Ceri’s involvement with the All Blacks has allowed the team to grow greater understanding of how we can perform far better under pressure. This has let the team use their abilities to far greater effect and in doing so enhance the All Black legacy.

– Steve Hansen, All Blacks Coach

Human performance in Formula One is about more than two drivers – it’s a team of up to 1000 people, all of them elite performers in their own areas. Working with Ceri has helped us shape our ethos, strengthen the resilience of our internal culture and unlock greater performance from the team. Our people are our sustainable source of competitive advantage; Ceri’s straightforward, practical and humble approach has been an important building block for the success of our team.

– Toto Wolff, Team Principal and CEO, Mercedes–AMG Petronas Motorsport

Performing under pressure is the platform for a successful career. Ceri helped me clear my mind, focus on decisive matters and strengthen my vision for the team. His contributions to the team helped them analyse what we faced and target individual and collective performance. Thank you Ceri for your great contribution.

– Arsène Wenger, Manager, Arsenal FC 1996–2018

Ceri’s approach is a unique blend of practical experience at the cutting edge of the pressure continuum that goes beyond the intuitive – it is scientific, practical and results oriented. He provided me with a more disciplined, clinical and deliberate approach to understanding and dealing with pressure than I had previously encountered; and enabled our leadership team to embrace pressure and operate in an increasingly complex political environment.

– Brendan Boyle, Chief Executive, Ministry of Social Development 2011–2018

Ceri changes lives! Ceri’s unique ability to take a complex, highly personal and often challenging subject and make it alluring, memorable and actionable is a true gift. The leaders on our programmes have embraced the RED–BLUE ‘secret’ for thriving under pressure and are building more effective organisations, communities and home lives as a result.

– Roz McCay, Co-Founder Hiakai CEO programme, Facilitator, NZ Global Women Break Through Leaders programme

Everyone in business wants to be world-leading, but very few are. Ceri’s Perform Under Pressure programme provides leaders with the framework and tools to shift an organisation’s performance towards its vision of excellence. Ceri has helped me focus on making decisions that drive positive movement towards this.

– Bill Moran, Chair of Sport New Zealand and High Performance Sport NZ

Ceri provided us with the common language and a united approach needed to thrive in investment attraction, a very competitive, pressure-filled environment. He shifted the conversation of high performance behaviour from a sensitive topic to an energising and fun experience.

– Dylan Lawrence, General Manager – Investment, NZ Trade & Enterprise

I harassed Ceri for a few months until he gave in to working with me as an entrepreneur, and I’m glad he did because he changed my life. Ceri brought my attention to unconscious habits that were slowing me down and causing me to fold under pressure. Now I’m more aware of my emotional state, make clearer decisions, and my business is performing better too.

– Sam Ovens, Entrepreneur

Ceri took an impossibly complex change environment and broke it down to a simple, clear and easy-to-use framework, delivering thinking beyond what we have seen before. He has held me to account and is relentless in his quest for improvement of both himself and our business.

– Garry Lund, General Manager, People and Culture, Gough Group

Ceri treated our coaches and 60 amateur teenage rowers vying for national titles with the respect of international athletes. He showed us that pressure is relative and universal, and taught us fun ways to deal with it. Ceri’s sense of humour and language ensured that his message was relatable – his RED/BLUE analogy is still embedded in our squad culture three years on!

– Mark Cotham, Director of Rowing, Rangi Ruru Girls’ School, Christchurch

Ceri’s clear approach provides tools which can be used by anybody who wants to perform to their very best under pressure. His framework was enlightening and resonated with surgeons, who also face pressure and expectations of high performance.

– Andrew Vincent, Orthopaedic Surgeon

Perform Under Pressure was the most impactful – and challenging – leadership programme we have participated in as an executive team. Ceri armed us with knowledge and tools that have been invaluable in understanding how we each deal with pressure and drive improved performance. The real ‘aha!’ moment came when we discovered that our performance gap was in how we were working together, allowing us to commit to closing the gap together.

– Neal Barclay, CEO, Meridian

A wise adviser, perceptive facilitator and enlightened educator. He has helped me and the teams I work with immensely.

– Gilbert Enoka, All Blacks Manager – Leadership

We were a young, ambitious and highly successful team already leading our industry, but Ceri’s approach completely changed our own perception of ‘what good looked like’. It was a revelation – we found it refreshing, enjoyable and were excited to take it further, compressing months of work into a matter of weeks to regularly achieve timelines that even our own team would call absurd and ridiculous. It stuck – ruthless speed became our new ‘normal’ and the business results (and awards) flowed.

