Game Plan for Pressure

Some people are better under pressure, right? When the pressure is on, they perform statistically at their very best?

If you are like the 40,000 people a month we survey, then chances are you answered yes to this question. In fact, 67% of respondents believe that some people, the lucky few, perform better in pressure situations than non-pressure situations. 

But it’s not true. It’s a myth. 

We have created an insidious myth of pressure and performance, where we believe that in important moments the best rise to the occasion, and perform better than they have ever performed before to win. We see this narrative most acutely in sports, but also beyond sports in stock trading, negotiating, leadership, sales, in almost all domains.   

 Let me repeat: it is a myth, a fiction.  

 The Myth of Pressure 

There is no better story than Michael Jordan’s to illustrate the myth of pressure. Most people believe that Jordan, who was recently featured in the The Last Dance, a documentary chronicling his team, the Chicago Bulls, and their six NBA championships in the 90s, was better under pressure. 

 But Jordan was not. In a pressure situation, such as in the final two minutes of a game where his team was either down by one point, tied or up by one point, his free throw percentage was lower. 

In those situations, Jordan’s percentage went down, not up. It is not what we believe or remember but it is what the data tells us. 

This is not to single Jordan out; this finding is consistent for every NBA player in the history of the game. When under pressure as defined above, players make only 69% of their free throws, compared to a season average of 76% when they are not in a pressure situation. In other words, they shoot significantly worse when under pressure.  

It is time to disrupt this myth -- for ourselves, or in our role as parents or managers, especially as we re-emerge from lockdown and feel an increased pressure to perform. These are times of heightened pressure, where we might be facing financial hardship, fewer people working in our organizations or clients who are facing the same. 

It doesn’t serve us to believe in the myth of ‘rising to the occasion under pressure:’ it actually sets us up for a poor performance. 

 Believing We Need to Be Perfect 

This myth of pressure works against us. If we buy into the story that the only way we will be successful when facing a new, bigger challenge is that we must be perfect, whether when we get a new role and want to impress others, or we have a presentation to a big client or to our bosses’ boss, then when mistakes occur, which is inevitable, we will feel like it is an impossibility to succeed. 

After all, we just made an error, how could we win if we believe we need to be perfect to succeed? Instead, we feel embarrassed, shameful, and dejected, which causes a downward spiral, making it even more difficult to perform. We beat ourselves up and stop trusting our capabilities, or worse, we stop trusting our teammates.  

So, what should we do? In a word, prepare.

Prepare 

Teams don’t - and we don’t - rise to the occasion, we fall to our level of preparation. So we need to prepare. How do we do that? 

To start, bring awareness to this fiction, this myth. Accept that you will make an inevitable mistake when the pressure is on. Expect it. Prepare for it. And know that making a mistake doesn’t mean you won’t succeed; it just means you will need to be resilient. You will need to focus on bouncing back faster than your competitor. This is what Michel Jordan was able to do: he let go of his mistakes or missed shots sooner and wanted the ball back faster than his competitors and so was more resilient than everyone else. That was part of his secret - and it can be yours and mine also. 

This is learnable stuff, but don't doubt it won't take time and commitment. As Abraham Lincoln said:

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

A great resource to build these skills to handle pressure more effectively is Performing Under Pressure week at the Last 8% Morning podcast. 

Next, take a moment now and reflect on how pressure shows up for you. Where do you feel it in your body? Is it butterflies? Does your jaw tighten? Do you feel heat? Now, examine how you react to these feelings in your body.

What do I mean by that? Many of us react in one of two ways when we feel the physical sensations, the emotions or the thoughts that accompany pressure. We either try to push it away, have aversion to it, avoid it and not want to feel it or we get hooked by it – we get caught up in the thoughts and awfulize about it. And we spin. And we get tightly wound up and everything closes in. And we can’t think straight. And we underperform. 

So, as a first tool, what we want to do is Change our Relationship to it.  

 To do this, try to befriend it. Welcome it. Feel the feelings and try not to push them away. When we do this, we disempower these feelings/thoughts. We might still feel uncomfortable but it stops there. We don’t react to it and spin and get more tight. We just co-exist with it. Without trying to change it.  

For the athletes I work with, the way we change our relationship to it is by merely seeing it as our body getting ready to perform. We’ve been here before, we will be here again. We welcome it. And we see as a sign that we are really living, really engaged in the moment. We want to walk toward this pressure - try to welcome it and enjoy it. 

“In basketball – as in life – true joy comes from being fully present in each and every moment, not just when things are going your way. Of course, it’s no accident that things are more likely to go your way when you stop worrying about whether you’re going to win or lose and instead focus your full attention on what’s happening right this moment.”

– Phil Jackson, Former coach of the Chicago Bulls and L.A. Lakers

Execution

If we are prepared, we don’t get thrown off when the physical sensations of pressure come on. We don’t react to them in a way that makes us tighten up and spin. We see it as normal, expected even, that we will be uncomfortable when under pressure. We do not go in expecting to be perfect, and because of that we are able to let go of the inevitable mistake sooner. We even start to enjoy the process more and start to see our pressure moments for what they are - opportunities to be fully alive and engaged. When we get to this point, execution merely becomes a byproduct. 

As always, we at IHHP and on the Last 8% Morning podcast stand with the brave protestors across the world speaking out against anti-black racism and police violence. Organizers have put together this Link Tree with so many helpful resources: https://linktr.ee/ceeetrl.