As I was sitting down to write this blog post, I had a golf tournament on in the background. Even though I don’t play golf, the game fascinates me because of the mindset required to consistently be a good golfer. This day, it wasn’t the golf match itself that was interesting. It was one of the advertisements.
“This club is too wobbly.” “Someone sneezed just as I started my shot.” “The wind changed directions on me.” “The grass is too wet.” On and on the self-talk yammered, and I quickly identified the same kind of getting in my head that I have experienced in water skiing, business presentations, and other pressure-filled moments. For a fleeting moment, I though perhaps a famous sports psychologist had decided to advertise how to get out of your head to the national golf audience.
I should have known better!
Nope, the ad was for a seller of golf equipment. The pitch: Buy our stuff and you won’t have to make excuses anymore.
In a nutshell, that is the bill of goods we have been sold across the board on how to deal with stress and pressure.
It goes like this: If you don’t like the way [whatever thing is causing you stress] is making you feel, then buy our [super-duper product, car, drug, job, food or bubble bath.]
Remember “Calgon, take me away”? It was a bath powder that was advertised in the late 1970’s. The ad starts all the stress of traffic, the boss, the baby and the dog – and ends with the simple answer: “Calgon, take me away.”
There is nothing wrong with enjoying a nice, relaxing bath! If only we could escape to it in the middle of that difficult meeting or during the performance or while having the difficult conversation…or any other pressure that creates the feeling of agitation.
We need a strategy that works in the moment.
In last week’s blog, I shared the way I’m seeing our choices when faced with pressure:
PRESSURE -> AGITATION (THE FROTH) -> CHOICE: OPERATE FROM 1) MY STORY OR 2) WHAT I AM SENSING
Have you ever seen the diagram based on the Viktor Frankl quote that says “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Stimulus -> Response
I have found that there are TWO parts to the stimulus. First is the pressure. Second in the agitation (froth) created by the pressure. Breaking it into two parts helps solve for the choice – which happens AFTER the agitation.
We were designed to listen to agitation as a survival mechanism. The rustling in the grass while gathering berries told our ancestors to quickly discern if it was the wind or a lion creating the sensation inside of them. Our bodily sensations carry the deep wisdom to guide us if we have so trained ourselves to listen to those sensations rather than numb them.
Agitation is necessary for neuro plasticity. We can learn ONLY when we are agitated – within what’s known as the productive range of discomfort.
Modern life brings a lot of pressure, and therefore a lot of agitation. We get a LOT of stimulation with every kind of media, the ability to travel globally, computers that were supposed to make life easier, but didn’t. We carry the memory of friend that excluded us from the birthday party, the teacher that sent us to the principal’s office (threatening to mark up our permanent record!), and the fall we took the last time we tried to climb that tree. The next time we feel such agitation, we are instantly transported to the past – and live out of the story (history) rather that the discovery of what is happening right now. Just like Pavlov’s dog, we act on auto pilot from our triggers. It’s being run by our subconscious, outside of our conscious control.
For many years in my coaching, I had two basic categories to help my clients deal with pressure and stress: Pocket Strategies and Practice/Practices. Both of these strategies are designed to reduce the pressure, and if the pressure can’t be reduced, to cope with the agitation caused by the pressure.
In recent years, I’ve come to recognize a third category: Pressure as a Catalyst. Catalyst to growth, freedom and access to a greater repertoire of responses.
The Balloon Analogy
Being triggered is like have a balloon blow up inside of you. It takes up a lot of space, restricts freedom of movement and can be distracting at best and destructive at worst. Have you ever said something in the heat of the moment you wish you could take back? Yeah, me too. The sooner we can make that feeling go away (ie, deflating the balloon/getting untriggered) the better. In other words, it’s useful to be able to come back to center quickly after we’ve been thrown off.
Even better would be dissolving the trigger all together, so that the “balloon” no longer exists to deflate. That’s where using Pressure as a Catalyst comes in.
