High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 416: How to Avoid Choking Under Pressure with Dr. Sian Beilock, Cognitive Scientist, Author & President of Barnard College

Episode Date: March 21, 2021

Dr. Sian Beilock is a celebrated cognitive scientist. She’s published over a hundred papers in her field of study and gave a Ted Talk on choking under pressure which has been viewed over 2 million times. She is the current president of Barnard College in New York City. Prior to her appointment as President, Beilock spent twelve years at the University of Chicago. As the Stella M. Rowley Professor of Psychology and a member of the Committee on Education, she specialized in how children and adults learn and perform at their best, especially under stress. President Beilock is the author of two books that have been published in more than a dozen languages—the critically acclaimed Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal about Getting It Right When You Have To (2010) and How the Body Knows Its Mind: The Surprising Power of the Physical Environment to Influence How You Think and Feel (2015). President Beilock earned her Bachelor of Science in cognitive science from the University of California, San Diego, and doctorates of philosophy in both kinesiology and psychology from Michigan State University.  In this episode, Dr. Beilock and Dr. Kamphoff discuss: The science behind performing under pressure Why choking occurs How we can reach our unlimited potential Why it is important to “Don’t think, just do.” How to unhook our prefrontal cortex How writing thoughts down on paper can prevent your mind from dwelling on them The power of self-compassion in pressure moments Numerous tools to help you avoid choking under pressure Plus, much more… HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE: www.cindrakamphoff.com/416 FB COMMUNITY FOR THE HPM PODCAST: https://www.facebook.com/groups/highperformancemindsetcommunity FOLLOW CINDRA ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/cindrakamphoff/ FOLLOW CINDRA ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/mentally_strong Quotes from this episode: Kobe Bryant once said, “Everything negative – pressure, challenges – is all an opportunity for me to rise.” Ed Jacoby  once said: “Pressure come from within and so must be mastered from within.” Sian Beilock writes, “Athletes’ tendency to overthink their performance is one of the big predictor of whether they will chock in important games or matches.”  

Hey, my name is Cindra Campoff and I'm a small-town Minnesota gal, Minnesota nice as we like to say it, who followed her big dreams. I spent the last four years working as a mental coach for the Minnesota Vikings, working one-on-one with the players. I wrote a best-selling book about the mindset of the world's best and I'm a keynote speaker and national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. And I am obsessed with showing you exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best so you can accomplish all your goals and dreams. So I'm over here following my big dreams and I'm here to inspire you and practically show you how to do the same. And you know, when I'm not working, you'll find me playing Ms. Pac-Man.

Yes, the 1980s game Ms. Pac-Man. So take your notepad out, buckle up, and let's go. This is the high performance mindset. Kobe Bryant once said, everything negative, pressure and challenges, it all is an opportunity for me to rise. Ed Yacobi said, pressure comes from within and so must be mastered from within. And Sian Bilek, who I interviewed today for the podcast episode said, athletes' tendency to overthink their performance is one of the biggest predictors of whether they will choke in games or matches. Welcome to episode 416. This is your host, Dr. Sindra Kampoff, and I am grateful that you are here.

If you know that mindset is essential to your success, then you are in the right place. And I wanted to let you know about an exciting announcement today. We have decided to put all of these interviews live as we are doing them over in the High Performance Mindset Community Facebook group. So you can get them, you can watch them actually as they're happening, as they're unfolding, and you can ask us questions over in the community when we are live on these interviews. So we can ask your questions right from there. So we'd love for you to join us over at the High Performance Mindset Community over on Facebook. You'll get a ton of value from there. And to join us, you can scroll down just on this episode in the show notes

and find the link to the High Performance Mindset Community. Or you can just go over to Facebook and search High Performance Mindset Community. Today's episode is with Dr. Sian Beilock, who is a celebrated cognitive scientist. She's published over hundreds of papers in her field of study and gave a TED Talk on choking under pressure, which has been viewed over 2 million times. She is the current president of Bernard College in New York City. Prior to her appointment as president, Sian spent 12 years at the University of Chicago, where she specialized in how children and adults learn and perform at their best, especially under stress and pressure. President Beilock is the

