It Differs from Passive Experience
Usually, we pretend things “just happen” to us. We say, “Oh, the class was off today. The students were lazy,” as if you had no part in it. Generative responsibility flips this: maybe the energy was low, but you can shift it. Bring a new drill, crack a clever joke, or rearrange the course layout. Instead of being at the mercy of “meh,” you’re the director who can yell “Cut!” and rewrite the scene.
Why This Matters
Picture a parkour coach stuck with a demotivated group. Conventional wisdom says: “Ugh, they’re just not feeling it.” Generative responsibility says: “I can shift this dynamic. Let’s crank up some music, introduce a fun challenge, or say something so inspiring and badass that they forget they were lazy two minutes ago.” You’re writing the next chapter, not reading from a script, SERIOUSLY!!!
The payoff? It’s freeing. As an athlete, for example, confronting a challenging jump stops being about the scary obstacle and becomes about how you choose to engage with it. You can reframe nerves as excitement and proceed with confidence.
That’s generative responsibility in action, recasting fear as a stepping stone rather than a roadblock.
Recognizing When You’re Not Operating from Generative Responsibility
It’s one thing to embrace the idea of generative responsibility, to view yourself as the source of your responses, interpretations, and next steps. It’s another to notice when you’ve slipped out of that perspective. In day-to-day pressures, it’s easy to fall back into more passive modes of operation. Here’s how to tell if you’re not fully owning your role as the generator of your experience:
Shifting Blame Elsewhere: If you find yourself explaining your actions or results by pointing to external factors, your athlete’s lack of discipline, your customers’ fickleness, the timing of a big opportunity, this is a signal. When you’re constantly naming reasons outside yourself for what’s happening, you’re effectively surrendering your influence.
Waiting for Conditions to Improve: Another sign is holding back on decisions or withholding effort until something changes on its own. For example, a coach who waits for students to magically become more motivated or a business owner who waits for the market to stabilize before innovating is reacting to circumstances rather than shaping them.
Frequently Using “I Can’t Because…”Phrases like “I can’t do that because they won’t listen” or “I can’t try that approach because it’s just never been done” show that you’re deferring your power. Instead of looking for how you could influence the situation, you’re relying on a narrative of impossibility.
Feeling Stuck or Helpless: Persistent feelings of being trapped or overwhelmed—without exploring alternative approaches, are a telltale sign. Feeling momentary stress is normal, but when you repeatedly see no viable route forward, it might mean you’ve stopped looking at what you can create.
Lack of Initiative or Experimentation: When you avoid testing new methods, new drills, or new frameworks and simply accept the status quo, you’ve moved away from generating possibilities. If your approach is “this is just how it is,” it’s likely you’re relinquishing your role as a proactive force.
Why This Matters:
Noticing these signs isn’t about beating yourself up. Instead, they serve as early-warning systems that you’ve drifted from generative responsibility. Once recognized, you can reset your perspective: remind yourself that you have the agency to influence what happens next. This pivot is what puts you back in the driver’s seat, maintaining forward progress, adaptability, and genuine satisfaction in whatever you’re doing.
How to Shift Yourself Into Generative Responsibility
Moving from a reactive stance to generative responsibility isn’t about reading a clever quote and suddenly feeling motivated. It’s a deliberate process that you practice repeatedly until it becomes second nature. Here are the steps to guide that shift:
Pause and Observe: When you catch yourself blaming external conditions or feeling stuck, stop what you’re doing. Check in with your internal dialogue. Notice if you’re saying, “I can’t because…” or “It’s pointless since…” This is your signal to intervene.
Name What’s Happening Internally: Identify your thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations as separate entities. For instance, if you’re feeling frustrated by an athlete’s lack of progress, label it: “Right now, frustration is present.” This acknowledges what’s happening without equating it to who you are or what you must do next.
Clarify Your Intention: Ask yourself: “What do I want to create here?” This might be a more engaged coaching environment, a workable training plan, or a strategic pivot in your business. Defining what you aim to generate breaks the loop of passive reaction. Instead of looping on the problem, you’re focusing on a constructive target.
Take Responsibility for Your Next Action: Recognize that while you may not have chosen your current feelings or circumstances, you do choose your next move. This could mean adjusting your approach to instruction, reframing how you view a setback, or deciding to communicate differently with your team. The key is making a decision that aligns with what you’re creating, rather than what you’re avoiding.
