How Do You Perform Well Under Pressure?

Most people go through embarrassing situations they do not have the skills required to get through them and meet the burdensome expectations associated with them.

Sports psychology helps to learn mental techniques to deal with this type of pressure, and it was later shown that it holds great value for workers in other fields such as commerce and theater.

Brainpower is a losing approach

Responding to the pressures of work in contemporary western cultures requires more robust thinking, which is supposed to stop the nerves from fraying and reduce the frustration and discomfort of stepping out of one's comfort zone.

The brainpower approach is great, and athletes, adventurers, and entrepreneurs are adopting it widely, while companies pay big bucks to give their employees lectures on how to use it.

The concept of mental strength in sports psychology combines the qualities of self-confidence, determination, and a sense of control over one's destiny. At first glance, it may seem attractive, but the approach to work is completely different. Exaggerating self-confidence, as well as determination, control, self-denial, sacrifice, and courage, carries a lot of damage.

This mentality may seem invulnerable, but it drives its adherents into a state of denial when faced with daunting challenges in reality. Mental strength trainees practice ignoring their fears but often destroy themselves. If you are among those who fall into the trap of justifications and excuses, like a lecture that you refuse to rehearse, a research draft, or a project that you only completed half of, the result of your work will be of low quality. Mastering mental strength results in the acquisition of unhelpful and unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as rigid self-imposed rules, idealism, a lack of self-compassion, and viewing goals as risks to be met rather than challenges to be accepted.

Going into high-performance areas and seeing them as a threat is hard to solve. Because it simply means that you are thinking about the parts of your brain that are normally driven by fear rather than using an open-minded, directed approach. In a state of fear, you cannot think or react creatively; rather, you follow a prior pattern subject to strict rules. This means that you are unable to adapt well to new data or to a change in your usual comfortable environment.

Imagine a tough-minded cyclist who might be amazing at riding uphill but would panic if his bike got a flat tire or if a spectator entered the racetrack. Or imagine an actor who can withstand the pressures of a live audience until the moment someone's ringing phone disrupts him and he forgets the lines he has to perform. Mental strength means holding out at the crucial moment, but the quality of performance will drop, and with it the joy of work.

Benefits of Mental Flexibility

The mental flexibility approach is based on developing thinking to cope with stress (based in part on the principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a psychotherapy subset of the Interactive Behavioral Therapy approach). Flexibility in thinking is a vital method for coping with stress. You need the skill to handle all the situations you encounter to perform well, especially the ones you least expect to happen.

As for the sports field, the tide of events may change at crucial moments, or a scout may come to see your performance that night. On stage, the event might be the entrance of a student during the intermission of the show. In the office, you may get a last-minute request to join a new team, and developing flexibility of thinking will help you manage these situations better.

Steven Hayes, an American clinical psychologist and co-founder of acceptance and commitment psychotherapy, best defines mental flexibility as “the ability to be fully in touch with the present moment and to use change and persistence when they serve a valuable end.” The mention of “valuable goals” here is essential. When you are rigid (or inflexible, according to psychology), you resist your actions if they are no longer effective in achieving what you want.

In turn, you can quickly switch between strategies based on the demands of each individual situation, using flexibility of thinking and making decisions about how to act according to your own values.

Flexibility is associated with superior performance and improved mental health. In 2006, Hayes et al. published an analysis of 32 studies that included 6,628 participants who took a questionnaire to measure their mental flexibility.

It was found through these studies that people who scored higher are less likely to suffer from mental disorders, and they enjoy better general mental health.

Among patients with chronic pain, those who were psychologically flexible were able to work longer and needed fewer painkillers and health care visits. In the workplace, those with the highest rates made the fewest mistakes and landed the best positions compared to the others.

The orientation towards mental flexibility comes as a therapeutic goal for psychological methods such as acceptance and commitment psychotherapy, which is directed towards the understanding that everyone has their own fears, problems, and anxieties and that people act better when knowing and facing these feelings rather than confronting them. Psychologists have noted that attempts to block out difficult thoughts and emotions make them more visible. In cases where the person tries to accept these thoughts instead of suppressing them, they will still notice them, but their effect will be less intense and the distraction from them will be small.

This helps to think more productively and solution-focused while lessening the impact of avoidance-based coping mechanisms. This means that a person distances themselves from behaviors that no longer help them act according to their values ​​in life.

These principles are especially important when feeling under pressure. An employer may surprise their collegue by asking them to pitch a product to a number of potential customers, or a person may feel nervous preparing to meet their partner's family for the first time.

The common idea may be that toughness is the way to excel in high-stress situations, but the mental flexibility approach is more beneficial, especially when the person is clear about their values ​​and aware of what matters to them.

Values ​​help guide decision-making under stress when they exist, as they act as a measure for them in times of need. A value-driven flexibility approach helps deliver good performance. Because the method of dealing will be smart and the work will be directed to meet your own standards in life, no matter how great the influence of others, fear, or hopes.

What should you do?