author of two books that have been published in more than a dozen languages. The critically acclaimed book, which we talk about in this episode called Choke, what the secrets of the brain reveal about getting it right when you have to and how the body knows its mind, the surprising power of the physical environment to influence how you think and feel. Sian earned her bachelor's of science

in cognitive science from the University of California, San Diego and her doctorates of Philosophy in both Kinesiology and Psychology from Michigan State University. And fun fact, for those people who know about the program in Kinesiology at Michigan State, her advisor was Deb Feltz. In this episode, Dr. Bylock and I talk about the science behind performing under pressure, why choking occurs, how we can

reach our unlimited potential, why it's important to not think, just do, and how we actually do that, how to unhook our prefrontal cortex, why writing thoughts down on paper can prevent your mind from dwelling on them, and the power of self-compassion in pressure moments, plus so much more. Now you can head over to this website to find the full show notes and description, along with the transcript of this interview to pull out the golden nuggets of what Sian said

in this podcast episode. You can head over to syndracampoff.com slash 416 for the episode 416, which is this episode number. And if you love the show, we'd love for your rating and review wherever you are listening. If you are listening on Apple Podcasts, you can just scroll down and leave us a rating and review there. It helps us just reach more and more people each week. And we would be so grateful for your review. Now this week's rating and review, which by the way, I hope I can read yours next week. It comes from MLKATC. And ML said, I love the wisdom of this podcast. Great blends of short snippets for mindset and longer form interviews with key leaders in the area i love that cindra summarizes what she hears cool thank you ml i so appreciate your rating and

review make sure you share this with a friend somebody who needs to hear about choking and performing under pressure today you can copy and paste the link wherever you are listening text it to a couple of friends or share it on social media. And when you share it, make sure that you tag myself, Sindra Kampoff, and Sian Bylock wherever you're tagging. And we'd love to comment. Without further ado, let's bring on this powerful conversation with Sian Bylock. Sian, I'm so excited to talk with you this afternoon. How is your day going so far? It's been busy and it's cold here in New York, but good other than that. It's cold here in Minnesota too. We've had this great weather and then all of a sudden it's snowing like five inches, six inches today. So I don't know what that's about.

Well, to get us started, Sian, can you just tell us a little bit about what you're passionate about and what you're doing right now? So I'm president of Barnard College at Columbia University, which is the premier college focused on women's leadership in the U.S. And I'm passionate about helping young and I focus on human performance. Basically, I'm interested in why we sometimes don't perform at our best when it matters most. And I wrote a book called Choke about this. Yes. And that's one of the reasons that we're having you on the podcast today.

I love your book, Choke. I read it several years ago and I know you're working on another book as well. Maybe just to get us started, tell us a bit about why you started studying choking and just performing under pressure in general. Yeah, so I definitely do some research in addition to research. You know, I was an athlete growing up and always interested in why I sometimes didn't put my best foot forward when it mattered most on the playing field or taking tests or speaking in front of others. And when I got to college, I realized that there was lots of research focused on how to perform at your best, but much less asking questions about why really counterintuitively

sometimes when we want to do well, we don't. And so that's what I started studying. Yeah. And I listened to your TED Talk along with, it was very good, over 2 million views. So you can, I know that people are really interested in this topic because, you know, we perform under pressure in lots of different areas. Yeah. And it's, you know, I think we often think about the Olympic athlete or the Superbowl is the place where we perform under pressure, people perform under pressure. But one of the reasons I think this topic is so important is that we all perform under pressure in lots of, you know, middle, medium, low stakes situations all the time.

