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In part 1 of this 2-part post, we looked at pressure and made a business case for staying calm under pressure to prevent high stress and possibly burnout.

In part 2 of this series on Pressure, we’ll look at 6 ways to stay calm under pressure and explore effective methods to deal with pressures in life.

Learning to manage pressure takes time and is a long-term self-development goal.

The challenge for many of us is learning to cope with pressure in the short term.

When under pressure, even the advice of a well-wisher to keep your calm or cool gets the knee-jerk reaction of your snapping at them or even telling them off.

Later you might feel bad about what you did and render an apology but the damage to your reputation and the relationship is already done.

It’s up to us to prevent such situations.

Make Self-Care a Priority

It might sound strange to talk about self-care but this is a priority area for you if you really want to learn to manage pressure.

You see, self-care is shown to reduce stress.  Making time for self-care practices improves both your mental health and physical health. This sets you up to handle all that life throws at you with greater competence, less stress and more peace in general.

In other words, learn to be kind to yourself.

How one can practice the art of staying calm under pressure

How often do you feel under pressure to act or react?

In those moments, what you really need is calm. That can be tough to achieve when you’re experiencing high stress levels.

It’s one thing to feel occasionally frazzled, but to feel panicked constantly is a serious problem.

When you start to feel the pressure mounting, you need go-to tactics to help you beat the weight bearing down on you. Let’s talk about it.

Focus on Facts – give your fertile imagination a break

As pressure mounts, it’s easy to get caught up in worst-case scenarios. Instead of thinking catastrophic thoughts, deescalate the situation by focusing on the facts. Calm yourself by identifying facts and looking for the evidence in any situation. By making a list of facts and evidence you can calm your nerves and get your brain back into shape.

Hit the Brakes

Think of the stress that comes from pressure as a broken car alarm. It doesn’t matter how many times you hit the button to silence it, it keeps alarming.

The alarm system is broken because it’s drowning in stress hormones and can no longer accurately judge or understand the signals it is being sent. The only way to remain calm under pressure is to hit the brakes, downshift, and decelerate.

The question is how? This will be different for anyone, but deep breathing, meditation, and calming music are all effective ways to do so.

Music, in particular, can help you get a grip on organizing your rational thoughts in a bid to overcome the terrible thoughts your brain creating.

Control Your Impulse Even if it drives you nuts in the moment

Once upon a time, the fight or flight syndrome was triggered by serious danger (think: a wild animal trying to eat you). Unfortunately, that hardwiring remains, and when it kicks off it’s like a volcanic eruption.

It’s normal to feel fear and to start panicking. However, you can use impulse control to help manage this. This is a tool you use daily – think about all the times you bite your tongue instead of telling someone what you really think. You’re more than capable. You just need to use self-regulation to calm yourself and stay in the moment.

Choose not to react when your buttons are pushed

The greatest challenge we face as humans is coping with responsive emotions when someone or something is pushing our buttons. When someone attempts to get a reaction from us, we generally respond exactly as they intended. It might feel good to let it fly at that moment, but it’s not the best way to respond to pressure.

This reactionary response we turn to is often the result of ego or a complete inability to manage emotions. It’s also an indicator of low Emotional Intelligence.

When you find yourself in this position, silently remind yourself not to react and give yourself time to calm down before you respond. There’s a reason we’re told to count to 10 before giving a response to a stressful or agitation causing situation.

Practice Patience

The more you practice patience the better you will be at exercising it when under pressure. When you have the strength to step back from a stressful situation and pause your reaction you show patience in the face of pressure.

Take this moment to do some deep breathing to calm the tension in your muscles, waylay your emotions, and get control of the situation.

This will also give you time to identify a solution.

Build your Attention

When faced with pressure, your attention is often swept away. Your ancient brain kicks into high gear building a fictitious future to derail your progress.

By building your attention you can keep this ancient brain at bay because you will be more adept at identifying the many false alarms trying to hijack the narrative.

How can you build attention?

Choose an activity that focuses on the moment and requires your attention – think learning a new language, playing an instrument, chess, or even dancing.

5 Effective Ways to Deal with Pressures in Life

We don’t live a compartmentalized life. Pressure is a part of life and can be beneficial for us. However, in extreme cases, you may find yourself bubbling over and knocked out by overwhelm and burnout.