– Mark Soper, General Manager, Powershop 2016–2019

Excellence in any field requires our psychology and physiology to be in harmony. Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Ceri Evans’ RED–BLUE model provides a unique and accessible framework that supports clear thinking and adaptive behaviour under pressure. He builds on contemporary thinking in physiology to explain the neurobiological basis for a counterintuitive mental strategy: challenging ourselves to face the threat and find a solution.

– David Paterson, Professor of Physiology, Head of Department, University of Oxford

PERFORM UNDER PRESSURE

Dr CERI EVANS

Copyright

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

While this book is intended as a general information resource and all care has been taken in compiling the contents, it does not take account of individual circumstances and is not in any way a substitute for medical advice or treatment. It is essential that you always seek qualified medical advice if you suspect you have a health problem. The author and publisher cannot be held responsible for any claim or action that may arise from reliance on the information contained in this book.

Thorsons

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in 2019 by HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Ltd

This edition published in 2019 by Thorsons

© Ceri Evans Consulting Limited 2019

Cover design by Darren Holt, HarperCollins Design Studio

Illustrations by Renzie Hanham

Author photo by Diederik van Heyningen, Lightworkx Photography

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Ceri Evans asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Find out about HarperCollins and the environment at www.harpercollins.co.uk/green

Source ISBN: 9780008313166

Ebook Edition © September 2019 ISBN: 9780008313180

Version 2019-07-11

Information about External Hyperlinks in this ebook

Please note that footnotes in this ebook may contain hyperlinks to external websites as part of bibliographic citations. These hyperlinks have not been activated by the publisher, who cannot verify the accuracy of these links beyond the date of publication.

Dedication

In memory of my father, Gwyn, and mother, Joy,

both pioneers in their own way.

Te waka taiuhu, monā I whakatau akē, ngā ngaru āwhā.

The prow of the waka will cut a decisive pathway

through the stormiest of ocean waves.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

List of Illustrations

FOREWORD by Richie McCaw

INTRODUCTION

PART 1: RED AND BLUE – UNDERSTANDING PRESSURE

CHAPTER 1: THE NATURE OF PRESSURE

CHAPTER 2: TWO MINDS – INTRODUCING RED AND BLUE

CHAPTER 3: BALANCED BRAIN vs UNBALANCED BRAIN

CHAPTER 4: THE RED–BLUE TOOL

PART 2: PREPARING TO PERFORM – LAYING THE GROUNDWORK

CHAPTER 5: CREATE THE GAP

CHAPTER 6: BRIDGE THE GAP – THE MENTAL BLUEPRINT

PART 3: PERFORMING UNDER PRESSURE

CHAPTER 7: PRE-PERFORMANCE TECHNIQUES

CHAPTER 8: COMPLAIN OR COMPLETE – ADDING TIME PRESSURE

CHAPTER 9: DEFEND OR DISCOVER – ADDING CREATIVITY

CHAPTER 10: MASTERY

CHAPTER 11: FOR LEADERS

CHAPTER 12: AFTER WE PERFORM

CHAPTER 13: Tough Days

CONCLUSION

Glossary

Further reading

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

List of illustrations by Renzie Hanham

The Human Brain: External structure

The Human Brain: Internal structure – side view

The Human Brain: Structure & function

RED vs BLUE State

Mental Strength Sliding Scale

RED–BLUE Tool

Step Back, Step Up, Step In

The Pressure Equation

The Scale of Mental Intent

Create the Gap

Mental Blueprint

Skill Ladder

Three Circles

The ICE Technique

The Offload Technique

RED–BLUE Debrief

Foreword

Richie McCaw

In 2015 I played my final game of rugby with the All Blacks. It was our second consecutive Rugby World Cup final victory. No other team had achieved that. We felt a huge expectation but were able to deliver. As captain, I couldn’t have wished for a better way to retire.

Roll back the clock to when I was captain in 2007 and it was a very different story. Despite being favourites we had, yet again, failed to win on rugby’s biggest stage. We’d even left the tournament earlier than any previous All Blacks team. We hadn’t dealt with the pressure and knew that something needed to change.

