Benefits of habit “Become comfortable with pressure”
✓ Reduces anxiety
✓ Improves self-esteem
✓ Increases stress tolerance
✓ Provides more career opportunities
✓ Improves the look of professionalism
First step:
Stop overreacting to pressure once
Progress:
1. Today, mentally prepare yourself for pressure at work and don’t let it get to you. Either repeat a mantra or let the obvious attempts at pressuring you slip by. Do this one day in a week.
2. Next week, do this for two days in a row.
3. Keep it up until every day you handle pressure better and better.
4. Your goal should be to not let it get to you at all.
Helpful tips to make it a habit:
✓ Same time is key. You can’t plan pressure, but you can plan preparation for it. Every morning, give yourself time to prepare for the stress of the day.
✓ Trigger your mind. Keep a stress ball handy and squeeze on it whenever you feel pressure coming on. It’s great tool to reduce it.
✓ Let the app help. Reminder function of this app can ring you when it’s time for your morning prep talk to yourself.
✓ Reward yourself. Once you’ve gone a full month of handling pressure well, reward yourself by going out and trying a new, aggressive sport. Maybe boxing or kickboxing – something to reduce the pressure that no doubt built inside of you.
Tips for beginners:
✓ Don’t keep it in. Even if you learn to handle pressure well in public, inside, you will always be bubbling. Let it out during exercise or some other way you find that helps. Don’t keep in an ounce or it will start hurting you for real.
✓ Control your emotions. Sometimes it’s hard to control your emotions on the spot. But that is the goal of handling pressure, at least at the beginning. Until you learn to cope with it naturally, your goal should be to control your rage and other emotions.
✓ When it’s too much. No matter how good you become at handling pressure, time will come when it’s going to be too much. Think of a short escape you could do that would help you calm down on the spot and practice it several times when available. It will help immensely when situation goes out of your control.