Whether it's, you know, raising your hand in a meeting, pitching to a client. For me, you know, parallel parking with my friends in the car. You know, there's all sorts of times when we feel a little bit of pressure. I feel pressure too when I'm parallel parking. I'm good when no one's watching. Yeah, isn't that true? So I know you were talking about in the book choke, you know, there's, you know, we generally have performance ups and downs, and that's not really choking. So tell us how you've come to conceptualize this word choking and what it really means. this choking is worse performance than you're capable of precisely because you feel pressure to perform well. Maybe people are watching you. You don't want to let someone down. There's something on the line. And this is, you know, exactly when you want to perform at your best and you just can't put your best foot forward. So what would you say generally leads to people

choking? So one of the biggest reasons people choke is that they haven't practiced in the right way. By that, I mean, practicing under the kinds of conditions you're going to perform under. You see this all the time in athletics, in taking a test when you have to do public speaking, we often, you know, maybe practice the skills or read over our notes, but we don't practice being anxious. Yeah. Practice under the kinds of conditions where all eyes are on you. And it turns out that if you haven't practiced in that way, you really haven't practiced how you're going to perform and that can lead to poor performance. So there's lots of research showing that when you start mimicking the conditions under which you're going to perform under, I talk about

closing this gap between training and competition, you actually perform better when it counts. So let's say I'm a business leader or an athletic coach, and I want to make sure that, you know, the people that I have on my team can be able to perform when maybe the stakes are high? What would you tell us to do in practice to make sure that there's opportunity for us to be anxious and to practice that? Yeah, so if you have a team as a business leader and they have to pitch to a client or give an important presentation,

I'd want my team to give that presentation while others watch as practice. Maybe you invite in another team from the company or if no one can watch you, you videotape yourselves, anything to get that feeling of all eyes on you. And it turns out that when you practice in that way, you realize what you need to change, what is not as clear. And you can do the same thing on the field, rather than practicing free throws or the court when no one's watching, you know, we're heading into March madness. What happens if you, if every time someone misses a free throw at practice, the rest of the team has to do something maybe not so fun, run a lap, sprints, that'll sure

put the pressure on the person shooting. Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the things that really stood out to me when you were talking about what leads to people choking is this idea of our attention and that our attention might be on the wrong thing. Can you talk a little bit about that and how that leads to choking? Yeah, we often in these pressure situations are so worried about doing well that we start paying attention to every detail of what we're doing. And I think we've all experienced this when you're talking to someone you want to impress and you start monitoring everything coming out of your mouth, right? And that's not fluent and you end up not saying something that's sensical. And so, you know, what my research and others have shown is that sometimes we pay too much attention to the details of what we're doing. You see this in athletics all the time.

You know, people choke oftentimes when they start trying to monitor every aspect of how their wrist is moving or what they're doing with their foot when they should just leave it on autopilot. And so a lot of my research has shown that we can put tools in place so that we don't actually pay that much too much attention to those aspects of what you're doing. And an example I give that I think helps resonate with this idea is that imagine if you're shuffling down the stairs and I asked you to think about what you're doing with your knee, you know, there's a good chance you'd fall on your face, right? And that you don't often pay attention to it runs outside of conscious control. And when you do pay attention, you end up slowing everything down and mucking with it. And so when you're going into that stressful situation, the first thing I would

say is for those five minutes before, don't go over every detail of what you're going to do. Distract yourself. You know, my favorite thing to do is actually read Us Magazine, like something that just gets my head away from everything going on. I don't read the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times because I'll get too emotionally involved, but I do something that's just mindless, right? And then when you get into that situation, something as simple as singing a little song or having three keywords or a mantra, anything that keeps your attention off of going into the details too much of what you're doing. Because at that point, you know it and you just got to do it. Yeah, that's really helpful. And there was a page in your book that I starred and it said athletes tendency to overthink their performance is one of the biggest predictors of whether they

will choke in important games or matches. And so I like what you're saying about that. We can overthink our mechanics. Do you also find that we overthink other things? I'm wondering, you know, for me, when I choked as an athlete, it was like I was focused on the outcome. Definitely sometimes who was there. Are there other things that we can think about beyond our mechanics that lead to choking? and the outcomes causes you to start focusing and trying to control what you're doing, right? So the pressure can be, you know, we find it's really easy to make people feel pressure if they have people who are supportive watching them, if they're thinking about what's on the line, if they don't want to let someone down, and all of those things then cause you to start trying to control what you're doing, right? Yeah. So the question is, how do you get rid of those, or how do you make it so it's not as important? Right. So if you're focused on who's there watching you, why not? And if you're a coach coaching young athletes, for example, why not invite the parents to practice?