We looked around for answers and it became evident that Ceri was an obvious choice.

You’ve only got to speak to Ceri for a few minutes: he doesn’t just tell you how it is, he takes you with him. The things he said and the way he said them struck a chord with me straight away. As well as being a doctor working in forensic psychiatry, he’d been a pro-footballer. He made things real.

Ceri explained what happens to the brain under pressure. He showed us examples of how people react differently under pressure and how they go ‘into the RED’. It all made sense. He helped us understand that it’s OK to feel pressure and showed us ways to manage ourselves differently. I learned it wasn’t about pretending it doesn’t happen, it was about how you deal with it. We started to use the RED–BLUE model and straight away I began to see it work.

Over time, we completely changed the way we dealt with pressure.

In the last 20 minutes of the 2011 final, when we really got tested, I realised how important that was. The match was touch and go and I felt myself going into the RED. It could have unfolded like in 2007, but I got back into the BLUE and thought, ‘This is the moment I have pictured and prepared for.’

Not everything was perfect towards the end, but I felt calm. I could see what I needed to do, and I felt myself getting stronger. I wanted to be there.

The tools Ceri gave me had worked but after the weight of expectation in the four years leading up to the 2011 World Cup and the energy it took, the thought of repeating it all again felt too much.

Ceri helped change my perspective. He said, ‘If you try to do it the same way again, you set yourself up to fail.’ From that I knew I needed to look at things differently. He talked about being pioneers, becoming the first team to win back-to-back world cups. I got excited again. He helped change the mindset from ‘What happens if we lose?’ to ‘What happens if we win?’ Simple but powerful.

The things that are really worth chasing involve pressure and that’s what makes them rewarding. I knew we needed to be tested under pressure to be taken to our limits. I began to crave those moments.

No matter what the challenge was, Ceri always had an idea or angle to help me anticipate, deal with it or improve. I was always intrigued to see what he had next. RED–BLUE was just the start.

Now I’m retired from rugby, the things I learned with Ceri are still relevant. I’m a husband, a father, a pilot and although these might not look the same as playing rugby, the lessons in this book relate to anything you do.

When the pressure is on, we all know it affects the way we behave. Anyone can feel under pressure from many different factors: dealing with stress, conflict at work, managing relationships. If you’re curious about how to learn and do those things better, the tools in this book will help you develop the ability to step back, clear your head and deal with it all much more effectively.

From my time in rugby I remain most proud of how we went from a team that struggled to deal with pressure in the big moments to, by the end of my time playing, leading the way. The expectation became that, when it was tight at the end of a match, the All Blacks would get there. Whatever was thrown at us we had learned to find a way. Ceri was a huge part in that turnaround, helping shift our mindsets and raise our thresholds to deal with pressure.

Whatever it is you want to improve in your own life, this book will help you do it. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

RM, 2019

Introduction

When I hear the phrase ‘high performance’, the word ‘PRESSURE’ automatically comes to mind. I don’t think you can have one without the other.

But for many of us, ‘high performance’ feels out of reach – just getting through the day feels like a struggle. That’s why I prefer to think in terms of performance under pressure.

I’m talking about all fields of performance here. Whether your arena is the stage, the classroom or the shop floor, or whether you’re trying to lead an executive team, an operating theatre or your family, if you face a mental barrier that has, to this point, limited you from reaching your goals, this book is for you.

Whatever your performances look like, the aim of this book is to change the way you feel, think and act in high-pressure situations. But my bigger goal is to show you how you can reach your full potential through powerful responses to powerful moments. I want to help you go from ordinary to extraordinary.

The key lies in those moments of truth when we either shy away from a challenge or rise to the occasion. Because these moments carry more significance, they carry more pressure.

Most of us try to minimise the number of these moments in our lives, because they make us feel uncomfortable, and we’re afraid we might fail. But some individuals, teams or organisations relish these moments and seek them out deliberately.

If you want to get better at what you do, pressure is unavoidable – but does it stop you in your tracks, or open a window into a new world of opportunity?

In this book you’ll learn about the RED–BLUE mind model, which helps explain why pressure has such an impact on all of us. The RED–BLUE tool and related techniques for performance under pressure will provide you with practical help to think and feel clearly – and perform better – when you need it the most.

