The best mental state when working under pressure at work

We all want to feel passionate about our work, feel fulfilled, but as professional we experience pressure (stress) at work. It could come from the super high unreasonable company's target, higher management demand, conflict with peers, customer demand, volume at work, competitive situation, and many more. I am writing this as I feel pressure as well and these are my thoughts in overcoming pressure at high level.

We all feel pressure at different levels. Sometimes the pressure could escalate to the maximum level, that is impacting your performance and even your health and personal life.

Signs that pressure is negatively impacting you are you no longer have bright ideas, you lose enthusiasm, excitement at work, procrastination, avoidance and even impacting your health and relationships.

Our professional life is similar to competitive sports, even though they are more exciting to watch. Competitive sport is actually even tougher. In a tournament there is only 1 winner for each category, leaving out hundreds of other participants. I always like to use competitive sport as benchmark and learn from them.

Everyone in competitive sport experience pressure. In competitive sport, athlete cannot win while playing with bad mood. They only focus on executing the right tactic during the game and perform at their best. The role of the coach is to provide the right direction on how they should play. Sport psychologists always tell the athlete to focus on the game and not the result.

The same principles apply to our professional work.

1. Turn pressure into positivity

Part of winning the game is to stay positive throughout the game, including positive to yourself. Reacting negatively to pressure is only getting you to the darker hole.

Check for signs that occur in your mind, body and soul. Do you lose your bright ideas, excitement, passion at work? Sometimes we play defensive and that is fine. However do we lose our vision to win at work? When you do that is the sign that pressure has turned negatively on you.

Make pressure a little signal (not too loud) so that we determines our actions including working smarter and harder while maintaining our positive mindset. This is turning pressure into motivation to stay on the positive track.

Turn pressure into learning opportunities, learn not to blame yourself, learn to manage your emotions, learn to think it is normal. That is an internal self talk. The best way to talk to yourself is to write journals and have a self check.

2. Play with nothing to lose is the best

Company always wants you to always win, that is unreasonable. Give yourself mental space and tell yourself it is ok to have bumps on the way.

Playing with nothing to lose boosts your courage to take (calculated) risks, boosts your confidence and increase your resilience from set back.

3. Focus on the things that you can do

When under pressure, we are overwhelmed with many tasks we should execute. Many of the tasks are beyond our control for example convincing a CEO of a global bank to approve your project while you have no access to meet the CEO.

I love to use a whiteboard, draw the picture of the situation, determines set of actions and assign the owner to the task. That way I know what I can do and what help do I need from others and I execute my part and ask others (sometimes push) to do theirs, including the higher management.

3. Check and manage your emotion

Many people put pressure on themselves while they are under pressure. That is giving multiple pressure on you. You must care on yourself, your wellbeing.

I still find myself difficult to practice mindfulness, instead I think of what to be grateful of. When you feel angry, find ways to channel your emotion positively. Walk around, get some fresh air. Cardio exercise is the best to get rid of cortisol, the toxic hormone from stress. You deserve to enjoy your life no matter what pressure is coming to you.

Practice positive self talk. You can do this by talking to you out loud in the mirror for a few minutes a day or write a journal assessing your strength and endorse yourself to be able to overcome any challenges.

4. Ready to do anything

Readiness to do anything boosts the spirit to work. Discipline people will win, and they are ready to do anything to accomplish the task. The willingness to do whatever it takes at any time frees you from being complacent. Taking action combats our anxiety and brings pleasure of having small wins along the way and boosts confidence.

5. Create an exit plan

Sometime the situation is so bad, well that is part of life. We win some situation, we lose some. When that happens, create an exit plan, maybe finding a new role within the company, look into another territory, diversify your product or anything. Have a plan B when plan A doesn't work. Having good backup plan reduces the pressure on you.

I would like to close this article with remarks from the legends about pressure.

"Under pressure, diamonds are formed." - Thomas Carlyle (Scottish historian, essayist)

"Everything negative - pressure, challenges - is all an opportunity for me to rise." - Kobe Bryant (American basketball player)

"Pressure is a privilege. It means you've got something that people care about." - Hank Aaron (American baseball player)

It is all about mental and emotional game - Winton. Cheers.