On Sunday 9th February one of the world’s biggest sporting events will take place in Louisiana, USA.
The Super Bowl Final – the culmination of 6 months of competition in the American National Football League or NFL – regularly draws in over 100 million global viewers and has featured half-time shows from some of the world’s biggest music stars including Rihanna, Beyonce, Eminem, and Shakira.
As we gear up for the 2025 season finale, we look at what lessons the two finalists – Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles – can draw compassion science in order to have the psychological edge.

Grin and bear it
Athletes and sports-stars are often trained to have a “win at all costs” attitude. While this can be good for creating a single-minded determination, there’s an obvious risk that this kind of mindset can stray into self-criticism. “I can do this” soon becomes “I’ve got to do this” which becomes “Why can’t I do this, I’m failing”.
While it might be obvious to an outsider that this approach is unhelpful or even harmful, it’s also notoriously difficult to shake-off. Many of us struggle to offer ourselves compassion because we fear that it will “let us off the hook”, making us lazy and uncaring.
This barrier is as unfounded as it is pervasive. While doses of constructive criticism are always helpful, having a relentlessly critical voice inside your head is likely to become deeply demotivating. Instead, ambition, vision, hope, and desire are far stronger motivators – especially in the long-run.
And the way to sustain – rather than crush – that desire is through self-compassion. Offering oneself compassion helps create a sense of security and empowerment that can equip athletes to endure the tough times – whether that’s gruelling training, the loss of a match, or pre-performance nerves. It also makes failure much less scary – helping sports-stars perform with more freedom, creativity, and courage.
Team bonding
Unsurprisingly, feeling compassion for others has been found to be highly beneficial in fostering unity and cohesion – an essential ingredient in any successful team. The ability to understand others, recognize a shared endeavour, and seek the best for for your team mates is crucial in creating an environment in which the success of one becomes the success of all. It also helps to create a safety net around players so that, as above, they can feel empowered to perform. That is why coaches are increasingly looking to cultivate a sense of shared compassion across their teams.
Sporting behaviour
Of course, being compassionate to oneself in hard times and supportive and encouraging to team-mates can all be for nothing if a player turns up to the game, behaves badly and finds themselves sent off, sin-binned, or disqualified. That’s why another interesting finding about self-compassion is relevant to our theme of sporting success. Self-compassion has been shown to help reduce narcissistic traits amongst athletes and to promote moral behaviour. This is not only good for the game – it makes it more likely they will be on the pitch in the first place to perform to the very best of their abilities.