So it's not like they're just showing up to a game. Right. So it's not like all of a sudden the game is so different. Again, you know, if you are putting together a presentation that has high stakes, why not do it to someone else in the company? Why not even invite, you know, the next team or a boss to watch it? Yeah. Yeah. Really good. Can you give us an example of a time that you choked, even though maybe you knew this research? Because I can give you some of mine, my examples. So, I mean, I, I, I choke all the time. I think it's really important to this. You know, I think one thing that I hope people take away from my work is that we're not born chokers or thrivers, right? We can always, we can use these psychological tools that I talk

about in my TED talk and in my book choke to help perform better. You know, oftentimes for me nowadays, it's not so much public speaking. I do that so much. I'm well-practiced, but it's when I'm trying to meet with someone and I'm trying to impress them. Right. And so I start, I start thinking about what I'm saying and what they're thinking about what I'm saying. And then all of a sudden I'm thinking about what they're thinking about what I'm thinking. And then I start monitoring everything I'm saying. Right. And I try, for example, when I'm doing important meetings over Zoom now, I actually make it so I can't see myself on the screen because I

find that to be really distracting. I monitor myself, and that's a tool I've used to perform better. Excellent. When I was preparing to interview you, I thought of some times I choked, and one particular time I'm a speaker, and I was invited my first speaker showcase where there, you know, like 25 speakers. And I was towards the end, which was really a lot of pressure for me because I saw all these incredible speakers. And I just got up there and was definitely overthinking, more mechanical than speaking from my heart. And

I did get booked from what, like, I think one or two people in the audience from that, but I'm not sure how. Right. And I think it's actually a really important thing to remember is that we often are so much harsher on ourselves than other people are on us. And I talk a lot about this in terms of having self-compassion first of all people you're paying way more attention to yourself than I'm paying to you because I'm paying attention to myself right and so we often have this tendency to spotlight to think that other people are remembering every little mistake we made and in fact that's not true and you can there we all have examples of this where we've been out with a group of friends and you say something kind of dumb and then later you say to one of

your good friends oh I can't believe I said that and they're like I don't remember that right I mean because no one's paying attention to you they're paying attention to themselves so it's important to remember that's actually helpful um to keep that in mind and then you know it's having compassion when you don't get everything a hundred percent right. We can be the worst critics of ourselves, which can lead to additional pressure. So how do you step back and have a little bit more self-compassion? And one great way to do that is just to distance yourself in your mental coaching. So like, instead of saying, I can't do this, right. Actually talking to yourself by first name, Sian, you can do this.

It's like you kind of take the compassion, you take the passion out of it, the emotion out of it. You just really step back and it's like how you would coach a friend. Yeah, that's beautiful. And I know that people who are listening do struggle with that. I struggle with the compassion of myself, even though that's one of my goals for this year is like less judgment, more compassion. But it's, I think, especially if you have high goals, it's, it's hard to be compassionate because you want, you think maybe

that if you're compassionate with yourself, you won't reach those goals or something like that. Yeah. And I always think, you know, a good way to people who really want to strive for a lot, you know, we're hard on ourselves. So I always think a good way to judge that is like, or is what you're saying to yourself, would you ever say that to a friend? Right. And that's like a good litmus test. Yeah.