Why I Developed the RED–BLUE Mind Model

In my teenage years I was either kicking a ball or reading a book – usually about how our bodies and minds worked. The crossover between the sporting and mental worlds fascinated me. Everyone in sport seemed to know that the mind was critical to performing well – but no one really seemed to be able to explain in a practical way what was going on inside someone’s head that caused them to perform poorly or well. In those days, the attitude towards psychology in sport was sceptical and often cynical. In team environments, ‘seeing the shrink’ was taken as a sign of mental weakness. Later, my work as a forensic psychiatrist in hospitals, prisons and the courts gave me new perspectives. Understanding the mind was one thing, but understanding how it worked at its limits, under stress, was what captivated me the most.

One relationship stands out as the turning point. I met Renzie Hanham – co-developer of the RED–BLUE mind model, and illustrator of this book – and things began to fall into place. Renzie is a highly accomplished martial arts instructor and gifted graphic artist. His perceptive insights, and ability to translate those insights into graphic format, showed me the way forward.

I remember the day when I asked him to produce a diagram that would map out the pathways to both effective and ineffective performance. I had an ‘aha!’ moment, and realised that the diagram should be colour-coded. The first RED–BLUE mind model was born.

The learning curve was steep: some of our early efforts were too complex and confusing, and others were too obvious and simplistic. (I figured it was about right when the criticism was evenly balanced between the two!)

But despite the false starts and cringe moments, two things rapidly became clear. First, people got the RED–BLUE mind model – quickly – and second, it really seemed to help them.

The implications of the model soon spread beyond the sports world. Countless individuals, teams and organisations were involved in ‘stress-testing’ the model not just on the pitch, but also in the classroom, on the stage, in the workplace, and in many other environments. Their insights have been invaluable. Every tool in this book has been used many times by many people who are serious about what they do and how they do it.

When people tell me they’ve used the model – with their children, with their partner, or for themselves – and seen a real shift in their performance, it feels hugely satisfying.

The RED–BLUE mind model draws on several different schools of thought, but in the end it has one intention: to help you gain emotional self-control to enable you to think clearly and act effectively when you need it most – when you’re performing under pressure.

The RED–BLUE mind model has taken me down an immensely rewarding path. It’s the central piece of a jigsaw in which many things I’m passionate about come together.

Here are 10 reasons why I strongly believe in the RED–BLUE mind model:

1 It works. It wouldn’t exist if people didn’t feel it had significantly helped them. (Nor would this book!)

2 I use it myself (all the time). My best and worst moments – as a parent, footballer, clinical director or speaker – all relate back to my use (or non-use) of the model in my own life.

3 It’s for all of us. I have seen the best in the world get mentally better – and worse – in different moments. I have also seen those in the mid-range, and those with everything against them, get mentally better – and worse – in different moments. Everyone is on the same RED–BLUE page.

4 It’s practical. I’ve met experts who know more about the theory behind the brain than I ever will, but just like the rest of us, they’re still held back in their performance when it comes to putting it into practice. No amount of theory can alter that.

5 It changes lives. It has encouraged people, time and again, to venture into more challenging areas, which have proved to be personally significant, and occasionally life-changing.

6 It provides balance. In every performance environment I’ve experienced there is an opportunity to be exceptional in the technical aspects of that field and the mental elements, but few are exceptional at both. Even in those fields seemingly ruled by technology, human elements still have their say – and often the final word.

7 It’s easy to use: People quickly pick up on the main RED–BLUE ideas and make them work, because the model is intuitive.

8 It works for young and old. I’m not an expert in child psychology, but (as you’ll see) ten year olds have picked up the model and run with it; and I’ve seen people of advanced age change their philosophy even after a lifetime of unhelpful mental habits.

9 It’s enjoyable. It takes what for many is an unwelcoming area – performing under pressure – and turns it into a personally relevant road map.

10 It surprises people. It surprises – and even shocks – experienced performers when they suddenly realise that they have been trying to ‘get better’ most of their lives by trying to become more comfortable when they perform, guided by an unspoken assumption that this is the only or best way forward. The idea that significant opportunity exists in the space of becoming more effective when they are uncomfortable can come as a revelation.

The bottom line is that most people do not chase their potential or, if they do, they only get some of the way. We have all experienced that daunting sense of being overwhelmed when the world closes in on us. Even top performers falter and are undone in moments when the pressure gets to them. And one in five of us has serious procrastination issues! The world is full of untapped human potential.

