Performance Under Pressure: The Right Attitude - Taking Control While Under Pressure

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Sometimes, despite your best efforts, you'll find that you can't control all the external factors that cause you to experience pressure. However, you can control your reaction to pressure.
This will help you avoid wasting energy on negative emotions that can impede your performance at work. It's best to adopt an attitude of control for performing under pressure.
Avoid making instinctive reactions. Think everything through instead so that your reaction is more considered and appropriate.
Principles to Control Your Reaction
There are two main principles to follow to control your reaction to pressure. First, take control of yourself. And second, cultivate a success mentality. But what does the first principle mean?
Taking control of yourself
Taking control of yourself means taking stock of your emotions, establishing a sense of calm, accepting that you can't control everything, and using self-talk as a reminder.
Taking stock of your emotions involves identifying what your feelings are when you're under pressure and how these feelings impact your behavior and your relationships with others. If you do this objectively, you'll create an early warning system for yourself.
For instance, if you're feeling frustrated because of pressure, will this make you difficult to approach? If you're able to anticipate the negative tendencies that these feelings cause, you may be able to avoid them.
Consider this example. Corbin is a quality control supervisor for a dairy processing company. In the past, pressure caused him to become withdrawn and his colleagues found it difficult to deal with him. After he identified this tendency in himself, Corbin made an effort to be more communicative if he felt under pressure. He found this actually relieved some of his stress.
Control Your Emotions
Another aspect of taking stock of your emotions is to realize that experiencing high pressure can cause you to lose control. As pressure increases, your responses may become more instinctive and reactive.
You should try to be more measured and precise in your responses when you're under pressure. Try not to let your emotions dictate how you respond.
Tina, for example, is a hospital administrator who was under pressure to quickly transfer a large number of patient details to a database. She grew irritable and responded harshly to a friendly query from a colleague. But when she realized the effect of her behavior, she became more aware of how she had lost control of her emotions. She is now determined to keep her reactions more controlled when she's under pressure. (...)
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