Feeling pressure is normal. It is the natural response to a moment that matters to you, and if it did not matter, you would not feel it. So the aim is not to remove pressure, but to understand it and be ready for it.
The uncomfortable feeling that comes with pressure is normal too. It is part of how we evolved. For our ancestors the fight-or-flight response was useful, priming the body to react and survive in the face of real danger. In most of the situations we face now it is far less useful, firing in moments where being tense does not help us, and can get in the way. So the important part is learning to understand that response and manage it.
What separates the people who handle pressure well from the people who struggle with it is not how much pressure they feel. Everyone who cares about what they are doing feels it. The difference is having ways to cope with it, worked on in advance and made personal, so that your focus stays where it needs to be when the moment matters most.
We all experience it, and there have been many times where pressure has stopped me performing to the best of my ability. What follows draws on both the research and on experience. We will look at what pressure is and where it comes from, the different kinds of pressure we face, and how to prepare for the moments that bring it on and refine that preparation over time.
What Pressure Is, and Why We Feel It
A degree of pressure helps us. The long-standing research on arousal and performance found that a moderate amount sharpens focus and lifts what we are able to do, and that beyond a certain point it tips over and starts to pull us down instead. This is why a little pressure can feel like readiness, while too much feels like being overwhelmed. The aim is not to avoid pressure, but to stay on the useful side of that line.
Where that line sits is individual, and so is the direction we need to move in. Some of us run hot and need to bring ourselves down before a big moment, settling the nerves so the energy does not spill over. Others run calm and need to lift themselves up, raising the intensity so they meet the moment with enough edge. Part of understanding our own pressure is knowing which way we tend to go, because the same situation can call for the opposite response in two different people.
Underneath the feeling is that same survival response. Faced with something that matters, the body reacts as though it were facing a threat: the heart rate climbs, attention narrows onto the danger, and we become tense and alert. None of that is a fault in us. It is the system working as it was built to. The difficulty is that it was built for physical danger, and most of the pressure we meet now is not physical. The response arrives all the same, and we have to know how to work with it.
There is also a more specific way that pressure can interfere. Beilock and Carr (2001) studied what they called choking, where a well-practised skill falls apart at the worst moment. They found it happens most when we turn conscious attention onto something that normally runs on its own. We start thinking about something the body already knows how to do, and in thinking about it we interrupt it. It is worth knowing, because it explains why even people who are well prepared can come unstuck, and why so much of handling pressure is about where our attention goes.
The Different Kinds of Pressure
Pressure is not the same for everyone, and it is not the same in every situation. Before we can prepare for it, we have to understand our own: which moments tighten us, what the pressure is really about, and where it is coming from. It helps to separate it into two kinds, because we deal with each one differently.
External pressure comes from the situation itself, the stakes, the expectations of others, the deadline, the consequences if it does not go well. That expectation can take many forms, a parent or a coach, a manager or senior colleagues, or simply the standard other people have come to expect of us. We can rarely remove it, so instead we prepare for it. Part of that is becoming familiar with the moment in advance, because a moment we have prepared for feels smaller and more manageable than one we walk into unprepared. And part of it is the thinking behind it: once a pressured thought arrives, the reaction has usually already been triggered, and by then it is very difficult to reverse. The key is getting comfortable with the thought beforehand, so that when it comes, it is familiar rather than alarming.
Internal pressure is the pressure we add ourselves. Some of it comes from worrying about what other people will think, the fear of being judged, of looking foolish, of letting people down. Some of it comes from simply wanting something badly, from having put a great deal of time into it, where the wanting itself tightens us. Either way it is ours, which is what makes it the more workable kind. When we are anchored in our own values and our own sense of what a good effort looks like, the question of what others will think loses much of its grip. We are measuring ourselves against our own standard, rather than waiting on someone else’s verdict. And the more purposeful time we put into preparing, the readier we are to meet expectation of either kind when it comes.
This is what it means to focus on what we can control. The result, the expectations of others, the conditions, the judgement we imagine, much of that sits outside our hands. What we can control is how much importance we give it, how much weight we let that outside noise carry. Our preparation, our effort, our attention, the standard we hold ourselves to, all of that is ours too. Pressure eases when we move our attention away from what we cannot control and onto what we can, and give our attention to the process rather than the outcome.
Preparing for the Moment
Most of the answer to pressure lies in preparing for the moment before it arrives. When we know a pressured moment is coming, we can prepare in advance rather than hoping to cope on the day. People who look calm in big moments are rarely feeling less than anyone else. They have seen the moment coming and prepared for it.
Preparation works on two levels. The first is the skill itself. The more deeply something is practised, the more it holds when the pressure is on, because it runs without us having to think about it, which is exactly what stops us interrupting it. Practising something well past the point of being able to do it, so that it holds even when everything around us is difficult, is one of the strongest protections there is. It also lifts our base level, so that even on an off day we can be confident of performing to a standard we can rely on.