If you restrict yourself to performing only in comfortable situations, your life will miss the fulfilment available to those who don’t restrict themselves. But if you embrace them, those challenging, high-pressure moments can be especially powerful and rewarding.

Pressure – your friend or your foe? By the end of this book, I hope you’ll look at that question in a different light.

Performance under pressure is a fact of life. But because it holds the key to unlocking your potential, pressure is priceless.

PART 1

Part 1, Red and Blue – Understanding Pressure

An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour.

Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist (1905–1997)

CHAPTER 1

Chapter 1, The Nature of Pressure

Pressure is confronting. It can smack us in the face. The sharp edge of reality has a way of cutting our fantasies to shreds.

Pressure is universal. No matter what our level of performance, we all fall victim to it in the same ways.

Pressure is real. What happens inside our heads and bodies – anxiety, tension, frustration, exasperation, foggy thinking, tunnel vision – is not imagined. And when it comes to the effects of pressure, there is no immunity.

Pressure is a mystery. The simple rules of the external world of cause and effect don’t hold. The mental world is a non-linear, invisible, cryptic one, where our unconscious often lurks in the background with sinister intent. With success within their grasp – and therefore also the prospect of failure – some people suddenly collapse under pressure, and we don’t really understand why. Because the mental world seems hard to comprehend, many people don’t make an effort to do so. The very thing that is the most variable, and has the greatest impact, is the least pursued.

Pressure is captivating. Tight sporting contests, precarious business decisions and tense armed stand-offs seem very different situations, but they draw us in for the same reasons. We don’t know how they will turn out, and the outcome matters. Predictability is boring and, especially when the stakes are high, unpredictability is thrilling.

Pressure is perilous. The knife-edge, risk–reward seesaw explains why many people do everything they can to avoid or escape from stressful situations.

But a minority of people do the opposite. They walk towards these moments of truth, seeking the things they also fear.

Pressure can be an incredibly sobering, painful or even crushing experience, from which we may struggle to recover, or a stirring, heartening one, which resets our life trajectory upwards.

Welcome to the world of pressure.

Two Kinds of Threat

At the heart of pressure is fear. But not all fear is equal.

Imagine someone is walking in the country, in a relatively reflective state, when a wild dog bursts into their path, locks eyes with them, snarls and runs directly at them.

How do they react? Their eyes fixate on the dog, their body becomes tense and their thinking shuts down, all in a split second. They are in a state of fear.

Now imagine a golfer leading his first big championship by one shot. (Please note that all examples in this book, unless otherwise stated, are fictional and any resemblance to real situations is purely coincidental.) At the final hole he is confronted with a difficult water hazard that has claimed his tee shot in the last two rounds.

How does he react? His eyes fixate on the water, his body becomes tense and his thinking shuts down, all in a split second. He is in a state of fear.

These two reactions look identical at face value. They are both internal fear reactions to external situations. But they’re different in one key respect: the wild dog is a genuine external threat, while the golf hole is not. The golf shot holds the potential for judgment, but no direct physical threat (unless the golfer falls in the water).

The wild dog triggers a split-second reaction, directly provoked by an external stimulus: sharp teeth. But we can’t say the same thing about the golf shot. The golfer’s state of fear is triggered by what the external situation stirs up inside him. The threat is not an animal with teeth, but feelings that bite.

The tournament or crowd don’t directly cause the fear. It’s the change in situation that creates the threat: getting close to the end, on the cusp of winning. Which also means possibly losing, with instant audible and visible judgment from the crowd. This possible judgment stirs up deep-seated feelings from long-forgotten past performances, leading to anxiety and tension.

So, there are two kinds of threat: one that is triggered by real external danger, and one that is prompted by an internal emotional conflict.

Faced with the first kind of threat – the wild dog – just about everyone would have a similar reaction. But in the case of internal emotional threats, there’s a lot of variation in how people react. Some people become fearful and some don’t, with all grades in between.

What determines who becomes fearful and who doesn’t? And when does this become a problem for performance?

To answer these questions, we’ll need to learn more about the human brain …

CHAPTER 2

Chapter 2, Two Minds – Introducing Red and Blue

Our brain is the part of our body that has the greatest influence on our performance under pressure.

Even when a challenge is mainly physical – such as training for a marathon – pressure places demands on us mentally as we solve problems, make decisions, adjust timing, fight through the discomfort, and much more. Our mental response is what makes the difference.