All of the strategies I’m about to outline require one thing: AWARENESS. If you truly want to begin to learn to use stress and pressure to you advantage, begin with awareness.
When you are willing to look, you have already begun to change. If you are not willing to look, nothing can change.
Pocket Strategies
The first category is Pocket Strategies. These are actions we can take while being triggered that are preplanned to take the place of reactivity. They buy you some time to bring yourself back to center. I can’t tell you how incredibly powerful these strategies can be.
1. Breath
Our breath is the connection between our conscious mind and our subconscious mind. There are many ways of breathing that can help us come down from a fright, or other kind of trigger. The quickest and most effective is to do the 4 – 8 breath. Inhale for 4 beats and exhale for 8 beats. From what I understand of the science of this breath, being able to extend the outbreath tells your brain that everything is ok – your survival mode can stand down.
A similar breath to the 4 – 8 breath is the Ribbon Breath, where you take as deep a breath as possible and extend the exhale like a ribbon for as long as possible. This could be up to 30 seconds. Same message to the brain and requires a little more presence than the 4 -8 breath.
Many sports psychologists (and the Navy Seals) recommend the box breath, which is 4 even beats for the in breath, pause, out breath and pause.
You can also simply slow down your breathing to be a little slower and a little deeper than usual, with and equal in breath and out breath. The HeartMath Institute recommends this breath as a way to enter into a state of high heart rate variability (HRV) which is connected to better response times, improved immune system and deeper sleep.
A physiological sigh is a breathing technique that can help reduce stress while feeling agitated. It involves:
- Inhaling twice through the nose, with the first inhale usually being longer than the second
- Exhaling through the mouth with a sigh – like action, releasing the breath quickly
Repeat a couple of times if necessary.
Whether you use one of the breathing techniques here, or simply just focus on your breath, it’s the best pocket strategy available when you are feeling out of kilter.
2. Four on the Floor
One of the most effective physical techniques I’ve experienced and taught is “Four on the Floor.” When we are triggered, fight or flight kicks in. In either case, our heels tend to come up. As soon as you are aware that you are triggered, focus on your feet. Put equal weight on four points: the balls of your feet and the heels of your feet. Couple this with one of the breathing techniques above.
3. Pocket Questions
One of my favorite go-to Pocket Strategies is the Pocket Question. I wrote about this in my book The Elegant Pivot. At one of my client retreats, a very senior executive struggled when he felt agitated and the story he told himself was that “things are about to get bad,” which put him in a defensive position. We strategized together to review the different situations that threw him off. Here’s what we came up with:
| Situation | Question |
| “That won’t work” | “What will work?” |
| Strong body language, or silence | “What does [name the body language] mean?” “What does the silence mean?” |
| “I can’t do this” | “What would it take for you to be able to do this?” |
| They are doing something that appears to be in their self-interest | “Could you tell me what is behind this decision?”…then “How can we make this work to both of our benefit?” |
| Someone says we need something, and others can’t see why. | “If we had that, what would it give us?” |
| When people are confused, in chaos, or undertaking a large endeavor | “What is at stake here?” |
| Upon completion of making a point or to get agreement | “What are your questions, or reservations?” |
Over the years, he has used these questions over and over again to buy himself time to regroup, get grounded and operate from a centered mindset.
Pocket Strategies give you a useful move that you have preplanned to pivot to while triggered, because it’s almost impossible to be curious and creative in that space.
Practice/Practices
Every athlete worthy of their game values practice. In fact, most athletes spend most of their time in practice, with much less time devoted to the performance. In my favorite sport of water skiing, the performance time is typically less than 5 minutes per round of skiing. On the other hand, corporate “athletes” get almost no time to practice; everything is a performance.
Before sharing some specific ideas, let’s make a distinction between practice and practices. The first is a verb. The second is a noun.
Practice is how we build skills. We do the thing that we will be doing when it counts (the performance, the sales pitch, the final round) when the consequences are lower. For athletes, it’s everything from batting practice to the driving range to running drills and more. For corporate folks, it’s running through the pitch, or the presentation beforehand, or going to a training program.
