Under Pressure?

Have you ever felt under pressure to perform and deliver a result?  I am not sure how it is for you - but the feeling I experience when under pressure is one of anxiety.  It starts in the pit of my stomach, as a tightness, and spreads up the torso into shallow breathing and a hollowness - a feeling I associate with a 'fight or flight' adrenaline dump.  This is all good - if the challenge before me is one that requires fight or flight - but most of the time my challenge is to deliver on something a little less vigorous.  At work it might be to complete a proposal or to make a difficult phone call or to choose between doing a task or spending time with family.  In sport it is usually around the need to sink a putt to win the match.  My reality is that the pressure I feel has a direct inverse correlation to the likelihood I will deliver.  For me - more pressure = less success.

I played a golf match today against two friends.  It is a regular event and very competitive.  I shot into an early lead but soon found myself worrying about the next shot, the last shot, the end result and the way they were perceiving me - based on the shots I wasn't making.  I was worrying about everything, my anxiety levels steadily grew and my performance suffered.  I struggled to be present and still in the moments that required it most.  How different my game is when I just play for the pleasure of it all.  This contrast is beautifully illustrated in my favourite 'golf as life' movie - The Legend of Bagger Vance.  Junnah, a one-time local hero, has been talked into representing his town against the world's best golfers and is struggling under the pressure....

 

I was always taught that pressure was good and that 'when the going get's tough - the tough get going'. Just suck it up!  Man up!  Withstand the pressure.  This may be true when experiencing G-forces - but maybe not so much when the pressure is in my mind.  I have learned, through working with Arbinger's approach to self-deception, that there are tell-tale signs available to me, in my very experience of life as I live it, that can let me know when I might be in 'the box' (a state of self deception where I distort the truth in order to justify a previous choice).  One of those signs, for me, is the feeling of anxiety when I get worried about my image - that carefully manicured portrayal of how I wish to be seen - by myself and others.  

Contrast that crushing feeling of anxiety with the soaring feeling I experience when I am 'in the zone' - present and engaged in the passionate pursuit of something that I feel drawn to.  I could call it pressure but there is no anxiety here.  It is more like excitement and joy.  It is, for me, a state of exhilleration where time seems to stand still.  So - passion is like being in 'the field' and pressure is like being 'in the box'.  In the field I am more likely to succeed because I have no fear of failure - I accept all results as feedback which I can build on.  In the box I limit my chance of success because my fear of failure is all-consuming.  

I recognised today that the pressure I was feeling, standing over the putter, was the weight of 'the box' and with that came the realisation that it doesn't have to be that way - I have a choice.  If the pressure comes from the way I perceive myself in relationship to the task and the worId - then I can change my frame.  I can get out of 'the box' by choosing to focus, instead, on the passion that brought me here in the first place and responding to what is needed in the moment.  I can choose passion over pressure.  

Maybe real toughness is the ability to keep my eye on the passion of life and remain untouched by pressure and anxiety.

Food for thought......

Comments

[Ants]

Thanks Cossie,

As always, your posts help a lot more than I expect. I think a lot of that is because they appear to come out of the blue to me.

Ants

[Cossie]

Hi Ants. Great to hear from you. To tell you the truth - they often come out of the blue for me too :-) This one is a blinding flash of the obvious for some - but I am going to work trying to shake off the tightness of anxiety by looking for the passion beneath why I do what I do in the first place. It feels quite different already. Cheers. Cossie