It’s not only work deadlines that get you; it can also be financial obligations and the burden of daily life. Money, in particular, is a rising cause of anxiety and stress for many of us, especially since the pandemic years started.

Combined with the stress of excessive working hours, a lack of control and support, and it’s no wonder so many people are feeling under pressure.

We all react differently to pressure. Some people swear it makes them perform better while others recognize the damage it can do to their performance. It is much easier to remain focused on a task when you’re calm.

So, let’s look at five effective ways to deal with pressures in life.

Concentrate on the Process, not the Outcome

This is advice from the Bhagavad Gita where we are instructed on doing our duty and not the fruits of our labour. We are taught to stay detached from the outcome.

The best thing you can do for yourself is detach from the outcome and remain focused on your work. It is much easier to live your potential if you remove the obstacles you face mentally. When you focus on the process, rather than the outcome, it will reduce the likelihood of performance anxiety.

Create your personal organization system

How do you organize your day? How do you manage your thoughts? You can’t store it all in your head. The best way to deal with thoughts and responsibilities is to have an external organization system. It might be that you write out a daily to-do list, it could be that you prefer a digital calendar.

Whatever it is – it removes the pressure of memorizing everything you have to do and worrying about forgetting something. Your list will serve as a reminder for everything you need to do or deal with. You will notice a serious dip in the pressure you carry.

Reframe your Negative Thoughts

If you struggle with negative thoughts this will only add to the pressure you feel. One way you can manage these thoughts is through re-framing them. When you are faced with a negative thought, start by putting things into perspective.

As frantic worry starts to overtake you, stop and remind yourself that no matter what it is you’re faced with that you can handle it.

It’s not the end of the world, work through it by deciding your next steps – first, I’m going to do x and then I’ll do y and do this until you have successfully reframed your thoughts and empowered yourself.

Know your Limits and respect them

Your brain can only keep it all together for so long. If you’re dealing with tens of thousands of thoughts daily (you are), as well as a list of things to do, and a glut of problems, your brain can only maintain for so long.

Understand that your brain has limitations and start going easy on yourself. Be realistic. Do not expect to carry all of the solutions all of the time. You literally can’t.

Breathe Through It

When you are faced with a crisis, too much pressure or you feel overwhelmed, press pause and breathe through it.

Count to ten as you inhale deeply and exhale and allow yourself a moment to clear your brain of worries. Let your mind have enough time to recalibrate so you relieve some of that pressure and allow yourself to think more clearly to deal with the problem at hand.

Bonus Tip: Upgrade Your Self-Talk to deal with Pressure

Dealing with pressure is a process. Believe it or not, you have more control over it than you think.

Self-talk has a powerful effect on our feelings.  You can change your frame of mind with the right self-talk.  It’s part of your mental game.

Our self-talk is not set in stone or based only on our temperament or natural-born ability to be mentally strong. You can learn to use effective self-talk to help you handle pressure like a pro.

Start upgrading your self-talk today.

Practice using strong, motivating words and abstain from words that sound negative. Use words that remind your that you can do it and that you have what it takes.

The benefit of using this kind of self-talk is that it increases self-confidence, self-belief, and even courage at times when it counts.

Keep your self-talk specific. If you keep it relevant to what you are dealing with it is more likely to be helpful.

If you’re prone to worrying, that’s okay. Be you. You have the power to empower yourself and change that today.  Don’t wait for some perfect set of circumstances or a perfect moment. Change yourself with intentional actions.

So, when you face a pressure-filled situation, attack it using affirmative, positive self-talk.

Positive self-talk can help you improve your outlook on life. It also has lasting positive health benefits, including improved well-being and a better quality of life.

However, self-talk is a habit that takes practice. Incorporating intentional positive self-talk in times of pressure makes it just a little bit easier each time.

If you have the tendency to indulge in negative self-talk or deal with pessimism, you can change this. That’s a habit too.

Just like the habits of pessimism you can build the habits of strong empowered thinking.  Improving self-talk in this manner will help you level up when it comes to dealing with pressure.

But all the guidance and information in the world won’t work until you step up to the plate and take the required action.

You are more capable than you realize, and you can do this!

What’s the first step you’re going to take today to start dealing with pressure?