Tuesday, November 07, 2017

Pressure

Performing under pressure is not easy, it's a big topic and I'm only going to glancingly touch on it here and in this video. Pressure placed on us from the outside is hard enough. Like a someone on your team saying (well intentioned though it may be), Let's book this one... (as if you were aiming to do something else), but pressure you put on yourself is a unique challenge.

Pressuring ourself, riddling your own thinking with expectations and external goals, is not always fun. The pressure, well, the call comes from inside the house so to speak. How to react, how to respond, how to do our work even when we ourselves are pressuring us to accomplish a result not within our control? The answer may be in the question: the outcome is not in our power to define, even if our work may influence it. So our focus is best used on that which we do control, on doing the work.

Let that which is outside of you be outside of you. Let that which is beyond our power to rigidly decide and control take care of itself. Wishing people and things outside ourselves would bend to our wishes may do many things, but the wish alone doesn't actually bend them. Our task, even when the stakes are high and we really really really want the gig/review/role/accolade/date is not transformed by all the distracting things our own desired outcomes manufacture. Say the words, pursue the objectives, try to make the other characters do what yours wants them to do. Simple doesn't mean easy, but focus, patience and the calm of knowing you will (n a fundamental sense) be ok no matter what happens, may help. Don't forget to breathe, and have some fun while you're at it too.

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this posted by David August at 10:00 AM 

comments: So true! I once heard a football coach talking about pressure in life and he said "there's always pressure. You've just go to decide to position yourself on the giving end not the receiving end".

# posted by Anonymous Miss Shaz Jones : 1:09 AM  

I like that, turns the focus, concise. Thank you for sharing that.

# posted by Blogger David August : 1:10 PM  

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