In this powerful episode, M.S. Sport Psychologist Andrea Stojanović joins us to explore how the relentless pursuit of success can trap athletes in fear and rob them of joy. From young tennis prodigies weighed down by parental expectations to elite competitors haunted by past achievements, Andrea shares candid insights into why so many athletes feel they’re never “enough” and how they experience guilt under the pressure of not letting people around them down. Together, they unpack the difference between success, greatness, and mastery—and why redefining these ideas is crucial for well-being. Whether you’re an athlete, a parent, or simply someone striving to grow, this conversation offers fresh perspectives on how to reconnect with your true value beyond medals and results.
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Mathias Alberton (00:03)
Hello everyone. This is Mathias Alberton. I'm the creator of Martial Attitude. This is Martial Attitude Voice. As you know, it's a podcast about discipline. It's about sports psychology in the instance to discover new nuances of how sports psychology can be applied in practice, speaking with other professionals around the globe. Actually, we've spoken with people from Australia, from UK, of course. Today we are actually in Serbia.
We are joined by Andrea Stojanović, a dynamic professional whose careers bridges around the world of sports, psychology, human resources. Andrea holds a master degree in psychology with a focus on sports, psychology and human resources. After an early start interning in a psychiatric hospital and earning the title of health associate, she launched nearly a decade long journey supporting athletes and strengthening their mental game. While building her sports psychology practice, she also spent working as a flight attendant, which is actually an interesting take on this, a role that most definitely has sharpened her ability to understand people quickly, to navigate high pressure situations, skills that she now channels into helping teams to thrive. And there are specializing in mental training for athletes from building self-confidence, emotional control, to supporting recovery from injury and balancing life on and off the pitch. In Human Resources, she is equally passionate about driving positive culture, career development, and soft skills that empower people to grow. Above all, Andrea is dedicated to inspiring others to be brave, embrace change, and believe that pretty much no problem is unsolvable. Andrea, it is very nice to have you here today on the podcast. Welcome.
Andrea Stojanović (02:03)
Thank you, Mathias. It's my pleasure to be here with you today and thank you for inviting me and thank you for representing me in such a nice way.
Mathias Alberton (02:14)
Well, my pleasure. You have been working with sport lately in which with some particular team or some particular athletes?
Andrea Stojanović (02:27)
I'm working with individual athletes currently and over the years I have had the chance to work with many athletes from young talents to Olympians and I have often seen a very particular struggle. Athletes who in their desire to succeed completely lose the ability to enjoy their sport and that's the topic of today's conversation.
They push themselves beyond their limits, not just to achieve something, but to prove something to themselves, their coaches, their parents, audience watching them. And this constant need to prove worth often leads to physical injuries on the first thing because they lose focus and also emotional burnout and a deep loss of identity outside of sport because they are not also athletes, they are also human beings on the first thing.
Mathias Alberton (03:21)
Yeah, that's one of the points. I mean, we met, so to speak, online. I was following your Instagram profile and you posted the story about success. a month ago I have posted as well something about the concept of success, something that I am a bit struggling with. There are a few concepts that I am not really engaged with or let's say that I don't buy too much into the narrative that is around the idea of success just to stay on topic. So in your experience working with athletes, how do you see the difference, let's say between success and greatness, which was the point that I was trying to make myself? Do most athletes consciously distinguish between these two ideas or they do kind of blur together?
Andrea Stojanović (04:21)
I think that they blur together. To me, being haunted by success means being trapped by your own achievements and by the expectations that follow. Success becomes a pressure point, not a source of joy for them and instead of feeling inspired, the athletes are anxious, afraid of losing what they have built and afraid of how they will be perceived if they don't keep winning. And that's the main point of that. my approach when working with these athletes is, on the first thing, to remind them of their worth, that they are valuable as human beings even when they are not winning. And many athletes forget this. They attach their self-worth to their achievements and when they do that, the joy disappears and only fear remains. And I support them in this process because on first thing we explore the meaning of success.
I ask them what does success mean to you now at this stage of your life and career. Often they don't have a clear answer. They are chasing all definitions or external expectations. So we take time to ⁓ redefine success in a way that is authentic and personal. Also we shift from external pressure to internal clarity by helping them recognize the impact of media expectations and public image and guide them to come back to their own voice. I think is very important.
Mathias Alberton (06:09)
And when you are talking about these athletes, just to clarify a bit in my head, what's the age group of these people you're working with, roughly?
Andrea Stojanović (06:15)
Early 20s.
Mathias Alberton (06:22)
And the kind of sport discipline they are working in ranges between, I mean, individual sports, hockey, football, team sport.
Andrea Stojanović (06:30)
No, mostly basketball, football, athletics, individual sports, tennis and water polo also.
