Be Cool - Develop Resilience To Pressure
Written by James
Hey Tribe,
Welcome!
Even in a life of routine and control, its inevitable things don’t always go to plan.
This is when the mettle of a person gets tested – will they lose their nerve? Their temper?
…Or will they stay calm and calculate their next action? How do they handle this pressure?
People are animals of impulse, letting emotions dictate how they handle a situation.
This can be damaging to reputation and many are not aware how much their emotions take control when faced with adversity.
How can pressure be utilised to our advantage?
Breath, recalibrate, deliver
Imagine you’ve got the biggest presentation of your life, 200 attendees from across the country listening to you in a webinar.
Every small detail has been perfected, you’re not going to blow this chance, but then… the webinar technology fails.
The attendees begin to get impatient – inside you’re panicking, upset and even angry with yourself.
This really happened to me!
Luckily, I’d just read about the ‘breath, recalibrate, deliver’ method from the book SAS: Who Dares Wins.
When under pressure:
Breath – pause for a moment, focus and don’t let the emotion dictate how you will react
Recalibrate – think through what is happening and review your options to handle the situation
Deliver – carry out the reframed approach to the situation
Using this approach, I calmly apologised to the attendees, began troubleshooting and resolved the problem to start my presentation.
This approach is not an instinct; therefore, reinforcement is required - every morning I reaffirm this idea and say to myself
“If something doesn’t work out today remember – breath, recalibrate, deliver”
Forgive yourself
When you lose control of emotions, you’ll naturally feel disappointed how you reacted.
This is where learning to forgive yourself is important.
If you’ve hurt someone else from an outburst, this makes forgiving yourself harder. The best approach is to speak to those impacted and apologise, this is the first step to moving on.
Dwelling on mistakes too much will create a negative loop where you continue to fail under pressure again and again.
Whatever happens don’t let mistakes consume you, learn from them instead.
Let the situation make you stronger
With hardship comes growth - those who try to live without pressure typically react the worst when something does go wrong and many of their ‘issues’ seem like nothing to an average functioning adult – they have poor resilience.
Situations of chaos can be utilised to our advantage – don’t avoid difficulties, embrace them and become a stronger person.
Reflecting on pressure can help you learn how to do better next time and regular exposure to adversity will help build resilience resulting in a calmer approach handling stress.
When it all goes wrong, see the positives in the situation and how it can be utilised to be better at the task.
Keep calm, keep controlled
In the scheme of control, as individuals we are fully empowered how we chose to react and what lessons we can learn by putting ourselves under pressure.
I hope these words inspire you to think with greater care how you react to bad situations – you can own these instances by exerting self-control, forgiving yourself when you don’t and develop your resilience to challenging situations.
I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback on handling challenging situations.
Have a great day and remember… always aim higher, feel good and get results!
Until next time,