Pressure

You can dedicate your life to high performance like our Olympic athletes do or you can do it in your own way by applying yourself to the best of your ability throughout your life and your career.  It is what we call the THPL journey.  But as we watch and observe, in this case the Olympic athletes, it is striking to see the impact that pressure has on performance.  It can turn the best of performances into disappointments, and can at some level turn years of amazing performance and practice and mastery into the unexplainable. 

And so what is it that we do to ourselves?  We know the risks that pressure brings, yet, we have collectively been unable to consistently put pressure aside and perform as we know we can. Why do we find ourselves in such a situation?  The worry that we might fail brings on the pressure and then the pressure ensures that we do not perform our best.  We know this and so the challenge is what to do about it.  A few thoughts, and yes, we all know this is easier to write than to do…..but we have to start somewhere.

  • Regardless of the outcome of the event our abilities and talents are still the same
  • Your family, friends and people that matter, love you regardless of the medal or award
  • We don’t have to be satisfied with our results but we have to be happy with them
  • Life is supposed to be fun – pressure takes away the fun – shooting for high performance does not
  • Make it personal but do not take it personally – the moments matter but they do not make the person.  How you handle them does.

Here’s to everyone who faces down pressure and is happy with their results - every ready to at it again and again for love of life not to prove anything to anyone but ourselves of who we are and what we are made of.

Loving life with no pressure – just high performance….

Ciao

joe