You need to be sure of several things to perform better under stress, namely your ability to push destructive thoughts out of your mind, talk to yourself, find a way to react to confusing emotions, practice mental flexibility to respond in the best way possible, and finally, know what matters to you.

Here are five steps to building a new behavioral approach under stress:

1. Separate yourself from your thoughts

First of all, it is necessary to remember that the thoughts that you have when you feel pressure are often incorrect on the ground. It may occur to you when you stand on the tennis court, for example, that you are useless and that your performance will be embarrassing, or that you are unsuccessful in submitting job offers and that you will feel embarrassed. However, they are emotionally driven thoughts that have no basis in truth.

By learning to "separate thoughts" (as it's called in acceptance and commitment therapy), you won't be distracted by negative feelings and unhelpful self-talk. Instead, you'll have the flexibility to make better decisions that move you toward what's important, not away from your fears.

Here is this exercise to help you get out of your thoughts. Notice your unhelpful thoughts, not with the aim of focusing on them, but to increase your awareness of them. There is a visual way to think about this. It is to imagine your life as a bus you are driving, your values ​​determining its direction, while the passengers (thoughts or feelings) try to steer you in the wrong direction, and your job as a driver is to prevent the noise and conversations of the passengers from distracting you, but you are not able to dismiss them or stop them from talking.

So, the progress of the path does not require stopping ideas from emerging; Rather, it requires noticing what the passengers (your thoughts) are saying and nodding your head as if you were listening, while staying focused on the road and where you want to go.

Follow this method to get an amazing feeling of detachment from your thoughts by repeating them using funny sounds such as the voice of the cartoon character "Mickey Mouse" or the voice of the advertising man. This will help you absorb the negativity from the thought until it becomes clear that it is just a useless distraction.

At work, try changing the idea of ​​“I always start my presentations badly” to “I think I start my presentations badly,” and so on, so that you create a distance from negative thoughts.

2. Practice expressing your feelings accurately

You can feel overwhelmed by the stressors, and you may notice aggressive language echoing in your mind, such as "I'm angry" or "I'm panicking." It is as if the passengers on your bus are using highly emotional language while trying to get your attention. Interpreting your feelings in this way can automatically trigger a fight-or-flight response to help you escape danger, but it is not helpful in improving your performance when facing many modern-day situations.

Rather than dramatizing or suppressing these feelings completely, developing a mental flexibility approach requires you to increase your emotional vocabulary so that you can describe your feelings more accurately. which is important because most people tend to be lazy with language, relying on 6 to 8 words to describe basic emotions (usually focusing on joy, sadness, acceptance, disgust, fear, anger, surprise, and anticipation). Using more precise words to describe how you really feel will help you choose a more effective coping mechanism, as there are literally hundreds of words describing feelings.

For example, suppose you feel stressed after missing out on making your first team in a sport, or because a co-worker got the promotion you wanted. If you decide that you are an angry person, your response is likely to lead to violence or evasion, and is likely to backfire.

But if you notice that you're an envious person (which is one of the emotions related to anger), you can identify your envious element in any situation to help you take positive action, such as planning more workouts for the sports team or arranging a personal review with your manager.

You can be more clear about your goals and work towards achieving them more effectively when you identify the causes of envy.

3. Replace forms of self-talk that increase feelings of stress

How you think about your feelings and emotions is one aspect of self-talk, but another kind of self-talk can backfire when you're under the influence of stress. The one word you should be particularly wary of using is “should.” Like saying, "I should be able to make this presentation easily," or saying, "I have to finish this project tonight." This word carries a lot of expectations and pressure, and it prevents you from being open to all the options available to you.

Another example of tennis is when a player checks his opponent's rating and finds that it is much lower than his rating. He can go into the match with the mental strength that it is his duty to win, and unfortunately, this thinking will generate a threatening reaction if he does not win. He will fail twice, not only because he lost the match but also because it was lost to an opponent supposedly weaker than him.

Conversely, when he has the mental flexibility to see the bigger picture, he may notice that his opponent hasn't played in Ranked Events recently—events that fall into the official ranking—or that he's played a lot of out-of-ranked matches. With this open-mindedness, he will give his opponent the respect he deserves, he will set much lower personal expectations, he may tell himself that he has a chance to do well in this game rather than having to perform well, and it will help him relax during the game in order to improve his performance.

Use a wide range of emotional language terms, avoid stressful self-talk, and replace words like “must” and “should” with other terms like “notice,” “pay attention,” and “opportunity.” By developing this gentle language, you can adapt to the demands of the situation without letting emotion take over and will focus more on the action (the way you do it) than the outcome (in terms of success or failure), and it will allow you to look at what you can do to live by your values rather than from fear or avoidance of potential failure.

Away from the sports field, imagine a new manager with more experience than you coming to work to visit your team and ask you about the projects you are working on. You can tell yourself that you have to be strong, that you have to do it without preparation, and that you can put in a great performance to impress (self-talk that will likely scare you), but instead of those thoughts, try telling yourself, “This is an opportunity to share what I’m working on” or “That would be a great way to get more support for my project." This method should relieve stress and help you think carefully.