Mathias Alberton (06:43)
Right. So I can imagine on the top of my head that team sports, they do have a very important component of culture. Let's say there is the culture of the football club or the basketball club. And there might be pressure coming also from peers. So all what others components of the team are doing, so you need to blend in to a large extent, otherwise you are outside of the team, you must be full on. So the pressure is not only from the outside world, but it comes already from the inside of the team. So it is an extra pressure. Instead, maybe some individual sport like tennis is more binary.
So either you win or you lose, you are alone against another opponent. So the failure is just on you. You cannot share failure across the team. is, in your experience, this idea of success felt differently between disciplines, team sports, let's say, versus individual sport, or is kind of roughly the same?
Andrea Stojanović (07:59)
I will focus on the things that are the same and that's the pressure as you said now from inside also from the coaches, the team staff, parents and also outside media and also audience they are stuck between that two things. And I suggest them to focus on patience and small steps because once they reconnect with their own definition of success, I help them cultivate patience, learning to focus on small steps and of obsessing over big outcomes then success becomes something they build towards, not something must defend. And it's the same in individual and also team sports. I don't see the difference between that two things.
Mathias Alberton (08:57)
But you said that, you said it before, it was actually interesting that when they are stuck into this maladaptive idea of success, they are stuck in fear. Fear of what?
Andrea Stojanović (09:11)
Be good enough again as they were in the past.
Mathias Alberton (09:22)
that they are stuck and it is expressed because they don't enjoy the thing or they are still performing pretty well, but they would just like to be a bit fresh-minded. does the performance change because of this problem? Do they contact you because, look, I don't perform as well as before, so there is something wrong, I don't know what it is, and then you discover that there's a success problem, let's say, or it is something like, well, actually, everything is pretty fine, but I mean, if I could only live a bit better with myself, which one is, is performance compromised or not?
Andrea Stojanović (09:55)
In our work, we work on transforming that inner voice they have in their head from critical and fear-based to grounded and compassionate because they constantly have fear that they're not good enough because they have expectations from their coaches, their team staff, also their parents, if they're younger athletes, if we talk about younger athletes, also audience, and they constantly ask themselves, am I still good enough? especially if they had some big wins in the past.
Mathias Alberton (10:51)
Of course, I understand that the issue here is also to adapt to, you know, so many things. But honestly, some athletes, at some point, I figure they actually need to transition out of the sport. So let's say that because of performance, because of work commitments, because of creating a family, not mentioning injury or age. But simply put, some of the pressure might be, look, it's time to go. So the team management will decide for them, said, look, this is the last season, these are the last couple of decided it's better to move on. So whatever success they had, it is indeed in the past. So do you have this kind of situations? Do you work on this transitioning out of sport?
Andrea Stojanović (12:02)
Yes, but not too much. I had more experience with athletes who, for example, had injuries and back on the field after I think in that point of view, it's very important to remind athletes who they are beside of sport and every athlete has a life beside sport and balancing private and sports life is a very important thing during the career because of that as you said after transitioning out of sports they will feel better things inside them because they stuck in that point success only in sports. And they think that they are not successful as a human being if they are not anymore in sports.
Mathias Alberton (13:02)
Thing happens as well because many of these athletes, as you just said before, are very young. So they are honestly young and they have started playing ball or whatever the sport might be when they were even younger. So pretty much a very large amount of their lives was all about the sport.
Andrea Stojanović (13:29)
Absolutely.
Mathias Alberton (13:30)
You know, for adult, you know, you have done this, you have changed career a couple of times, you have trained before, then you discover that you like to play piano and you learn the piano and then you end up in having whatever age you have with a fresh new career, you're pretty good at doing another thing like playing the cello. And it's fine. So you can understand achievement, goal settings in different ways because you have, let's say, a perspective on what has happened before. These people instead, they don't have a perspective because the only perspective is forward.
There is no perspective backwards. They cannot look back. There is no much to look at. mean, there is a lot, but everything that they look back at is just about sport. There is nothing else. So how do you work this? How do you make them consider, if not reframing, that there is something else? Do you work on their interests, their studies, their relationships, how do you proceed?
Andrea Stojanović (14:53)
Interesting question because in that point they can feel stuck and lost.
Success can be a gift but when it becomes an obligation it turns into a burden. Many athletes are haunted by their past achievements, by the public image they feel they must protect and by the fear of letting others down.
My role is to help them reconnect with themselves, to see their value beyond medals, beyond results, beyond headlines. And I help them to understand that, that their past success is not their prison, it's the part of their story. And they need to decide what comes next. They need to feel themselves, feel what they really want beside the sport.