On the other hand, Practices the noun are conventions, rituals and commitments we make to ourselves to be who we would like to be in moments of pressure. For athletes, it might be the practice of bouncing the tennis ball three times, or adjusting the hat, or listening to certain music before the performance.
In my experience, this is the category where most of the focus goes on helping people perform under pressure – and for good reason.
1. Elevate Skills
The best way to elevate your skills is practice the verb. There’s a saying that we don’t rise to the level of our aspirations, we fall to the level of our preparation. Whatever kind of performance under pressure you are seeking to do, it’s useful to have practiced the skills of doing that thing.
Not long ago, we were on a scuba diving vacation. It’s been YEARS since I dove. Even though I’m certified to dive, I knew I was out of practice and decided to snorkel instead. If I really wanted to scuba dive, I would have been wise to practice somewhere safe before getting in the deep water of the ocean.
2. Space
One of my favorite practices the noun is space. The more I practice giving myself and others space, the more quickly I’m able to come back to center. It’s sort of counterintuitive, because when we are triggered, we want resolution NOW. However, sometimes just waiting for a beat or two (or ten) helps everyone come back down.
This practice is especially useful in tense meetings or negotiations. During one especially difficult meeting with my boss’s boss in my banking days, we were disagreeing over who would pay for what in the service my division offered. He was already known for being somewhat hot tempered, and in this conversation, I felt the heat rising. I found it very difficult to listen to him rant – and yet, somehow, I was able to stop myself from interrupting and gave him some space. His argument lost momentum, and before I knew it, he talked himself into my way of thinking.
I’ve found working with horses that just pausing for a beat before moving to the next thing, especially if they are tense, works wonders in helping them take a breath and release tension.
3. Meditation
Practicing meditation helps train your mind to seek the place I like to call “home.” Home is that feeling of peace and calm inside that can observe what’s happening with being identified with what’s happening. Home is curious, creative and compassionate.
There are many forms of meditation, and I’m not going to review all of them here. The core purpose of meditation as I see it is to learn to change your thoughts from unproductive “monkey mind” thoughts to helpful thoughts. In other words, meditation can help you get out of your head.
4. Journaling/Reflection
Sometimes, so many thoughts are bouncing around in our heads, it feels impossible to sort through them all. They can take a life of their own, insisting on being heard. The more we try to shut them up, the “louder” they get. That’s where a certain type of journaling called Morning Pages can be helpful. I was introduced to Morning Pages in The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron. Morning Pages is like a brain dump of thoughts. It’s handwritten (critical that you write, not type) three full notebook pages of free form writing without stopping. If this sounds interesting to you, the book suggests committing to doing 30 days of Morning Pages without reading them. I have a short write up on how to do them, which I will send you if you would like. Just hit reply to this email and I’ll forward it to you.
Other types of journaling and reflection can also be beneficial. I find it useful to work through different scenarios on a big decision to be made by journaling, for example. Writing out each scenario has a way of revealing where the holes are and where you are leaning.
It’s also useful to reflect on past events by writing out what you learned, what you would do differently next time and how to remind yourself to do that something different next time.
This is just a small sampling of things you can do to in the Practice/Practices category to lower the pressure, get out of your head and help you perform at your best when it counts.
Pressure as a Catalyst
The Pressure as a Catalyst strategy is the best way I’ve found to “dissolve” the trigger (or the rubber in the balloon in my analogy). Based on my understanding of brain science, neuroplasticity requires agitation, and pressure provides the agitation. Why then - with all the pressure we find in the world – are we not all rewiring the triggers in our brains?
It comes down to that choice between sticking with our story or trusting our senses.
We’ve been conditioned to NOT trust our senses – and in some cases, that’s wise. For example, instrument pilots are trained to trust the gauges on the instrument panel of the airplane, because the vestibular system in our inner ear can create spatial disorientation. For example, the body might convince your brain that you are ascending when in fact you are descending. Do that long enough and you will fly right into the ground.
