We have an enduring biological need for safety and belonging.

We engage in social groups in which rank and status matter because they provide advantage and opportunity.

Modern performance-based systems reframe achievement as the pathway to safety and belonging.

Why is today’s achievement no longer enough tomorrow?Why do we keep raising the bar, even when the cost is so high?Why are we so obsessed with performance?

So obsessed, in fact, that we push ourselves, our bodies, and even our children toward one defining moment—one fully exposed performance to be celebrated or criticized by the world. Why would Olympic athletes like Lindsey Vonn, Jessie Diggins, or Ilia Malinin sacrifice so much, risk bodily harm and public scrutiny just to achieve something no one else has done before?

There are many complex and individual answers to these questions. But there is also an often-overlooked physiological explanation beneath them.

Our obsession with high performance doesn’t appear out of nowhere. It is rooted in biology, reinforced by social systems, and amplified by modern incentives.

At our core, we carry an enduring biological need for safety and belonging. This is not something we fulfill once and keep forever. It is an ongoing need, one we continually seek to maintain within the groups and systems we depend on.

Many of the social groups we participate in are hierarchical, in which rank and status carry real consequences. Status shapes access to resources, protection, and opportunity. Higher status often brings more money, influence, options, and security.

Modern performance cultures intensify this dynamic. In sport, business, and academia, we see increasingly powerful reward structures for individual achievement. Super-achievers are celebrated, promoted, and financially rewarded. Their success brings advantages that others simply do not receive. So our drive to achieve makes sense when viewed through both a biological survival lens and a cultural competitive one.

The problem is that today’s performance culture magnifies the innate drive until belonging itself can begin to feel conditional on achievement. The dilemma emerges when achievement stops being an expression of safety and belonging and instead becomes the primary pathway to them. When self-worth and security become contingent on being better, faster, smarter, prettier, or more indispensable than others, comparison starts to register as risk.

Falling short is no longer just disappointing. It can feel like a potential loss of safety, value, or inclusion. Losing out to someone else disrupts the belonging our biology continually seeks. This is where Ilia Malinin’s rise and fall becomes more than a headline about Olympic pressure. It becomes a lived example of how achievement, belonging, and identity can become fused together inside a performance-obsessed culture.

“I don’t understand,” Malinin was overheard telling his father as he stepped off the ice. And referring to the 2022 Olympic team he had been rejected from, he reportedly said, “(If they had) sent me to Beijing, I wouldn’t have skated like that.”

These were his first words after his devastating Olympic collapse. They came from the same physiological imprint of rejection that had fueled his rise and now culminated in his fall.

Despite finishing second at the 2022 U.S. Championships at age 17, U.S. Figure Skating selected a more experienced skater for the third Olympic spot. The decision left Malinin off the team and outside his Olympic dream.

“To be honest, I think if it wasn’t for that decision (not making the 2022 Olympic team), I don’t think I’d be here in this moment. I don’t think I’d be landing a quad axel or trying to really revolutionize the sport.”

The hunger to prove them wrong drove Malinin to become a once-in-a-generation skater, referred to by many as "the quad god.” The drive wasn’t only about winning. It was about proving he belonged there in the first place and showing that he could now do something the world had never seen before.

By the time he arrived at the Olympics, the story surrounding him had grown even bigger. The question wasn’t whether he would win, but by how much, and what new scoring record would he set.

In the days before the final skate, he framed the expectations on social media in stark terms: “This is your moment—it’s either do or die.”

Then came a moment of stillness. A quiet arena. His starting pose.

“Right before I got into my starting pose… all the negative thoughts just rushed into my head. All the negative, traumatic experiences.”

“It really just overwhelmed me. I just felt like I had no control.”

He fell twice. He pulled out of several other jumps that are usually automatic for him. He scored far below anything he had done in years. He left the ice stunned.

Later, on social media, he reposted several TikToks that hinted at something beneath the confidence he portrayed. One read, “Sometimes I wish something bad would just happen to me so I don’t have to do it myself.” Another said, “Your little boy is tired, Mom.”

When everything feels performance-based and cutthroat, safety, value, and belonging must be continually earned. Competitive cultures and transactional trust may not show up in medal counts or records set, but they register deeply within the nervous system. This helps explain why even elite performers like Malinin can crack under pressure or withdraw at the peak of success.

Malinin’s rise and fall gives us a chance to be honest about the source of our own ambition and where that current is carrying us.

When teams, cultures, and societies implicitly ask us to secure belonging through relentless performance, by outperforming even members of our own team, they create an unsustainable foundation. Competition and comparison replace connection and collaboration. Eventually, performance shatters.

The deeper question, then, isn’t why we’re so obsessed with performance.

It’s what state that obsession comes from.

https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/ilia-malinin-suffers-winter-olympics-…

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/feb/14/ilia-malinin-analyis-figu….

© Psychology Today