High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 543: How Successful People Deal with Pressure

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

High performers in sport, business, and life use pressure to be at their best. Awareness is the first step to reducing pressure. They use natural tools inside of them to see pressure as a privilege. They POP the Pressure.  Quote of the Week: "Everything negative - pressure, challenges - is all an opportunity for me to rise." - Kobe Bryant   This Week's Power Phrase: “I see pressure as a privilege. Pressure leads me to greatness.” 

Hi friends, my name is Dr. Sindra Kampoff, a national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. Every week I'm on the local radio sharing my top tips on exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best so you can accomplish all your dreams. Get ready for a jammed packed episode focused on practical tips to help you get after your goals and step out of your comfort zone. Let's go. Time to check in with Cyndra Kampoff. Today, we talk about how successful people deal with pressure. Cyndra, start us off with a quote. I like this quote by Kobe Bryant. He said, everything negative, pressure, challenges, is all an opportunity for me to rise.

An opportunity to rise. So you've got an example to start with. Yeah, I just want people to think about the last time they felt pressure. You know, it's likely that you were doing something you really want to do well at. And it was likely that the outcome was unknown, or you felt somehow responsible for the outcome or judged for the outcome. You know, for example, at work, it might be a presentation or a meeting in sports, it might be a big play, or during the playoffs. And I think if we don't learn to deal with pressure and manage ourselves during it, we don't really step into our potential

and we hold ourselves back. So how do people typically respond to pressure? Well, we typically respond to it as something that we want to avoid, something that we really don't want to experience. And when we do that, we get really in this future based thinking, and we're thinking about all the things that could go wrong, or sometimes we imagine the worst case scenario. But I think we want to think about pressure differently. We want to see it as a privilege and a challenge. And I think we want to embrace it. And it's important because if we don't embrace it, we don't really take risks or dream big. Ultimately, we don't, you know, step into our best or our potential.

All right. So help us talk about how we should be viewing our pressure. Well, from my experience working with professional athletes, what I've seen is they, instead of avoiding pressure, they really reframe it as a good thing. They know that if they hadn't accomplished something wonderful in the past, they wouldn't be in their current situation and capable of really rising to the occasion. So we can learn a lot from them. And by doing that, we can see pressure differently. We can see it as a privilege, as something that we've earned, and how great things can come from the moment. Why is it that we experience pressure? Well, really, we experience it when three things happen. When the outcome is important to us, so something is really important to us in the future, and it's unknown, we're not really sure what's going to happen.

And in some way, we feel like we're judged by the outcome. Maybe we're judged by the fans or by our coaches or our teammates or at work, you know, we're judged by our boss. And what's interesting, Lisa, is all of them have to do with the outcome. You know, so our mind is typically focused somewhere in the future instead of really being in the present moment. And so what do we do when we are experiencing that feeling of pressure? Well, one of my favorite books is a book called Performing Under Pressure by Henry Weisinger. And he explains that high achievers use natural tools within themselves to perform at their best in moments of pressure. And so, for example, some natural tools might be

like your breath or focusing on the small steps, that process we call instead of the outcome, or just reframing the situation. And I have a little acronym I use to kind of describe how we can deal with pressure. How does that sound? All right. Sounds great. Okay. Okay. So I call it POP the Pressure. And the first thing we want to do is just the P for POP stands for Power Breath. We want to just take a few breaths and bring our attention back to the present moment. O stands for Opportunity. And that means we want to reframe the pressure as a great opportunity. And then the other P in top is process. And that means we want to stay focused on the small steps or the process we want to execute. And that will help us reduce the pressure.

Pop the pressure. I like that. How do you summarize today for us? Lisa, I'd say, you know, high performers in sport, business, and life, they use pressure to be at their best. And just noticing how we feel and noticing the pressure is the first step. And then using these natural tools inside of us to see pressure as a privilege. We want to pop the pressure. And what is today's power phrase? I see pressure as a privilege. Pressure leads me to greatness. Cinder, if we want to follow along with you and have any other questions about what it is that you do, where can we go? You can head over to DrCindra, so D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com.

And this pop the pressure idea comes from my book, Beyond Grit, and you can find more information over there. 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.com. See you next week.