If you feel it is an unfamiliar way of thinking, you can make things easier with practice. Write some examples of stressful self-talk like “I have to be better,” then cross out the word “I have to” and replace it with a less restrictive word like “I have a chance to do better than last time.”

4. Break some of your own rules

Rigid thinking and routines can make you feel stressed, but developing flexibility in your thinking is the antidote, and one effective method is to slowly challenge your usual ways of getting work done. It may sound very easy, but if you like a strict routine and depend on it, you will find it tough.

Try something you are not used to every day of the next week. It could be something as insignificant as taking a shower right after dinner instead of putting it off until the morning or taking completely different routes on the way home from work. Then, each day of the following week, stop doing something you used to do, like not wearing a watch or avoiding making your bed right after you get up if you used to do that every morning.

The activity does not have to be dramatic or hurtful, but something that makes you less comfortable than usual. Your mind will learn to escape from routine and wit when you break your own rules, and when you neglect the routine, you will realize that everything will be fine in general.

The next time you deal with a stressful situation, preserve your newfound mental flexibility.

Instead of undoing your useless tactics and strategies, be more willing to try alternative solutions or to interpret the possible outcomes of a situation with a more open mind. Suppose you are studying to further your qualifications, and your routine is to delay the submission of research papers as much as possible in order to get the maximum amount of time to prepare an ideal paper.

You'll realize that research doesn't have to be perfect. It is only acceptable when you think flexibly and have time to relax, practice some healthy habits, or start the next search only when the first one is submitted ahead of time with sufficient quality.

You will maintain your good performance under pressure, and you will help yourself reduce stress by breaking away from the rigid routine.

5. Identify and remember your values

The last and most fundamental step to performing well under pressure is knowing why performance is important in the first place, and this is where values ​​come into play. The distinction between values ​​and goals is essential. Goals are what you seek to achieve in the long term while you work to apply your values ​​in every waking moment.

Your goal may be to become the highest-rated scorer on your football team, but your values ​​in football are to do your best, always strive to improve, and be a good teammate. You get two main benefits from being very clear about your values: the freedom to ignore them and the ability to use them as a gauge for how you respond when you feel pressured to stay in line with them.

There are some papers available on the Internet that offer some suggestions and exercises for defining your values. Another fun way to determine the core ones is to flip through the pictures you have on your phone. Do they include a specific theme or repetition of some specific elements, whether they are related to success stories, family, beauty, or society? Or spirituality? Once you have identified your core values, take some time to think about how you will make some decisions about your life in line with those values.

And if you're feeling stressed in a particular area of ​​your life, such as team sports, your performance at work, or your family life at home, you may want to consider how the value you've identified relates to that context. Keeping your values ​​in your conscious mind when feeling stressed will ensure that you stay on the right track.

For a concrete example outside of sports, imagine you've started volunteering at a local wildlife society, and the manager suddenly asks you to give a short speech about the charity to a number of visitors. Again, you may think that the solution is to be tough and brave, but that would create a threat to escape from the situation. Instead, reconsider your values. You may be a nature lover, or your passion may include developing a sense of community.

Having these thoughts in your conscious mind is an opportunity (see them as a challenge rather than a threat), and you will feel more relaxed and think more fluently when you stand up to speak.

When flexibility beats rigor

One way to motivate yourself and develop your flexibility of thinking is to learn the stories of others who have gone from a mental strength approach to a resilience approach in order to improve their performance under pressure.

Working with teenage girls who were excelling in sports, school, and music, it was found that they struggled with the fear of failure. People who have outperformed in all aspects of life during the first fifteen years of their lives are very afraid of mistakes and what they mean to them. Fear drives these girls to establish strict rules and procedures to maintain control and protect themselves from feeling short, but it causes stress, anxiety, and the inability to try everything new, which prevents creativity and experimentation.

And since the teenage years are all about experimenting with characteristics, ideas, and activities on different levels, you may miss the opportunity to find what you love if you are afraid of trying anything new.

Girls can handle it another way by being more mentally flexible. For these girls, that means accepting that they will fail sometimes, realizing that the goal is more rewarding, a life of exploration and better performance, and a willingness to try things they haven't experienced before.

Another group that takes advantage of flexibility of thinking to perform well under pressure are the injured sports players. Whether they are professional sportsmen who make their living or amateur players, injury is the setback that everyone fears. Researchers in the field have found that athletes who score high in mental strength have higher pain thresholds and are more likely to continue playing with injuries. It helps them play then, but it risks their sporting careers in the long run.

Injured players are able to see the bigger picture when they think more flexibly, and their duty is to focus on their entire career rather than just one game. This is done by acknowledging a very important piece of information, which is that pain is something that should not be ignored. This recognition gives them a broader range of options to consider, such as adopting interdisciplinary training or starting a new sport, and more effective coping mechanisms tailored to their own values.