Awesome. I think it was in your Ted talk where I heard you say, like, don't think, just do. And I was thinking as myself as a mental performance coach, and also sometimes that's hard for me to do, right? Just don't think, just do. So what advice would you give us to try that? Don't think, just do. And how do you think that then prevents choking? Yeah, I think, you know, there's tools you can use, right? So if you have a one word mantra for your swing thought, or if you are trying to hit a certain spot at the back of the net,

or singing a song to yourself, you know, when I walk into an important presentation, I have three key points I want to get across, like written on a little piece of paper, which lets everything else just go, right? So these are the three things I want to get across in the interview. And then I don't have to worry about the rest of it. And so you want to scaffold yourself, give yourself tools so you can really in that moment just do. Awesome. You also said something about like unhooking your prefrontal cortex. And I wanted to talk with you a little bit more about that because I'm thinking about, right, that's the rational side of your brain. And tell us maybe how, why we need to unhook that. And is it an over-activation of the prefrontal cortex or are we choke or give us a little

insight on that? Yeah. I mean, it's almost like having too many cooks in the kitchen, right? So our frontal cortex and our prefrontal cortex is the seat of our ability to control our attention. And we focus, it's used to focus sometimes too much on what we're doing, right? And so the question is, how do you step back and just go with the flow in terms of being on autopilot, letting things roll off, as you talked about speaking from the heart. And all the little things I talked about are kind of, you know, getting these keywords down, having a swing thought, a couple of things you're going to fall back on can be really great ways to do that. It's also the case that reminding yourself when you have physiological signs of stress, like a sweaty palm, beating heart, just reminding yourself, reinterpreting the situation.

These are not signs I'm going to fail. In fact, my heart is beating fast, so it's shunting blood to my brain so I can focus on the right things. Just framing that can be a great way to take that sort of over-monitoring off. And finally, we've shown that just getting your thoughts down on paper, your worries down on paper before a big event helps download them from mind. They're less likely to pop up and distract you. And these are all, you know, little things, toolboxes, part of the toolboxes I talk about that you can use to really unhook that prefrontal cortex to step back and just do it. Excellent. Really good suggestions.

And I think what you just said about reminding yourself to reinterpret that stress, the physiological symptoms of stress and excitement are the same, right? So it's like, and I appreciate what you said about not seeing it as a sign that you're going to fail. Yeah. And we've actually done research where, for example, high school students taking a really important test in their science classes, we've randomly assigned some of them to read a passage about, you know, their sweaty palms and beating hard. And, oh, no, it's, you know, a sign you're stressed, whereas others read a passage about sweaty palms and beating hard. And, oh, my gosh,

it's a sign you're ready to go. Right. And just changing that, the students that read about a sign you're ready to go actually did better on the test. Just reinterpreting that, how you perceive that stress is really important. And the fact of the matter is if we didn't have any stress or arousal, we'd be dead, right? This is important to remember. Like this is something that is beneficial to us, right? And so how do you see it in this way to use it in that way and how you think about it really matters. Excellent. You know, you've already given us some really good strategies that we can use, which I think is really helpful when people are understanding choking. You said like one word mantra or singing a song, reinterpreting the symptoms or how your body's feeling, writing down your worries or some things that you gave us. What I also really liked

about your book is you gave such, you know, great research about choking and what leads to it, but it was also very practical. And I really liked these, this on 174 and 175 here, where you gave, you know, just some tools to ensure success under stress. Can you give us a little insight on maybe what some of those tools would be to ensure a success under stress? Yeah. So I don't have the book in front of me. Why don't you read one to me? Perfect. Well, here's some examples. You said reaffirm your self-worth, map out your complexities, write about your worries. That's one you've already talked about. Think differently, reinterpret your reactions. That's actually what you said. Pause your choke, educate the worries,

the Obama effect, practice under pressure. Yeah. So I've talked about some of those. I'll talk about a couple more that, that you mentioned there. So one is really focusing on why you should succeed. And that's about reaffirming your self-worth. I think we're so quick to be like, oh, I don't have to, I can't do it. I'm not, you know, I'm so worried. The what ifs, you know, what if I fail? And instead you can actually have the power to change that internal monologue. So why should you succeed? You've practiced more than anyone else. When I walk in to give a research presentation, I always remind myself, I know my data and this better than anyone else in the world, or at least better than anyone else in the room. So there's no way that I shouldn't be able to do this well. Like that's my lift in these situations.

