Some people have an ability to find inner peace even under intense pressure… like Tiger Woods, staring down a 12 foot putt on 18 to force a playoff in the 2008 US Open. Guys like this are able to master their fields precisely because of the way they internalize that pressure: they convert it into a moment of inner peace.

If pressure represents a reduction in the allowable margin of error, then the ability to handle pressure like this comes from the knowledge that you will execute flawlessly and don’t need the cushion that a margin of error provides. It comes from the ability to eliminate outside world, ignore all those eyes, erase the world from view, and remain perfectly committed to succeeding at the task at hand.

The ability to handle pressure can be learned. All it takes is a choice.

Think of an experience you have had, either at work or at home, where the moment was so perfect, so easy, and so all-encompassing that the moment itself still lives within you—it feels like it happened yesterday. Maybe you were laughing, maybe you were doing something mindless, perhaps you were feeling proud—whatever it was, you were in the flow. Time stopped and the moment stretched. You could anticipate what would happen next as sure as if everyone were playing from a script. You had no doubt. 

You were having a Quality Event… a moment of intense personal satisfaction that was caused by the excellence of the experience.

When you have a Quality Event, the world melts away and you are alone in the moment. If you could create a Quality Event at will, then you could create the conditions you need to handle even the most intense pressure. In essence, you could raise your level of commitment to the point where you could almost guarantee your own success. And guess what: you can create those conditions. To create a Quality Event, you need only three ingredients: an objective (a purpose); an environment; and the right attitude.

Objective
The objective itself has 3 criteria: it must be achievable, tough, and it must provide feedback as to your progress. How tough, you ask? Tough enough that if you don’t bring your “A game,” you will not achieve it… and that if you do bring your “A game,” you might achieve it.

The objective need not be strategic or even very meaningful. A sales person, for instance, might choose an objective based on daily activities, such as:

1. 10 more phone calls before lunch.
2. Keep the next prospect on the phone for 6 minutes.
3. Make one more call than the guy one cube over by day’s end

Try to avoid financial objectives. Financial success is often an objective, especially in the business world, but financial performance is also a lagging indicator because the money comes after the work is done, whereas building Quality Events requires feedback on progress, not performance. As a lagging indicator, financial performance is always mismatched to your current activities; it tells you how you did, not how you are doing. (Obviously, this does not apply to traders). Better to build Quality Events around activities that are leading indicators of performance (like number of calls or length of calls). That way, you set yourself up for two Quality Events: one while you get the work done, and a second one when you reap the reward!

Environment
Your surroundings need to be conducive to success. They should provide you with the tools you need and not get in your way. For instance, as a skier, if I have my bindings set too loose, I’ll keep popping out of my skis in the bumps. That’s an environmental factor that I always want to control. In an office, environmental factors include everything from internet connectivity and a full charge on your cell phone to building construction you can hear through the walls or a sick neighbor who is constantly fiddling with cellophane-wrapped cough drops.

Attitude/Mindset
The biggie. To have a Quality Event, we have to be open to having them… nothing more and nothing less. We cannot force them to happen, nor can we be closed off to them; all we can do is set the objective and environment, and then wait. Openly.

Here are things you can do to stay open in the moment:

1. Expect a great experience or a great story. On a recent trip to Mexico, the airlines lost a piece of our luggage, leaving me without clothes. Rather than get aggravated and splurge for resort wear, I went to the local flea market and bought the ugliest clothes I could find. I turned myself into a walking conversation piece, but instead of the same-ol’ conversation about how bad the airline service was, I’d get into good-natured discussions about funny vacation stories.
2. Smile. Allow yourself to laugh and create a more relaxed mood from the outside in. It works; your brain can be bluffed into a good mood.
3. Remind yourself what’s really important to regain perspective by going through family photos or calling someone you love.

Mindset trumps objective and environment. With an open mindset, you can alter your objective until you find that sweet spot. Similarly, the right mindset will help you create the conditions necessary for success… probably in the job you hold right now. (If you switch environments but not attitudes, then you will find fault with every new environment you find yourself in.)

The beautiful thing about Quality Events is, you have them all the time. You are preprogrammed to seek them out. That many people don’t seek them out at work seems unnatural and seems to me to be the cause of a lot of unnecessary stress. Remember, the only person stopping you from having Quality Events at work is… you. Seriously. There is no moment so big and so stressful that you can’t have a Quality Event. The criteria—objective, environment, and attitude—never change. Under stress, all that changes is the margin of error. That’s all. Even in a big, tough moment, something as simple as trying to keep perfect track of time (without using a watch) can be enough to settle your mind down and bring you into the moment long enough to achieve that feeling of intense personal satisfaction. 

What’s more, the people around you are going to take their cues from you, so if you are relaxed and in the moment, they will are more likely to be, too. If you want them to have fun, then you have fun. If someone sticks it to you, ignore it and move on… to your next Quality Event!

Posted under Coaching & Consulting, Self-Development, Leadership