Mathias Alberton (15:48)
There is also this idea in sports psychology. It's a very mainstream idea. I actually agree. don't there is nothing wrong in being mainstream. This idea of ego and task orientation for the audience just to uber simplifying the concept is the idea that someone is extremely focused on beating the opponent at all costs. Someone else instead is more task-oriented, meaning that he enjoys a bit more the process, regardless of the outcome. So there is kind of differentiation. People tend to be ego-oriented or task-oriented. Now, when we go to the, let's say, the last quartile, so the top athletes, the elite athletes, tendency is that they are very task-oriented and they are also very ego-oriented. Have you noticed differences between these two types of athletes and their approach to success?
Andrea Stojanović (16:55)
I think that that kind of athletes with ego oriented need to work on their personality on the first thing concentrate more of their personal development and after that on the sports development because if they do like that it will be their career because if their ego to control them it will be very hard during career.
Mathias Alberton (17:30)
Of course, you mentioned that part of the problem is that success often comes with the pressure to sustain or replicate success. So from your perspective, how can athletes avoid becoming trapped by their own achievement? So how do you disentangle them?
Andrea Stojanović (17:41)
I think that's the normal part of the sports development. Nothing can be perfect all the time. They constantly need to work on themselves and something new in their personal and sports life. They constantly need to try to be better for themselves, not only for others. And that's the main thing that we work on, to focus on themselves, on something inside them not the things they are outside. Because during the career they constantly need to prove something and they are focused on that external factors. And during our work I suggest them to focus on their own expectations, their own definition of success, refine some definition they had before and what is the thing that they need now.
Mathias Alberton (19:05)
Yeah, that is one of the points that I was reflecting upon when I first started posting some content on the idea of success. The idea that, let's say, victory, success, mastery are all different things. They may overlap time to time, but they actually are different things. that I...
Andrea Stojanović (19:32)
I agree.
Mathias Alberton (19:33)
Yeah, This is interesting because there is the dictionary helps sometimes to understand what words mean. And success is the past participle of succeed. So to get something done, meaning that success literally means that something that has been done, nothing else, is just a past tense of to do in a way. With this perspective in mind, success is always in the past. It cannot be in the present. It cannot be sustained because as soon as you've done something, you have succeeded in doing that thing and then you put it aside cannot be sustained. But the word success now means something different. It means a continuous feedback from the outside that you are great at doing something. But to be great at doing something is different to have success. So I try to think, OK, fine, maybe there is a problem with the words that we are speaking the words that we are using in identifying things. So maybe there is a lack of knowledge about the available words. So, okay, you're talking to me about success, but you are not really talking about success. You're talking about victory. And then maybe we can talk about mastery. We can talk about greatness. So something that you can become great at and then success is a minimal part of it. you work throughout the differentiation of these different meanings? Do we agree on this point?
Andrea Stojanović (21:30)
I agree with you on this point and I would like to say that they have that kind of pressure maybe because of the media because they can be very intense and when they start gaining recognition and media praise they begin to consciously or unconsciously that they must live up to that image and they fear that if they don't maintain that level of performance, the media will no longer see them in the same light and their value in the public eye will fade. And I think that's the main problem when we talk about success, greatness and victory because that thing creates a powerful inner tension. They constantly ask themselves, I'm not just trying to succeed, I'm trying not to disappoint an entire narrative about who I am. And it's a very tough thing for athletes.
Mathias Alberton (22:34)
Now you mentioned already two, three times this idea that some of the athletes you're working with, they are a bit haunted by the idea of letting other people down. Who are they referring to? The family, the partners, boyfriends, girlfriends, the management, the fans? Who are these athletes letting down?
Andrea Stojanović (23:01)
That's the individual thing. Sometimes it's management, sometimes partners, sometimes parents if they are younger athletes, sometimes public. That's the individual.
Mathias Alberton (23:13)
In your experience, did you identify kind of a pattern? So there is a need for being grateful, let's say, to people who allowed them to be that footballer, that tennis player, or they are substituting for something?
Andrea Stojanović (23:23)
I saw many times that pattern, especially in tennis. In tennis it's very hard to work with young athletes because they have double pressure from parents and from coaches. In my experience, they often work together to put that pressure to young athletes because they think that they will help them in that way. But that expectations from the parents and the coaches in tennis especially are the most biggest pressure that young athletes can have. And that's the main reason why they don't succeed in some matches. Because they constantly ask themselves, can I do it better? What they can tell me after this? What did I do? Why did they look me like that? And it's the very hard thing and that's the hard pressure they feel during their career.
Mathias Alberton (24:23)
Yeah, you ever worked with the parents as well?
Andrea Stojanović (24:45)
Yes. And that's the part that I work when I work with young athletes, especially in tennis. I work with parents and also coaches and because of that I tell these things.
Mathias Alberton (24:59)
Yeah, I remember, for instance, one of my lectures at Roehampton University, Sam Thrower, now He works at Oxford Brookes. And he has written about in different papers upon parenting in tennis, let's say. So how to tackle parents to have the right attitude towards their children when they are playing tennis, when they go to the match, when they come back, what's the talk that they do have in the car coming back from the tennis court.