You're walking in to give a presentation, you're probably well, way more versed in what you're doing than anyone else in the room. Remind yourself of that. And that's really about reaffirming why you should succeed rather than thinking about why you should fail. Another one that I focus on and I talk about in the book is mapping out your self complexities. And I think this is a really important one. We often, when we're so focused on succeeding in an athletic event or at work, we forget that we are multiple people in one. So there's a benefit to being multiply complex. So I'm a college president, I'm a researcher, I'm a mother, I'm a friend, I'm an athlete. And it turns out that when you remind yourself of all those things, when you have a bad day in one, you're kind of buffered because you

can fall back on another. And so when I have a bad day at work, I can go home and hug my nine-year-old. And when my nine-year-old says I'm the worst mother in the world, I can focus on my work. And it's actually very important to remind yourself of all these complexities because it makes you realize that every egg is not in one basket, that it's not all about this one particular moment or presentation. It just takes some of the pressure off. Yeah. And that's what I was thinking as I was hearing you say that, is it takes the pressure off this one maybe role that we have and we can, for at least for a while, turn our attention to something else, distract ourselves. Yeah. In the book, you talked a little bit about gender differences and just being stereotyped negatively can make us feel pressure. Tell us

a bit about that and what you found. Yeah, well, you know, I lead Barnard College, which is the premier institution focused on women. And, you know, it's really interesting because our Barnard women are exceptional. And one of the reasons they're exceptional is because I think we address these gender issues head on, right? So a third of our graduates are math and science majors. Barnard is number nine out of any college or university in sending women to get PhDs in science and math, you know, per capita of our undergrads, really impressive. And one of the things we do

is we address these gender stereotypes head on. There's no reason girls and boys would be, should be any different in math performance. In fact, the data don't, there's no brain differences for that. There's certainly reasons that girls and boys are conditioned differently, but we can change that. And really these ideas, just addressing these stereotypes, kind of undermining their significance can do a lot to impact performance. And another way to do this, which I think is so important that is often discounted, is to see people who are like you. At Barnard, 60% of our science faculty are women, and our students

learn very early on that they can succeed in STEM too. And there's a real power in seeing is believing in all aspects of life. And it's a great way to undermine stereotypes about which racial group or gender group or economic group can do something. And what advice would you give us like as a woman or a person of color or a different way that we might be negatively stereotyped? What advice would you give us to maybe consider in a person of color or a different way that we might be negatively stereotyped, what advice would you give us to maybe consider in a moment of pressure? And if we're thinking about, for example, I work a lot in football and there's not very many women, right?

So sometimes I can overthink that, but that doesn't help me. So what advice maybe would you give for those people who are listening? Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great example of where you could potentially fall prey to the stereotype that you don't belong. Right. And it just robbed you of the cognitive resources to do your job. And that's where I think you can really do what I talk about in terms of reaffirming your self-worth. Like maybe you're not many women play football, but I'd venture to guess that you are the most expert in the psychological processes that these guys are thinking about, right? And you bring that to the table. So there it's like, it doesn't matter if women are playing football,

it matters that you are the expert in what they need, right? And so really focusing on that, right? And I think this is true in any situation, a student who is at an elite university focusing on why they got there. They were picked out of so many people to be there. They have what it takes and they bring something really important to the table, a different lived experience that's gonna allow everyone to think better.

