Tom Daley shares how mindfulness helped him overcome ‘terrifying’ pressure of performing at the Olympics

Olympic gold medalist Tom Daley tapped into the age-old strategy of mindfulness to help him overcome the pressure of performing at the world’s biggest sporting event, he told CNBC.

“The pressure of what it means to go into an Olympic game where you have to perform on that one day, and those six dives have to be perfect, and if they’re not, it’s over,” Daley, Britain’s most decorated and recently retired diver, told CNBC’s Tania Bryer at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January. “So going into that, of course, it’s completely terrifying, and you have to get to a place where you can be as relaxed and peaceful as possible.”

Daley’s 16-year Olympics diving career began at just age 14 when he won gold at the European championships. He has gone on to win a total of five Olympic medals.

Speaking to CNBC’s Bryer, he admitted he was skeptical about mindfulness at first — but found it grew on him after.

“After 2016, I started doing mindfulness. I started doing breathing techniques, guided meditations and it took me ages to actually start doing it, because as soon as somebody said, ‘Oh, you should try mindfulness, you should try meditation’ I was like ‘Come on. What is that really gonna do?'”

Daley found it “challenging” in the beginning, but he eventually got into the swing of things.

“What I loved about it was the fact that I could go to this mind bank if you like. I like to think of mindfulness as going to the mind bank and taking out all of the mind cash that you need for the day but the nice thing about this mind bank is that it doesn’t run out of cash. So, throughout the day, you can go back to this mind bank and take whatever cash you need from it to be able to perform at your best,” he explained.

Mindfulness is a tried and tested method that has been proven to decrease feelings of anxiety and depression. One 2024 study of 1,247 adults from 91 countries by the University of Southampton and Bath found that, after a month of practicing mindfulness for 10 minutes daily, participants reported reduced depression, improved wellbeing, and decreased anxiety.

In fact, just a few minutes of mindfulness a day can make a world of difference, Vishen Lakhiani, CEO of Mindvalley and a meditation expert of 20 years, previously told CNBC Make It.

“People think that the length of your meditation is what determines the quality of your meditation. [That’s] not true…don’t think that you need an hour in meditation,” he said.

“You can take a one- to three-minute dip into peacefulness, and you can see remarkable results. The biggest benefits are going to happen in the first few minutes,” Lakhiani added at the time.

Daley said it became harder to find time to practise mindfulness after having children. He and his husband Dustin Lance Black have two sons together, aged one and six-years-old.

“Then [eldest son] Robbie was born, and, sitting down for 10 minutes of mindfulness throughout the day kind of became a little bit impossible. Because, with kids, any parents will know you can get interrupted at various points throughout the day,” Daley told Bryer.

“It was actually just at the beginning of [the Covid-19] lockdown where my mindfulness journey shifted into knitting, mainly because my coach said to me ‘You’re always on the go. You’re always doing something. You need to learn to sit still, because your rest and recovery is just as important as the diving training itself.”

Daley’s husband suggested at the time that he should start knitting, so he ordered needles and taught himself how to knit using YouTube videos.

This led to an Instagram media account about his knitting and crocheting journey called “Made with Love,” which now has 1.4 million followers as of Thursday. Daley eventually turned his knitting passion into a business where he sells his creations.

“My passion is to be able to bring craft as a form of mindfulness to as many people as possible, and not just the knitting and crochet. I mean, it can be embroidery, it can be cross stitch, candle making, you name it,” he added.