The privilege of pressure

Have you ever heard of the phrase: ‘remember - diamonds are formed under pressure’?

Well, the truth is that a diamond is formed due to a process that takes 1 to 3.3 billion years. The most interesting part of this process, for me, is that carbon is put under intense and constant pressure over this period of time, with not even a second of respite.

I am sure, like me, you have been in an interview when you are in front of a prospective candidate and you hear the saying ‘I perform best under pressure’. In fact, I hear it in almost every walk of life. Hell, I have been one of those people who have wheeled this out, especially when I was younger. And when I did used to think this way, I thought of pressure as a negative thing. Something that was stressful and should only last for a short period.

It has taken me to experience some moments in my life when I was faced with an incredible challenge and asked to perform on a given day, at a given time, in a given moment – whether I was ready or not, to realise that neither of these two perceptions about pressure need to be true.

When you are sitting there at the start line on an Olympic final and your entire life’s dreams are on the line, with no guarantee of a second chance, the stakes are at their highest.

I have also been that player on the pitch, losing a game, with a coach shouting at the team saying something along the lines of ‘if you don’t win this match………’. I have been that kid at school who has been told by a teacher ‘if you don’t get good grades you will end up a nobody’. All this is doing is making the consequence of not doing something greater than the effort needed to do it.

When I wrote my dissertation in 24 hours before the deadline at university the consequence of me not writing it and failing my degree outweighed the effort I needed to give in order to get it done. When I learnt the scales for my trumpet exam the night before the exam, the consequence of me not knowing them outweighed the effort I needed to put in so that I could memorise them.

But all this is, is short term pressure which is negative and, if repeated often, can lead to anxiety and stress. I wonder how many times a week or month you either put yourself under this kind of pressure, or you are put under it by someone else?

Pressure can be used to galvanise and motivate in this way but it can also crush and lead to burnout. I have seen it many times, when a person is put under immense pressure – they freeze – paralysed by the fear. Because they don’t feel they can overcome the weight of the short term pressure and expectation they are suddenly under.

Imagine if there was a way that this didn’t have to be the case and better still, a way we could look at pressure as a privilege.

Well, I think there is. And it comes back to diamonds.

When I was 20 years old I made the decision that I wanted to achieve something special in life and I began putting myself under an internal, and constant, pressure. And I was also able to look at pressure as a privilege. I did this because I realised that the only reason you are put under pressure is because either you, or someone else, expect you to do something. Someone believes in you and your greater possibilities. Write the dissertation. Learn the scales. With expectation there has to be a talent or skill. Why would you expect someone to do something if you knew they couldn’t do it? And I would much rather be the person with a skill or talent than a person without.

So sitting there in Beijing on the start line of the Olympic final on an August evening in 2008, or 4 years later at Dorney Lake on the start line of the Olympic final of the London 2012 games - I was under an internal pressure that was so intense, but one that I could embrace and see as a privilege – because I knew I was good enough to walk away with a gold medal.

It's important to note that this wasn’t a short term pressure. This was an internal pressure I had lived with every day since I was 20 – in 2001. It was an internal dialogue that held me accountable to the standards and discipline I needed to set in order to realise the goal I had set myself. The internal dialogue I had with myself was that I knew I could be good enough to win a gold medal and I was excited by that, and also I knew that I needed to perform every single day over a 7 year period in order to be in with the best chance I could be of winning that race.

The internal dialogue I was having was not the inner coach shouting at myself daily saying ‘if you don’t perform today you will never win that medal’. It was often – ‘what are you going to do today to make a difference?’. Or ‘how are you going to use this next training session to get better’. It doesn’t have to be stressful, and it most certainly doesn’t have to be a threat.

So, an internal pressure can be a great enabler to unlock more of your own talents, capabilities and resourcefulness. And how do we do this? We stop externalising our pressure, we stop waiting until the consequence of us not doing something outweighs the effort needed to do it, and we stop ignoring the voice inside our head that knows it needs to be done. Then we start internalising that pressure, and, like most things, it can all start with a single question: what am I going to do today which will contribute to the result I am looking for?

And I find myself using this internal pressure today. I work in a business which is in the travel sector. We have lost millions of pounds which we cannot afford to lose, and we are facing a very tough period in the future as the world starts to recover. What hasn’t changed is the ambitions and vision we have for the business. And what most certainly hasn’t changed is the dialogue I have with myself daily.

We are going to achieve our vision and not only has my conviction that this will happen got stronger, we have also used this period to accelerate ourselves towards this end point. It led us to buy a business 2 weeks ago as we saw it as a very important jigsaw piece in our puzzle. It has led us to build platforms for our airlines which would take most companies years and significant investments. We did it in 3 weeks for a very small amount of money. Why? Because we have an internal daily pressure that can never be dwarfed by anything anyone will say to us. Did I feel the weight of pressure of a home Olympics with 50,000 people screaming at us to go faster and millions more watching at home? No – because all I could hear at the time was my internal pressure. At Ink we have also set ourselves the highest standards and are willing to be disciplined enough to achieve it. And we are loving the pressure this puts us under as we create our own diamond.

Thank you for reading this and I would love your feedback and hear your experiences under pressure.