Ask a Different Question: Instead of “Why is this happening to me?” switch to “What can I do to influence the situation?” or “How can I adapt to get the result I’m looking for?” This reframes your perspective from passive receiver to active shaper. You’re no longer waiting for conditions to align; you’re making something happen.
Implement a Small Action Immediately: Don’t just think about it—act. This might mean delivering a specific coaching cue, tweaking a business policy, or breaking a complex jump into simpler parts. By taking even a minor step in line with your generative goal, you reinforce the stance that you have influence right now.
Check Your Results and Adjust: After taking that step, observe the impact. Did it move you even an inch closer to what you want to see happen? If yes, keep building on it. If not, refine your approach. Generative responsibility is dynamic—it’s about continually iterating your actions until the environment starts to shift in the direction you intend.
In Practice: If you’re a coach and your class isn’t responding with enthusiasm, you first notice that you’re frustrated (pause and observe). Then you define what you want: a more engaged class (clarify intention). You drop the excuses that it’s just a “lazy” group and own that you can alter the atmosphere (take responsibility). Instead of asking “Why are they so disengaged?” ask “What can I introduce now to spark interest?” (ask a different question). Perhaps you add a new drill (implement a small action). If the group’s energy rises slightly, keep going. If not, try another approach (check and adjust).
Over Time: With repetition, these steps help you internalize the stance of generative responsibility. You’ll start to catch yourself sooner when you fall back into passive reactions and quickly realign with being the origin point of meaningful action. In short, this shift is a continuous practice, not a single event, and it’s grounded in daily, concrete steps to move from powerless reaction to empowered creation.
Upsets and Emotions Are Reactions to the Past
It’s also critical to understand that what goes on inside you is not who you are. Emotions, bodily sensations, and recurring thoughts appear automatically based on past experiences stored in your brain. Current stressors often reactivate old patterns. Recognizing this frees you from the idea that your emotional spikes or self-doubt define you.
They’re just patterns playing out again, and you can respond differently now. The human brain encodes everything we’ve perceived, every challenge, frustration, and triumph, as memory patterns. When current events (like a new business challenge or a high-pressure competition) mirror these old patterns, our brains automatically generate a similar emotional response.
By recognizing that current upsets often mirror earlier patterns, you realize these states are not truly about the present moment. They are echoes of the past. This frees you from feeling trapped by them. Instead of thinking, “I’m always scared of big jumps,” you can reframe it as, “This feeling is a pattern from the past that shows up now. I can choose a new response.”
Often I can free myself instantly and shake off an upset JUST BY RECOGNIZING THAT IT FEELS FAMILIAR!
Integrating Professional Tools
Sports psychologists often recommend techniques like goal setting, imagery, and progressive relaxation to manage internal states. Here’s how you might integrate these:
Goal Setting: Define clear objectives for each training session. For an athlete, it could be “execute the precision jump smoothly.” For a coach, “provide at least one new actionable tip per student.” For a business owner, “finalize the membership pricing structure this week.” Having concrete goals shifts your focus from internal noise to constructive action.
Imagery: Visualize success before it happens. See yourself (or your athletes) clearing that challenging vault, imagine your students smiling as they master a new technique, or picture a thriving, well-organized gym. Imagery rewires the brain’s associations, making success feel familiar rather than foreign. MAKE SUCCESS FEEL FAMILIAR! NATURAL! EASY! CONSISTENT!
Progressive Relaxation and Breathing Techniques: Simple breathing exercises, like inhaling for four counts, exhaling for four, activate the parasympathetic nervous system, calming the body and mind. This is especially useful if you notice anxious sensations before a big jump or holding a coworker to account for their performance.
One last thing...
Over time, consistently managing your state refines how you operate.
Ultimately, effective state management positions you as an agent of change in your parkour environment. Whether guiding students, pushing your own athletic boundaries, or optimizing your gym’s operations, you operate from a place of clarity and control.
You address challenges with constructive responses rather than default reactions.
Sure, this is gonna enhance your performance but also lead to a more meaningful and rewarding engagement with the discipline of parkour and your role within it!
By integrating generative responsibility into your routine, you transform obstacles into workable variables and shift emotional spikes into signals prompting informed action.
It’s not a quick fix, it’s a habit that develops through practice. But as your capacity to manage your state solidifies, you find greater consistency, adaptability, and satisfaction in every area of your life and also the various roles you play in your communities and work.
-Christopher Hollingsworth
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