When gymnast Sunisa “Suni” Lee began her floor routine in the all-around final at the Paris Olympics last summer, nothing was certain. It was her last rotation of the day, and Lee, the reigning gold medalist, was tied for fourth place with mere fractions of a point separating her from the competition. As she stepped onto the floor, NBC captured Lee reciting affirmations to herself.

“I was telling myself that I got this, and this is going to be the last one, so I wanted to make it the best one,” Lee says. “Telling myself that I was ‘that girl,’ just going to go out there and do my thing, because that’s what I came here to do.”

In 2023, a series of health struggles—including two kidney diseases—had Lee doubting whether she would ever compete again, let alone win two new medals for Team USA. But her renewed mental focus, on display in the memorable, now-viral video, makes her deeply proud when she reflects on the Games. “I had to overcome so much, not even with my health issues, but just mentally, too. There were days where I was fighting demons,” she says. “I’m really proud of the way that I was able to handle the pressure.”

Honing their focus by means of mantras and affirmations is a real, tangible strategy helping top athletes hit peak performance. The sayings are used across sports and other disciplines as a way to summarize, in one easy phrase, the very hard, important work that a person has put in to get to where they are.

And it doesn’t happen solely when big competitions roll around. After all, training the brain is just as important as daily lifts or team practices. “A lot of an athlete’s confidence can come from the way they talk to themselves,” says mental performance consultant Lacey Henderson, a Paralympic track-and-field athlete who competed in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.