Swimming is not enjoyable for the perfectionist control freak among us. (No judgement here: I’ve gots me some of those perfectionist tendencies streaming through my veins.)

We end misdirecting a lot of energy and effort on things that are, well….straight-up wasteful. Instead of spending more of our time on the things that actually impact our performance, we worry about how others will swim. Or that we aren’t perfectly motivated to train hard today. Or we obsess endlessly over the result.

There is a long line of things that you can control: Your effort in practice. Your pre-race routine before you get up on the block. Doing your warm-up and warm-downs properly. Showing up to early morning workouts. And so on.

However, there are also a significant list of things you can’t control. Influence? Sure, in some cases. But not all. And not always as much as you’d like.

Here are some of the things that we don’t (and should forego wasting energy on trying to) control in the water:

1. THE COMPETITION.

The biggie is how the swimmer in the next lane swims. How they prepare and decide to perform is ultimately up to them. Sure, you can do your best to intimidate them (whether through overt actions like chest slapping, spitting water into their lane and staring them down or by breaking their will during the race), but this isn’t something that should predict how you prepare and ultimately perform.

Yes, swimming is a competitive endeavor, and we therefore tend to measure ourselves up against the swimmer in the next lane, but this shouldn’t be the primary thing we are focusing on when at the pool.

2. EQUIPMENT.

From the moment our dreams become high-performance we start leering over at the magical power of expensive gear, enthralled with the idea of being able to pay for a shortcut to faster swimming without the requisite hard work.

As a result, I’ve seen more than my fair share of swimmer who obsesses over precisely what kind of racing suit to buy…but this same swimmer is the athlete who makes half the workouts, doesn’t push themselves during the main set, and their diet looks like a five-alarm dumpster fire.

To a point equipment can help you, but it’s not something you should be relying on to help you swim faster. Similarly, you can’t control what equipment other swimmers are using, so comparing your racing suit or goggles or their fancy parka to yours is wasted focus and energy.

3. LUCK.

Yup. Luck. It’s one of the things that athletes, coaches and even I don’t really discuss because there’s not really much of a point—it’s not something you can influence, and yet, it is still something that is going to play a role in how you swim.

You streamline into someone coming off the wall who just jumped into the water during warm-up and dislocate two of your fingers? That’s (bad) luck. (This is also a true story—my pinky finger is still crooked to this day.) Or your main competitor gets DQ’d in the morning heats.

The infuriating part about luck is obvious: by nature it is serendipitous and therefore impossible to rely on. And so you shouldn’t.

4. THE RESULTS.

Yes, I know, it sucks to hear this. You can’t completely control the final outcome. What you can do is put yourself in the best possible position to influence it to as high degree as you can.

As Cate Campbell, the world record holder in the 100m freestyle and widely considered a shoe-in for gold in Rio, saw firsthand, there are no guarantees in swimming.

Perhaps the most agonizing part of the sport is when you do everything right, check all the boxes, focus on your own deal, and the race just isn’t there for you when you need it most. (I feel like we’ve all been that swimmer at least once.)

5. HOW OTHERS VIEW US.

Hey, ya know what? People are going to talk. They are gonna gossip. They are gonna say dumb stuff.

People will have something to say when you have big goals, and they’ll have something to say when you don’t have big goals. Work hard at practice and somebody will say something (“Man, you are making the rest of us look bad”), and when you have a bad day at practice and somebody else will have something to contribute (“Buddy, keep it up—making us look gooood”).

The reality is this: we worry about how others perceive us. It’s natural. Getting up (in a bathing suit, no less) in front of hundreds or thousands of strangers and trying to bang out the swim of your life is terrifying. I get it.

But the more you worry about what others think, the less you will believe in yourself (science). The fear of negative evaluation and its effects are real (but at the end of the day, people don’t really care, even if they pretend like they do), so limit them by not getting consumed in what others might or might not think about you.

When you start trying to control what other people think you will find yourself infinitely frustrated and stressed.

Okay. Well. That was a fun list. Sorta-not really.

With all these things that can go wrong, what are we left to do but endlessly stress about them? Sounds about right. Which is odd, given that we know we can’t control them, and yet we worry and tense ourselves up anyway.

This is why you should set goals for yourself that are as controllable as possible. They shouldn’t be contingent on how other people perform: saying that you want to win gold at the Olympics is a fun goal, but it’s faint and imprecise. Better to outline a specific time (that you predict will win gold) and build a process and the performance necessary to achieve that standard.

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