Steve Magness is a performance coach, author, and sports scientist. Performing under pressure isn’t easy. Whether it’s a big test, a game, or a presentation, nerves often get in the way. So how do you stay calm and do your best? How can you turn pressure into an advantage? Expect to learn how pressure impacts performance, how to deal better with stress and anxiety, how to stop focusing on negative outcomes, why identity and self-clarity are so important, the biggest differences between surviving and thriving, the role failure plays in shaping your true identity and how to fail better, why it’s so difficult for people to find out who they are and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get a 20% discount on Nomatic’s amazing luggage at https://nomatic.com/modernwisdom Get a 20% discount on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D, and more from AG1 at https://drinkag1.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: How can elite performers overcome nerves?
How many elite performers do you think have got the talent to be able to become world class, but don't actually have the inside game to actualize that potential?
I think it's a much larger percent than we realize. And I've seen it. I've seen it at the junior, the high school, the college level. Athletes who were insanely talented, better than those who became Olympic medalists, But they just kept getting in their own way. They weren't able to express that talent.
And I would bet you that any coach or somebody who spent enough time in this field has dozens of stories just like I do.
Yeah. Do you know who Lewis Capaldi is? British singer? No. Okay. I mean, you'll have heard his tracks. He's done billions and billions of streams. And he's having a tough time mentally at the moment. He found a lot of pressure in between his first and his second album, as it's known, the difficult second album. And
had this pressure to perform, wasn't really too sure whether he could live up to his own expectations and what was needed by the label and what was wanted by his management and so on and so forth. And he had Tourette's and he developed kind of a Tourette's tick, which was his shoulder, which is very common. And a lot of anxiety came along with it. And a couple of times now, on very big stages.
I think he did this at Glastonbury last summer. He's certainly done it in a couple of his own live shows. He's choked on stage doing his own songs. And the anxiety has gotten so bad that he hasn't been able to get the words out to the songs that he's written, doing the very thing that he wanted. And I feel so bad for him because I adore his music. And
I think he's like a wonderful, kind, funny guy, at least in as much as you can tell from someone through the internet. But I always think about him as having this really unique blend of insane talent, gorgeous voice, wonderful songwriting ability, real insight into the human condition with what he sings about and how he puts it into words and lyrics and sounds.
And then this other side, which is his performance, his inner game and the challenges that he faces and the fact that his inner game is limiting his capacity. And I think for most people, we assume, well, people just aren't good enough. They're not good enough at the thing that they're trying to do.
And so many people have got the desire and the drive and they want and they try hard and so on and so on. But they're kind of just not that good. They're not world class.
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Chapter 2: What struggles do talented individuals face under pressure?
And it's interesting because you generally see it in those who have performed well, either young or their first go out. So like the singer you were talking about crushes the first album. And then the follow up often elicits more pressure and anxiety. Why? Because it's like the expectations rise. And in fact, there's some research on, we call it the one hit wonder effect. right? You have your hit.
You're the musician who finally has the breakthrough. And what happens is that follow-up is really difficult and often doesn't match. And researchers studied this actually in authors, and they found that one of the main reasons that that follow-up is so hard and there's so much pressure and expectations is because our identity literally shifts. Before we had our hit,
We were the guy expressing our talent, right? We were the singers saying, hey, I'm good at this. This is what I like to sing about. This is what I'm going to throw into the world. Who cares? Let's see what happens. Once we had that hit, our identity shifts to I am the singer. I am the singer that is known for being creative at this. Mm-hmm.
And what research tells us is that when our identity cements around that thing, now anything that could potentially throw that off is seen as our threat. And our brain literally defaults towards threat mode. That's why the singer you mentioned struggles because he's on the stage not expressing what he knows. But his brain is going into, this is life or death. Like, run away from here.
Get off the stage. Like, play dead. Whatever have you. And that's why he chokes.
dude so interesting i love this area of conversation to what an unseen price of success it is your own expectation about yourself you know we talk about the price of success is the loss of privacy and um not knowing whether people are with you because they want to be your friend because they want to be around the new hot singer or whatever whatever it is but your own expectation
The fact that really what it seems like is in life, trajectory is more important than position.
And if you're continuing to just get a little bit better and get a little bit better, and then you have, I mean, two authors, I don't think they'll mind me saying this, like Morgan Housel and Mark Manson, both of whom have told me this and said, yeah, I'm kind of fully prepared for the rest of my career to feel like a failure. Yeah.
I'm never going to write a book that does more than the subtle art. I'm never going to write a book that does more than the psychology of money. So even though Mark's second book did obscene numbers, you know, top 0.000001% and whatever, whatever. It's like, yeah, but it's not subtle art numbers. And Morgan's second book, same thing, same as ever. Really, really great. Did great numbers.
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Chapter 3: How does identity affect performance expectations?
This is why there's research that shows that athletes with hobbies tend to be more resilient under pressure than athletes who don't have hobbies. It's why if you look at, there's a long study on Nobel Prize winning scientists
that found that Nobel Prize winning scientists were more likely to have a serious hobby or leisure activity than those who were a rung or two below who never reached that top. And part of it is because it makes you more resilient because like, again, it's not the end of the world. It hurts a lot.
But it's not the end of the world. It brings your level of focus down into that Goldilocks zone, the amount of pressure that you've put on yourself. Yeah, fascinating, man. I mean, God, how counterintuitive in many ways as well. And this is where...
um i have i'm increasingly sort of becoming disenchanted with the hard work fixes all ills approach that just working harder bro a lot of the time results in you making your performance worse and creating these odd psychological scars or or perspectives of how you see the thing that you do and what you actually need to do is to smoke some weed and play nintendo switch
That would be highly rejuvenative for you. Or you need to take up some sort of a hobby. You need to diversify that self-worth. Tim Ferriss said something similar. He said that the moment where he started to feel better about himself is when he realized he wasn't just a podcaster or an author. He was lots of these other things too that came along for the ride. And even more than that,
how much of it gives you a perspective on the world that even if it's not just, this is where I take my source of identity from, it reminds you that there's other things out there, even if they're not your sources of identity. So it reminds you that, look at the huge range of different lives that people lead.
and I mine's kind of good I told you I just got back from Jamaica and Kingston Jamaica isn't exactly the most salubrious of surroundings there's a fair bit of poverty there and some crime and I wasn't going to use the ATMs in downtown for fear of whatever and You're looking around and thinking, wow, look at all of the different routes that people's lives go down.
Look at how varied things could be. And I kind of like my life. That's pretty good. Whereas if you're just permanently stuck in Instagram real comparison degen mode, you don't get that same kind of perspective. You only get it moving in one direction.
Stress tends to narrow us. And what does perspective do? It zooms us back out. And we need both, right? We need to be able to go narrow and say like hard work, I'm going to work hard. Of course, hard work matters. But if we only narrow and we go narrow and narrow, identity shrinks, hard work is the answer to everything. Like the thing that made us good is going to be our enemy.
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