When two groups of students were given the same test but were told two different objectives for the test, one group was informed that the test is for the internal faculty use only, while the second group was tould that their academic future in the faculty depends on the result they will achieve in the test.

The group that was told that their future is on the stake got much lower results than the group that had less to worry about his future or another important factor in their life.

The worries and stress level had its effect on the performance of those students that were convincing that there is a reason to fear about their future in this faculty. 

Defines pressure moments as “stressful moments that matter.”

The characteristics of pressure moments are:

• The importance of the outcome you expect.

•  The uncertainty that you can about the outcome of your job.

• The outcome effect on the way you convincing self

  

Performing under pressure New York Times

Pawliw-Fry explained.

A pressure moment is the moment that all the three are in in effect. This is a moment that you need to call all your resources to fight the pressure avoiding falling to it and assuring a successful outcome.

“Pressure is different than stress. In a pressure situation, the outcome is uncertain, the outcome is important and we’re being judged on the outcome. Picture a high school student feeling pressure to perform on the SATs, a business executive working to solidify an important client or an athlete preparing for the Super Bowl.” Pawliw-Fry explained. “In any pressure situation, there are actionable techniques to calm down, overcome anxious feelings and improve your performance.”.

You must be able to distinguish pressure from stress to avoid dire consequences.

A stressful situation like a too long time to finish a job or a meeting, a co-worker that failed to deliver his part of the work can start building pressure even it is a normal thing that can happen any time and place. This common issues can be taken has big problems with no real impact that are threatening your chance to succeed with your job, project or anything that you are doing. Feeling that you are under a risk will develop a situation of pressure anxiety.

When you consider everything as super-important, you create too many worries and intensify the feeling of distress. Taking the daily stressing events at work as a pressure moment makes you react with your mentally and fiscally out of proportion to the reality. Confusing stress for pressure for a long time lead you to a dangerous situation where you lose the ability to think clear and rich the right conclusions. Taking the stress as pressure reduces your ability with no real reason.

A study of 12,000 people, made by  Institute for Health and Human Potential (IHHP) shows that the majority took a hap-hazardous approach about their way of managing pressure. Only the top ten percent had a plan for using scientifically-based strategies to avoid the damage that pressure moments can cause their ability to think clearly and take the right decisions.

Three pressure solutions to use when the pressure makes you feel it.

• Visualize yourself succeeding: Think of your good times, imagine of your success in the past to be repeated. Do not let yourself to fall into the negative thinking that the pressure is making your mind to suffer. Avoid yourself from thinking that things will go wrong. You may combat the negative cognitive distortions by remembering the times you had the best jobs done and focus on the success it will change your brain chemistry and let it function more efficiently.
  

• Regulate your breathing: As simple as it sounds it is beneficial and instantly useful. Take some profound breathe when you feel the pressure moments. You will get the best cognitive thinking.

From my personal experience I can tell you how taking more then a few breathes helped me. It was morning when I just got myself awaken, thinking about the coming and the pending tasks for this day, I remembered that it is the day for a few payments and the bank was too short in cash for those payments. I was under pressure and felt some helplessness. The phone rang, it was my friend Isaac on the other side, calling for our morning walk, we used to keep walking together every morning no matter if it was a rainy day. At this day we took the forest rout, climbing up the hills and coming down around the grove. It was one and a half hours of walking and a cup of coffee in my kitchen. Isaac left after the coffee, and I suddenly realized that I feel no pressure and more then this, I had the solution for the cash I needed, looking at my notebook again with a different mood, I saw that I can collect enough money for my clients to resolve the payments and more. Walking one and a half hours took me far from the negative thinking and pushed a lot of oxygen into my blood system. It was a beautiful day, I learned a nice lesson about pressure and taking a walk.

You can read the book “Performing Under Pressure: The Science of Doing Your Best When it Matters Most.”