However, we were designed to take in lots of information – much of it unseen – to learn to navigate through a dangerous world.
The question is how to take in that information without having if fill our heads full of fear, self-doubt and that incessant voice that is telling us all the ways we are screwing it up.
Where did that voice come from? I’ll start with this. It’s not us. It’s stuff that was put on us. And if it was put on us, it can be taken off.
We take it off by making six key pivots from the way we were conditioned to the way we were born to be.
1. From Pressure a problem to Pressure is our best friend
It starts with how we see stress and pressure. I mentioned the “stress as improving mindset” in last week’s blog. Researchers have found that just welcoming pressure shifts our willingness to receive feedback.
In my experience, it’s so much more. Every mistake we make while under pressure offers a moment in time to do something differently – based on what is happening now, not what you were told to do by one of the voices of your past. (Or even your own experience in a similar situation in your past.)
I’m often asked “How can I be more in the moment?” It starts with recognizing that moments of pressure – which create agitation – make your brain wiring available to recalibrate from acting on a story to tuning into your senses.
2. From avoiding negative feelings to Feeling is essential.
Within each moment of agitation, there is a signal. We can recalibrate our relationship with agitation when we learn to focus on understanding the signal, rather than shutting down or reducing the noise.
I’ve written before about treating the feeling of agitation caused by pressure as useful gauge. It’s not anxiety (also known as fear soup), it’s the body’s way of telling you there is something to pay attention to. It’s much like the electricity that runs through a car battery, which has a negative and a positive pole. That charge can be measured, and so can the “charge” that is running through you.
If you are interested in learning to read the gauges of your agitation so that you can use it under pressure rather than shut it down, I have an exercise called The Negative Positive Pole. Hit reply to this email and I’ll send it to you.
3. From thinking we know the answer to Being the conduit
Of all the key pivots that make a huge difference in using pressure as a catalyst, I’ve found being the conduit the most difficult to grasp. Our school systems and most of the ways we are taught tell us that we are supposed to have the answers. After thousands of repetitions of being tested to give the right answers, learning to be the conduit feels foreign. However, in moments of pressure, letting the situation tell you what to do, when to do and how to do can be immensely valuable.
The essence of this pivot is to seek answers from the human, animal, or situation, rather than thinking you know what to do. Even as I write this, it almost sounds like I’m setting myself to fail. Until I actually use it. Something intangible, yet very real, shifts inside of me when I open myself to learning in the moment. It’s like the real me comes out from behind the wall of knowing to approach difficult situations with curiosity.
When I sang in choir, one of the things we all had to learn was how to blend to become one voice. We were able to create expansive and beautiful harmonies when we let the other voices tell us pitch and volume, etc. A magnificent soloist can ruin a choir if his or her voice stands out. It’s in the give and take of all the voices working in harmony that beautiful choir music is made.
Thinking back to last week’s story of riding Chuck Norris, I let him tell me how to ride him. Listening to the subtleties of how he responded to my hands, my legs, my body kept the two of us connected. We had a give and take.
In the corporate world, the stories of out-of-touch leaders telling those on the frontlines how to do things abound. I remember during bank mergers, we were often handed edicts that we knew would not go over well in real life. Sometimes we had the ability to adjust to create connection between the orders from the top and the reality at the ground level; more often than not, the disconnect created significant breakdowns, blame shifting and ultimately a merger that didn’t work out.
Simply shifting from thinking you know to letting it tell you puts you in a different mental state that gives you something to do rather than get worried when the pressure is high.
4. From following Rules to reaching for your Tools.
This pivot is the idea of building what I like to call our “invisible tools”, much like we build our muscles in the gym. As we build strength, we are able to lift or pull more weight. When we build our invisible tools, we are able to stay present under pressure. Much like the limits on building muscle strength – there is a point of failure where we can lift or pull no more – there are limits on our invisible tools when the pressure is greater than the level to which we have built those tools.
