A smart way to handle anxiety — courtesy of soccer great Lionel Messi

What separates the very best in the world from the remaining 7 billion of us?

 
Exceptional talent often looks like an act of revolution — a person doing something in a way no one has ever done it before — but many revolutionary talents are actually built on a foundation of evolutionary tweaks. These tweaks develop over time, often compensating for weaknesses and anxieties that might derail a lesser talent.

Take the world’s best soccer player, an Argentinean named Lionel Messi. Messi has won more Ballon d’Or trophies, awarded to the best soccer player of the year, than any other player. He has scored more goals in a calendar year than any other living player, is the top all-time scorer in Spain’s La Liga, and has the highest goal ratio in the sport today, scoring almost once every match.

For all his brilliance, though, he’s famously anxious. For several years, Messi habitually vomited on the field before big matches. After a string of disappointing national-team losses, another former Argentinean giant of the game, the late Diego Maradona, uncharitably criticized Messi by suggesting that it was “useless trying to make a leader out of a man who goes to the toilet twenty times before a game.”

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 Πηγή: ideas.ted.com