Jun 16, 2009
One of the great keys to mastery in living is found in the ability to reveal what is called grace under pressure. No doubt you have seen someone who inspired you by their ease while performing effortlessly something that you know the be quite challenging. An advanced dressage rider, an accomplished pianist, a polished public speaker, for instance, all share this awe-inspiring ability.
According to Malcom Gladwell in his book “Outliers,” the key to success in any field is simply a matter of practicing any task for at least 10,000 hours. While that may be the case, I am convinced that we can work to build a foundation of competence, poise and confidence that allows us not only to excel in that which we undertake, but further which allows us to meet the pressure inherent in anything we do with grace and ease.
All learning involves the management of pressure. Teachers and instructors of every stripe must effectively manage the pressure of learning to avoid burnout, blowouts and shut downs in their students. Too much too soon in a lesson or in the overall process and there is a meltdown and the learning stops. Too little too late and the pressure drains out as well, resulting in mediocre results. Likewise, any creative activity we take on involves pressure. Like a good novel, there is a beginning, a middle and an end to the process, with the point of greatest tension, the climax, occurring somewhere in the middle. Those who learn to handle the pressure effectively all the way through the process tend to be those who excel in what they do. Those who don’t tend to fail predictably.
The story of success is told repeatedly in the lives of those who learn how to handle pressure creatively. Realizing that it is not so much what happens that matters, but instead how you handle what happens, the person who embraces the challenges in life with a relaxed yet focused desire to bring the best of his abilities to bear on the situation at hand – exactly as it is configured – will typically come out ahead. Conversely, he who consistently shrinks from responsibility, dreads new challenges, lounges idly in complacency or at the other extreme takes a more aggressive approach by getting angry or frustrated under pressure, will typically blow the pressure through mistimed action and consequently abort the process, leaving pieces or ashes of “what could have been” in his wake.
How do you handle the pressure in the various aspects of your life? Are you the Michelangelo of your field or the Michael Jordan in your every endeavor, or do you need some work on the fundamentals? The good news is that the bad habits that we’ve developed over time, habits that lead to us “blowing the pressure” are always, I repeat, always changeable. It is a matter of willingness and as Mr. Gladwell asserts, deliberate, consistent and honest practice.
I believe that there is mastery inherent in each and every person on earth. With the proper surround, the right attitude and specific application, brilliance can appear and those watching will be awed by the presence of grace under pressure.
More on this in a later post…
‘Grace under pressure’ is such a beautiful phrase and a wonderful image. It is unfortunate that we are rarely taught what this means and how to achieve it. Not only is it a skill every practitioner should master to help guide their clients, but it is a skill that our clients need to learn to help them heal. Most dis-ease is linked to stress of some form and if we do not begin to learn how to manage our stress we will continue to see an escalation of illness and dis-ease. Managing our stress can be as simple as changing how we view it.