What Are Feelings? A Coach’s Take on the Internal Game

What are feelings?

At the core, feelings are nothing more than internal signals. They’re the way your brain translates what’s happening around you, and what’s happening inside you, into something you can make sense of. But that doesn’t make them truth.

We grow up thinking feelings are accurate indicators of reality.
They’re not.

They’re interpretations. They’re biased. They’re filtered. They’re subjective.

And in high-performance environments, that matters.

Because feelings can be helpful…or they can completely mislead you.

You can feel unprepared and still be ready.
You can feel overwhelmed and still be capable.
You can feel doubt in the exact moment you’re closest to a breakthrough.

The feeling isn’t the fact, it’s the signal.

Where Do Feelings Come From?

Your internal world is built from a thousand influences:

• your past experiences

• your expectations

• your beliefs about yourself

• your perception of the situation

• your physical state (fatigue, stress, recovery, sleep)

• the environments you regularly place yourself in

Every feeling you have is filtered through that system, a system shaped by repetition, habit, and memory.

“Before one of my biggest championship swims as an athlete, I remember standing behind the block and feeling completely flat.

No spark. No pop.

My legs felt heavy warming up, and mentally I kept thinking, “This isn’t it today.” If you’d asked me right then, I would’ve told you I was about to swim slow.

But once the race started, everything clicked. My body did the job. All the work I’d put in for months took over. And I ended up posting one of my better swims of the season.

That moment taught me a lesson:
”Your feelings right before a race are usually just noise, not truth.”

That’s why two people can share the same moment and walk away feeling completely different.

One feels pressure.
One feels excitement.
Same circumstance, different internal code.

Your feeling is not about the moment.
Your feeling is about you.

My Personal Relationship With Feelings

“Your feelings are loud, but not always wise.”

— Unknown

Most of my life, as an athlete and as a coach, I misunderstood feelings.

I used to think “feeling confident” meant I was ready.
I used to think “feeling doubt” meant something was wrong.
I used to think “feeling pressure” meant the moment was too big.

But over time, across years of competition, career shifts, leadership roles, and being responsible for people depending on me, I realized something far more accurate:

Feelings follow your interpretation, not your ability.

There were times I felt flat but performed well.
Times I felt anxious but executed flawlessly.
Times I felt unsure but made the right decisions.

And there were other times where I felt great and still failed.

That’s when it clicked:

A feeling is not a prophecy.
It’s a message.
And messages can be misread.

“I coached an athlete who used to panic anytime he “felt tired” in warm-up. If his arms felt even a little flat, he assumed the race was gone.

At World Champs, he came to me in the ready room and said, “I’ve got nothing today.”

I told him, “Good. Stop thinking about it. You’re ready.”

He ended up swimming a lifetime best.

After the race he laughed and said, “I felt awful… but I swam great.”

— Classic example of feelings being terrible predictors of performance.

Feelings Are Subjective > Completely

Feelings are shaped by:

• what you focus on

• what you believe at your core

• the meaning you attach to events

• the stories you repeatedly tell yourself

• the patterns you’ve rehearsed

• the environments you’re surrounded by

All of those layers influence the internal story you hear.

And here’s the real breakthrough:

You can rewrite every one of those layers.

Nothing inside you is fixed. Nothing is permanent.
Your perception is a living system, highly adaptive and trainable.

The Science Side

From a neuroscience standpoint, your brain updates its wiring based on:

• repetition

• emotional intensity

• feedback

• and the behaviors you reinforce

Your internal world is not set in stone.
It’s constantly being shaped by your choices, your habits, and your interpretations.

You’re always teaching your brain what to believe.

The Coaching Side

Across decades of coaching, I’ve watched people transform not because their ability changed, but because their perception changed.

They didn’t become different physically, they became different internally.

When someone shifts how they interpret stress…
When they stop seeing adversity as threat and start seeing it as information…
When they stop attaching their identity to every feeling…
When they build new internal patterns and rehearse new stories…

Everything changes.

Performance rises.
Decision-making sharpens.
Consistency improves.
Identity strengthens.
The internal noise quiets.

Same body.
Same talent.
Different perception.
Different outcome.

“I remember coaching two athletes during the same championship meet…

One walked out every session convinced something was wrong, too tired, too anxious, too flat.

The other walked out with the same nerves, same fatigue, same stress… but never assigned it a meaning.

One spiraled.
The other performed.

Both lived the same environment, the only difference was the story they told themselves.

Your feeling is not about the moment.
It’s about your interpretation of it.”

What Changing Perception Actually Looks Like

Changing perception is not a motivational trick.
It’s a process.

It looks like:

• reframing what stress means

• questioning the old stories you’ve been repeating for years

• choosing what you focus on intentionally

• exposing yourself to environments that match who you want to become

• breaking your old automatic reactions

• practicing new internal responses until they become instinct

• noticing when a feeling is just a feeling, not a fact

“People don’t level up because their ability changes—they level up because their interpretation changes.”

— Brett Hawke

It’s small daily reps, mental and physical, repeated over and over until your internal world shifts.

That’s when feelings become useful instead of intrusive.
That’s when you stop being controlled by emotion and start using emotion as data.

That’s when your internal perception starts working for you, not against you.

Understanding Feelings Is Understanding Yourself

When you learn to separate:

• what you feel
  from

• what is true

you gain real power.

You stop getting derailed by emotion.
You stop mistaking discomfort for danger.
You stop confusing uncertainty for weakness.
You stop misreading stress as failure.

You start seeing yourself clearly.
You start operating with intention.
You start performing from a grounded place instead of a reactive one.

Master your perception, and you master your path.
Everything begins on the inside.

“One of the biggest examples in my own life wasn’t even athletic, it was stepping into leadership roles.

Every time I moved into a new chapter: coaching at Auburn, working with Olympians, building Sprint Revolution, taking on the Enhanced Games, the feeling was the same:

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

That feeling had nothing to do with the opportunity. It was just the discomfort of leveling up. Every time I stepped forward anyway, the work proved the feeling wrong.

Feelings tend to show up when the stakes rise, not because you can’t handle it, but because it matters.”