By invisible tools, I’m speaking of patience, timing, feel, listening, curiosity, and many, many more of our inborn abilities. We tend not to consciously cultivate these invisible tools, in favor of learning the rules, steps and skills of a given thing. There is NOTHING wrong with the Rules. For example, when in pilot training, the extensive Rules I had to learn were essential. Even landing the plane involved a very specific set of steps that lead to a good landing.
Yet with all of those steps, truly good pilots stand out by their ability to adjust to ever varying conditions, like wind, temperature and the sight lines of different airports. They do that by feel, timing, and patience.
I think of this pivot as the one where you truly learn to develop and trust your senses. When you take every moment of agitation as an opportunity to strengthen your invisible tools, you will find that next time the pressure is high, you have stronger Tools. Ironically, the moments that build the strength of our Invisible Tools are often the moments we skip over or rush through or avoid because the feeling of agitation is intolerable.
5. From rushing to the end and allowing the success of the end goal to define you to slowing down and breaking any task into smaller frames.
Almost every skill that looks effortless, elegant and elite is made up of thousands of invisible layers. What we see on the surface is like watching a movie, which appears to flow seamlessly. Yet every movie is made of many frames. Today’s high-definition cameras capture frames at an incredible rate. The essential point is that, when under pressure, the key to our success is to slow down and break the larger picture into the smallest frames possible.
The clearer our picture for what we are trying to create, the better our chance for moving through a situation. However, a clear picture is just the beginning. We must then forget that picture as we work through each frame.
When I’m throwing pottery, I may be envisioning the beautiful mug. However, I must first measure and weigh the clay, then wedge it (which is like kneading bread, only getting the air out instead of in), shape it, set up wheel, prepare the bucket of water, select my clay tools and so forth. All of this before I even begin to put the clay on the wheel. When I break the task into ever smaller frames, I become more and more present to the task. I’m also out of the mental chatter.
6. From rewarding the miles to rewarding the inches.
Have you ever noticed how difficult it can be to accept a compliment? Or to tell yourself “job well done”? Or to feel like you have done enough when there is still a ton of work to do?
When we break a big task into many, many smaller frames, we give ourselves many moments of completion. In each moment of completion, there is something else: the endorphin kick that comes with a job well done. This is an inner satisfaction, that does not depend on someone else validating us or telling us how good we are. It turns out that endorphins play a specific role in our biology. They help us cope with stress and pain.
I find the idea of breaking difficult tasks into the smallest frame both challenging and refreshing. I LOVE getting to the end of a difficult goal. And that love of the end causes me to rush. When a task feels daunting, it’s very useful to just focus on the next step.
I was out west riding horses at a guest ranch. The head wrangler was saddling my horse as I walked into the arena. His full focus was on looping the lead rope and carefully tying it in front of the saddle. His hands moved deliberately, with peace and ease. In this moment, each step of tying the lead rope was the only thing that mattered. When I walked up, he kept his attention on what he was doing. As he finished, I said “Each step is a whole thing, isn’t it?” It was so clear to me that he wasn’t already thinking about the next thing, or the thing after that. His expression said it all, as he simply said “Yes.” For him, each step in the saddling process is a complete process.
Conclusion
The prior two sections – Pocket Strategies and Practice/Practices – focused on discreet actions that help prepare for pressure and cope in the moment. This last section, Pressure as a Catalyst, is more like a system, or set of interconnected steps that transform us in the moment, while under pressure. Rather than preparing for or coping with pressure, we USE the pressure to free ourselves from the past and expand our repertoire. I’ve found it brings me back to my true self – and to my senses, rather than keeping my caught in my stories.
Imagine how different you would be under pressure without the mental chatter of getting up in your head. Imagine stress becoming an ally rather than an enemy. We don’t have to buy things for things to be ok. We can free ourselves of this narrative and increase our pressure threshold.
Last year, I developed a self-study introductory course around the Pressure as a Catalyst pivots. I’ve offered it once to a limited audience, and I’m considering offering it again. But only if there is enough interest.
So…did anything in this last section strike a nerve or pique your curiosity?