And so really narrating that for yourself is important we we often don't give enough value to those stories we tell to ourselves and it turns out how we think about a situation changes how the brain functions and that changes how we perform and so our thoughts and mindsets really matter yeah and i'm thinking about the environment and specifically the environment there at the college where supporting other women and maybe that I know for sure that allows other women to thrive. What can you talk a little bit about the environment and how that plays a role in choking, either if it's an education or business or sport? Yeah. I mean, I think it's not just up to the individual in the situation, but it's up to the leaders or managers at a company or coaches to

create an environment where people are getting information and supported for how they perform, right? So let's say it's even signaling that performing poorly isn't a sign that you don't have it, right? Or you don't know what you're doing. It's a sign you didn't practice the right way. So a coach can set that up. Choking as a team in an important game or as an individual is not a sign you shouldn't be there. It's a sign you figured out the right way to perform in that situation or get to the table. And just setting up those expectations can do a lot to take the pressure off. And there are situations where maybe coaches or parents or leaders might produce an environment that leads actually to choking instead of the opposite? Yeah, I mean, certainly any situation where a coach

is, you know, it's a fine line between getting our players ramped up and ready to go and sort of making it so that stress is and pressure is negative rather than positive. And so I think, you know, part of great coaches are figuring out what level each player needs, right? A lot of one size fits all. That's certainly true for managers. You know, you manage different people differently. I think that's true for teachers as well. And so, you know, I would, I would say that one of the elements of being a great leader is having that individualized effect on different people. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. You also talk in the book about changing the way that we experience fear. And I thought that was really powerful. I'm curious

your thoughts on that and how we might really change how we fear and what we fear so that we don't choke as much. Yeah. I mean, I think some of it is, you know, we have a lot of research showing that it's where we see the effects, say, in the brain of people who are worried about something is not when they're actually doing it. It's when it's leading up to it. So we've looked a lot at people who are worried about math and we put them in a brain scanner and actually see what's happening in the brain.

And what we show is that it's not when they're doing math problems. It's when they just know that the math is coming, that they activate fear and pain centers in the brain. And so that's really interesting, right? Because it suggests that if you can change these what ifs, if you can change the mindset leading up to the stressful situation, you're going to be in a much better position. And so, I mean, it's everything from telling yourself, okay, I'm worried about this situation. I know that the worst time is right before, but once I'm in it, I'll thrive or it won't bother me. So how do I take my mind off it leading up to it?

Right. Can I relax myself? Can I distract myself? That's where my Us Magazine reading comes in. Because if I didn't do that, I'd spend five minutes worrying about what was about to happen. But I know once I get in there, I'll be okay. Excellent. So I think that's actually a really important part of it is oftentimes we're way more afraid

before than during the actual stressful situation and reminding ourselves of that. And then actually figuring out what techniques we're going to use to get rid of that fear can be important. And I thought what you said about changing these what ifs, right? So we're changing the way that we might think about the outcome in more of a positive, proactive way. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, Sian, I am so grateful for your time. I have one more question before we close up. In the TED Talk that you gave about choking and performing under pressure, you said this really powerful thing. And you said, like, how can we reach our unlimited potential?

And I wanted to talk with you a little bit about that. What's, you know, what do you think the key is there of us reaching our unlimited potential? And how can we do that? Well, I mean, this might be an obvious answer for me, but I think one of the ways that we do that is learn to perform our best when it matters most. I can't even imagine how many world records have been broken when no one's watching, right? And so the question is, how do we do it when all eyes are on us? And I think having an idea of what happens in the brain and body in these stressful situations is key because it allows us then not just to train a skill or to acquire knowledge, but to train our mind as well. Excellent. So Sian's book, Choke, what the secrets of the brain reveal about getting it right when you have to. I know you have another book. Tell us about where we can get that and where we

can just find more about your work and follow along with what you're doing. Yeah. So I have another book, How the Body Knows Its Mind, and you can get both on Amazon or on my website, which is my name, SianBilock.com. I'm on Twitter as Bilock, at Billock, and on Instagram as Prez Bylock. And I hope you follow me. Awesome. Thank you, Dr. Bylock. I'm so grateful for your time and what you just gave to the High Performance Mindset community. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Oh, it was great to be here. Thank you. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy

cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe and you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes and to join my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A dot com. See you next week.