{"id":940,"date":"2008-03-18T03:26:53","date_gmt":"2008-03-18T03:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/2008\/03\/18\/940\/"},"modified":"2019-08-07T14:35:40","modified_gmt":"2019-08-07T21:35:40","slug":"940","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=940","title":{"rendered":"Handling Pressure in the Moment"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"t_chaotic_colors-sxchu_com_549443_77706999_c_christopher_potter.jpg\"<\/a>Ideally<\/strong>, before you find yourself in the hot seat, you’ll have had some time to prepare and condition. But what if you find yourself in a pressure situation, and aren’t prepared for it? Here are several things I’ve found that help.<\/p>\n

Awareness<\/strong><\/p>\n

First of all, if I’m going to call on any useful techniques, I first need to be aware of the pressure. It is a completely personal thing: a situation that is stressful to me may roll right off of you. And vice versa. So it is up to me as a leader to be aware of how stressed I am at any given point.<\/p>\n

An effective way to become aware of my current level of stress is to ask myself, at various points of the day, how much stress am I feeling right now? I rate it on a 1 to 10 scale. This way I develop the habit of surveying myself, and am thus much more likely to act wisely to support myself under pressure.<\/p>\n

Grounding<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I realize that I’m in a pressure situation, there are a couple of things that I do to ground myself, calm down, and get smart.<\/p>\n

#1. Breath. It really works: I deliberately slow down my breath, and become aware of it. I experience two points of benefit from this: the first comes immediately, with a bit of relief. The next comes within about a minute, as I really shift into a different mental state. There is a company called HeartMath that has a product that’s basically built around this principle of using breathing to get grounded. I haven’t tried the product, but they talk a good game<\/a> on their website.
\n#2. Look around. Strange but true: when I’m feeling under pressure, I lose track of my surroundings. And so I find that it helps me to take a good look at what’s around me: it helps put me in the room. Perhaps it helps me take a step back from the situation and get a less intense perspective.<\/p>\n

These are basic, well-known tools: and they work. Tomorrow I’ll cover a game-changing tool that you probably haven’t heard of.<\/p>\n

Paul.<\/p>\n

Paul Konasewich
\nhttp:\/\/connectleadership.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2008 Paul Konasewich<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ideally, before you find yourself in the hot seat, you’ll have had some time to prepare and condition. But what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1370,270],"class_list":["post-940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership","tag-leadership","tag-psychology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/89"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=940"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13956,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940\/revisions\/13956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}