#executivestress

I’d like to sincerely thank Nick Hutchinson for sharing such an open and considered review ⭐🙏

Nick’s experience of moving from constant overthinking and anxiety to feeling calm, focused, and mentally clear is exactly the kind of outcome many professionals seek in demanding, high-pressure roles 🧠✨

When the mind settles, clarity improves, decisions feel easier, and both performance and wellbeing naturally benefit.

Hearing that this was the first time therapy felt genuinely effective is why the work we do at Quays Clinic matters so much 💬🌱 Helping professional men and women reduce mental overload, regain control of their thinking, and move forward with confidence sits at the heart of hypnotherapy.

You can read Nick’s full review here 👇 https://lnkd.in/eqaRhEZK

When you’re a leader, whether that’s of a multinational company or your own SME, stress caused by the pressure to be successful is rarely far from you. Striving for success, whether that’s imposed on you by external sources or it’s pressure that you put on yourself, the effects are almost never positive.

There’s a popular myth that some people perform better under pressure, or ‘rise to the occasion’ but when scrutinised the evidence isn’t there.

Pressure actually helps us to fail

In most cases, when we are under pressure we perform below our capability – most of us have experienced that it is harder to parallel park when you’re being watched, right?

Under pressure, we get numbers the wrong way around; we miss the shot in the game; misread the question on the exam paper. We miss out the critical piece of evidence in the presentation – yet remember it on the way out when the pressure’s off but it’s too late.

Pressure has us behave badly

Pressure negatively affects our thinking and it also affects our behaviour function. Under pressure we can behave unprofessionally with colleagues, saying things in a way that is not helpful, that embarrasses them (and us), or that is just blunt and rude. If we can’t control our behaviours under pressure it can actually be career threatening - or relationship threatening. It can affect the way our children see themselves, never mind how they see us as parents.

We pass on the pressure to those we really care about

How many parents query their child’s exam results and ask for a paper to be re-marked because they underperformed so astonishingly poorly and couldn’t accept the result – even when the student may have accepted it?

Many parents offer their children incentives and rewards for getting good grades, but when you look at it in this context, are those parents actually undermining their child’s performance?

So, what can we do to help ourselves?

In their book How to Perform Under Pressure Hendrie Weisinger and J.P. Pawliw-Fry write about the ingredients of reducing the impact of pressure to allow us to operate at a level that is commensurate with our ability. This involves developing our Confidence, Optimism, Tenacity and Enthusiasm. They refer to that mixture with the acronym COTE. It provides a ‘COTE of armour’ against the negative effects of pressure.

Being under pressure feels similar physically to being excited. A way to help us handle those physical symptoms is to ‘reframe’ them for ourselves as excitement. Feel excited that you’re about to be making that pitch you’ve been working on; that you’re about to ask for more money than you’ve ever asked for before; think about it as an exciting opportunity to do something you haven’t done before.

Take the significance out of it by thinking of it as a dress rehearsal, rather than the real thing. Allow yourself to be more playful and relaxed. Become more comfortable with uncertainty. 

Choose your own measure of success. For example, what if it were to be about how engaged you get these people, rather than whether they said yes to your proposal or not, and you measured it by the number of questions they asked?

Weisinger and Fry suggest focusing on controlling what you can control; then visualising things going wrong, followed by bring your focus back to how you get back on track.

Also, don’t forget to tell yourself that the worst thing you can do right then in the heat of the moment is to get stressed out about it. Will you still be worrying about it in five years’ time. No? Well there’s not much point in stressing about it now then. Keep it in perspective.

Handling stress in the moment

Try to live in the present, don’t dwell on what happened in the past or what might happen in the future

Don’t over think and let your thoughts get the better of you - get into action

Identify your triggers for stress and develop a strategy for managing them

Remember that whatever happens you will only be able to deal with it when/if it actually arises