Andrea Stojanović (25:19)
Yes.
Mathias Alberton (25:38)
Now, for instance, the tennis players, they are fulfilled by, let's say, external success markers. Let's say, the medals, the titles. When you work in teams, maybe it's not so much because there is a lot of excitement all over the place. But with tennis, you know, it is also strictly binary. So if you win, you pass. If you don't win, you stop. If you keep on winning, then, you know, the title is closer. So there is one round, two rounds, three rounds. Now we see Wimbledon playing right now. So it's the same thing. So there are markers of success on and on and on and on and on.
Do you think that these markers are a compulsory, mandatory element of success? Can an athlete feel truly fulfilled without these markers?
Andrea Stojanović (26:39)
I think, especially in young age, that they do everything that parents and coaches expect from them. That they don't have time to think about anything else because they have that constant pressure to do something, to pass, to win the medal, to be better. And if they are not good enough, they often feel guilty and that's the very sad part of the story and because of that, tennis is very specific and I think as you said, now that the parents need to be coached how to approach their children after the match.
How can they tell them positive or negative feedback, especially negative feedback? And how can they support? Because the support is the most important thing in that case. Because young tennis players constantly feel guilt and fear because they can disappoint their parents, their coaches and it's a very hard thing.
Mathias Alberton (27:55)
Also, want to remind everyone in the audience as well that when we are talking about young athletes, so let's say... 15 to 22. So in that age group, even if they were not athletes, they were just, let's say, regular children growing up in adulthood. It is the moment in life, that period of life, where actually you are in defiance of parents. you know, parents stop to be relevant because the peers means everything and you don't accept anymore the rules of the house, you try to create your own rules and you transition to become, you know, self-contained, to have a better sense of self-identity and it's something that happens to everyone in those years. Now, the problem is that that thing still happens
Andrea Stojanović (28:43)
I agree.
Mathias Alberton (28:58)
But you do also have the problem pulling off some great matches and achievement. So there is a kind of an overlap between the natural developmental process of a human being, not to mention the ladies, the women, the young women to be. There is so much hormonal changes. There is so much discovery of you know, partners and how to behave with different kind of interests towards them. So, you know, all that still plays a major role. And then on top of that, you have to play, you have to win.
Andrea Stojanović (29:38)
Absolutely, agree with you and that's important thing to talk about, especially in tennis but also in other sports in that age because they passed through the teenage period and beside that they also passed through the transition through their sports and they try to become better constantly and to achieve something, to prove something to their parents, to their coaches and they have double hard period I think. need balance their personal and their sports life in that young age and it's very hard for them and especially I would like to mention some things from my practice from work with the tennis players, young tennis players. In that age, 17, 18, they also want to go out with their friends party, but they can't. And if they have one day to do the usual things that the teenagers also feel guilty because parents and coaches told them okay but you need to rest you need to train tomorrow and they constantly have that pressure that they didn't do something well.
Mathias Alberton (31:08)
How do you work with this? Do you manage to reframe this
Andrea Stojanović (31:13)
I think that in that point of view the sports psychologist should on the first thing with the parents and the coaches because they need to understand that the athletes are only for the medals and for the winning, but also they are human beings and also they are children still and they need to do some things like other children's does in that age. And it's the hard thing because the parents of course want the best from their but usually they don't know how to approach them and the sports psychologists need to help them to approach at least in that young age, on the level.
Mathias Alberton (32:01)
Finally, say to wrap this episode about success, achievement and struggle in being stuck because of these pressures. What advice would you give to someone listening right now who feel they are not succeeding, even though they are learning, growing, but
They feel like they are not succeeding. How can they start to shift their mindset towards seeing greatness as reachable possibility?
Andrea Stojanović (32:44)
I think the main thing is to help them to reconnect with themselves, to see their value beyond medals and beyond results and that their past success is not something that defines them and that's the only part of their story and they need to decide what comes next and that the power is in them. need to know that the power is in them and that's the main thing, I think.
Mathias Alberton (33:14)
Andrea, thank you very much for your time. It was really lovely to have a conversation with you upon success. I thought it was really brilliant. Thank you very much for being here.
Andrea Stojanović (33:26)
Thank you for inviting me. I enjoyed and have a nice day.
Mathias Alberton (33:31)
And thank you everyone who has been listening to Martial Attitude Voice Podcast. If you do have questions or ideas about how to tackle success, well, we are here to listen. So please send an email, drop a text, follow on social media. Of course, you will find the links to follow Andrea on LinkedIn and Instagram in the description of the episode below. I also remind everyone that Martial Attitude is working to create a bespoke system of training for visually impaired and blind people. run workshops in London every Sunday afternoon to enhance confidence, posture, and let's say the comfort in touching and being touched by other people in social settings. If you're interested or you know someone who might be, you know it, you keep in touch.