How to Stay Calm Under Pressure

Chocking

 Imagine you are at the golf stadium and your favorite  golfer going to take his winning shot, he is just one shot away from win. The crowd holds its breath, and at the crucial moment, he misses the shot. That competitor must experienced a phenomenon which we call "Chocking".

After the practice of months or years when a person fails when it matters most. Chocking is common in sports, where performance often occurs under intense pressure and depends on key moments. Chocking also happens with public speakers and most famous musicians.

Most people blame it on their nerves, but why does being nervous undermine expert performance?

There are two sets of theories about this, which both say that primarily, chocking under pressure boils down to focus.

Distraction

First their are the theory of distraction, this theory suggest that performance suffers when the mind is preoccupied with doubts, worries and fears instead of focusing its attention on performing the task which is given.

While performing any task our mind get distracted between relevant and irrelevant things, Our mind can process, store most of the knowledge at once.   

Tasks that challenge working memory

the mental "scratch pad" we use to temporarily store mobile number and grocery lists are especially vulnerable to pressure.

According to study, in 2004, a group of university students were asked to solve math problems, some are easy other are complex and memory-intensive. Half the students are able to solve both types of problems without facing any problem.

 While the others competed them when calm and under pressure, everyone did well on the easy problems, but those who were stressed performed worse on the difficult and memory intensive tasks.

Explicit Monitoring

Explicit Monitoring theories are the second theories which explain the reason for chocking and under pressure.

They are concerned with how pressure can cause people to overanalyze the task which is given. Here the logic is when a skill becomes automatic, thinking about that's precise mechanics interferes with your ability to perform it.

Tasks which we do unconsciously seem to be most vulnerable to this kind of chocking.

Chocking affects a lot

Chocking is something which do not affect everyone, it mostly affects to those who are self- conscious, anxious and afraid of being judged negatively by others. Chocking affects them more than others because these type of people mostly think about others, they think what others will think if they make any mistake.

How to Avoid Chocking?

- Use stress as strength

First this will help to practice under stressful conditions. According to a study of expert dart players, those dart players who hadn't practiced under stress performed worse when anxious, compared to those who had become accustomed to pressure.

- pre performance routine

The second way to handle pressure is virtues of pre performance routine for example taking a few deep breaths, repeating a cue word or doing a rhythmic sequence of movements. According to a research short rituals can lead  to more consistent and accurate performance under pressure.

- External focus on ultimate goal

Having external focus on ultimate goal works better than internal focus. External focus help us to achieve the goal easily.

Conclusion

The thing which matters a lot is always be ready to do work under pressure, doing work under pressure lead us to the success. work under pressure provide you a confidence to do work under the anxious conditions.