The second is getting used to the pressure itself. We can rehearse not just the skill but the conditions, deliberately putting ourselves into pressured situations in practice, so that the real moment is familiar rather than new. It helps to practise with something real resting on it, so that practice carries a little of the same weight the moment will. The first time we face a significant moment is almost always the hardest. The tenth is far more manageable. That is not luck, it is the result of having been there before. Stepping outside our comfort zone on purpose, in smaller moments, is how we build the capacity to handle the larger ones.
It also helps to prepare how we will speak to ourselves in the moment. What we say to ourselves matters, and the most useful self-talk does a job rather than simply lifting the mood. A vague instruction like “stay calm” gives our attention nowhere to go. Something specific and tied to the next action gives it a clear place to land, a phrase like “one thing at a time”, “slow and clear”, or simply the first step we have to take. The words themselves are personal. We are all different, and the cues that work are the ones that mean something to us, so it is worth finding the few that land and deciding on them in advance, rather than reaching for them when the moment is already on us.
And much of preparing for the moment is in how we read the feeling itself. The physical signs of pressure, the raised heart rate, the alertness, the energy, are close to identical to the signs of excitement. The breath is the fastest way to steady ourselves here, a slow breath out, longer than the breath in, settles the body before we try to do anything else with the mind. Trying to force ourselves calm in a high-energy moment is hard and often makes things worse, whereas reading those same sensations as a sign of readiness works with the body rather than against it. The feeling is not a warning that something is wrong. It is the body getting ready for something that matters.
Underneath that sits a deeper way of seeing it. The moment is ours to meet, not something we are being tested on. Once a moment becomes something we are taking on rather than being judged in, much of the threat in it eases. This is where reframing does its work, and it is worth preparing in advance, because the thoughts that bring on pressure are usually predictable. We can take the negative thought we know will come and decide now on the truer, steadier way to see it, so that the better thought is ready when the moment arrives. The examples below show the shape of it.
Refining It Over Time
Preparing for pressure is not something we get right once. It is refined over time, and the way we reflect on a pressured moment after it has passed shapes how we meet the next one. The temptation, especially after a hard moment, is to replay only what went wrong. A fairer reflection waits until the emotion has settled, because it is difficult to be rational while we are still inside the feeling, and then looks at the whole picture, what worked and is worth keeping alongside what we would change. A review that is only about what failed teaches us to dread the next moment, where one that sees the whole picture builds the confidence and the accuracy we carry into it. The aim is not to feel better about it, but to build an honest picture of how we respond under pressure, so that we can prepare better next time. This is how we keep developing.
All of this sits inside a wider way of thinking. Nerves and tension are completely normal, they are a sign that we care. A growth mindset treats a hard moment as information rather than a verdict on us. Accepting where we currently are, understanding ourselves, and treating feedback as something to use rather than something to fear, all of it helps. Handling pressure well is not about no longer feeling it. It is about understanding the feelings that come, expecting them, and having ways to cope with them ready.
As with anything worth doing, there is no quick fix, and none of it is especially easy. It takes rehearsal, and it takes deliberately putting ourselves into moments that test us, learning from them, recovering, and going again. Pressure is not something that will hold us back forever. It is part of performing, and part of developing beyond what is comfortable, and it is something we can build the skills to handle. The most important moment is always the one in front of us. When we own the decision inside it and meet the small challenge it asks of us, those moments add up. That is how handling pressure is built, not in a single significant moment, but across many of them, each one prepared for and met.
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Put It Into Practice
Before your next high-stakes performance, write down the three things entirely within your control. Not what you want to achieve — what you will do. Write them as process statements. During the performance, those are your only measures. The result will tell you something afterward. During it, results tell you nothing useful. If you do not yet have a way of preparing for the moments that bring on pressure, build one before the next occasion that calls for it, not during it.
References
Beilock, S. L., & Carr, T. H. (2001). On the fragility of skilled performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130(4), 701–725.
Brooks, A. W. (2014). Get excited: Reappraising pre-performance anxiety as excitement. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(3), 1144–1158.
Hatzigeorgiadis, A., Zourbanos, N., Galanis, E., & Theodorakis, Y. (2011). Self-talk and sports performance. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(4), 348–356.
Lidor, R., & Mayan, Z. (2005). Can beginning learners benefit from preperformance routines when serving in volleyball? The Sport Psychologist, 19(4), 343–363.
Schunk, D. H., & Ertmer, P. A. (1999). Self-regulatory processes during computer skill acquisition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91(2), 251–260.
Yerkes, R. M., & Dodson, J. D. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit-formation. Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, 18, 459–482.