Our brain is easily the most complex organ in our body – in fact, it’s the most complex thing in the universe. The numbers people use in talking about the brain are so big, and at the same time so small, that they’re hard to fathom.

The human brain contains roughly 100 billion neurons (nerve cells), which generate trillions of synapses (connections) with other neurons. At the other end of the scale, the average neuron is just one-tenth of a millimetre in size. A piece of brain tissue the size of a full-stop on this page could hold 10,000 synapses, allowing cells to pass information to each other as they branch out from the brain through the spinal cord and nerves to reach, and control, every corner of our body.

Whichever way we look at it, our nervous system is impressive, even though in terms of our knowledge of its complexity it remains a vast, unknown frontier.

This complexity is necessary for neuroscience, but not for us. Fortunately, we can easily simplify how the brain functions into just two interactive systems.

But first, to appreciate why the RED–BLUE mind model makes sense in performance situations, it will help if we understand some basic facts about how the brain is structured.

We can view the structure of the brain in terms of three parts, or levels.

The first level, located at the base of the brain – at the top of the spine – is the brainstem, which is responsible for our major physiological drives and functions and our basic survival responses. It is fully developed at birth. We share this part of the brain with reptiles and other mammals.

The second level, sitting at the heart of the brain, is the limbic system, which is responsible for processing information about our emotional and physical state, and emotional information about those around us. It develops after the brainstem, going through significant change in the first year of life. A set of nuclei (nerve centres) located around the limbic system, called the basal ganglia, are closely associated with our unconscious physical habits.

The third level is the cerebral cortex – the outer layers of the brain – made up of two halves: the left and right hemispheres, joined by a thick bundle of fibres called the corpus callosum. The cerebral cortex, which controls advanced mental processes such as language and reflection, is the last part of the brain to develop, and is still maturing in our mid-20s.

THE HUMAN BRAIN

External structure

From the outside, the brain is dominated by two large cerebral hemispheres.

Although nearly all mental tasks are based on a combination of left- and right-hemisphere activity, one will dominate, because they function very differently in terms of the types of information they process.

Right-hemisphere processes are automatic, fast, and largely unconscious. The right hemisphere works in the here and now, using non-verbal information such as images, and has the capacity to see the big picture, taking an instant snapshot of the situation.

Left-hemisphere processes are deliberate, slower, and conscious. The left hemisphere works by matching current reality with past experiences, using language and calculation to construct stories, explanations and timelines.

The three parts of the brain – and the two hemispheres – function within a hierarchy, with the brainstem at the bottom, the limbic system in the middle, and the cerebral cortex at the top. The later-developing cortex has the power to hold back or refine the more primitive reactions from the sub-cortical structures (the limbic system and the brainstem), giving top-down control.

The right hemisphere, which matures before the left hemisphere, is more concerned with our immediate safety and sense of where we are in the world, while the left hemisphere is more concerned with analysis and setting goals. Likewise, the back of the brain processes raw sensory data (like visual images), while the front of the brain is more concerned with refining these images through meaning and interpretation. Altogether, our brain develops in a bottom-to-top, back-to-front and right-to-left direction.

To keep things simple, we can see both our right hemisphere and our limbic system and brainstem as dealing primarily with feeling, and our left hemisphere as dealing mainly with thinking.

The feeling system is primed for survival – including our essential physical processes and the fight–flight reaction. It runs on raw, unprocessed data: when a large dog suddenly appears in front of us, all we need to see and sense is that it’s angry and growling, not its name, species or favourite park. The defining feature of this survival system is speed. Because it’s linked to emotions such as fear, it has been described as ‘the hot system’. I call this system RED.

THE HUMAN BRAIN

Internal structure – Side view

On the inside, the human brain is organised into three main functional areas: the brainstem at the base; the limbic system in the middle; and the cerebral hemispheres at the top.

The thinking system is primed for potential. Once we’re safe from the dog, we can think about how to avoid crossing its path in future – maybe we need to buy an even bigger dog ourselves! This system allows us to solve problems, set goals, learn and adapt. Because it’s linked more to thinking and rational analysis, it has been described as ‘the cool system’. I call this system BLUE.

Red

The RED system is strongly connected to our body through powerful nerves, to maintain the overall functioning of our body and main organs within certain, comfortable limits, and to allow us either to run away or to defend ourselves when the situation demands.

There are two RED brain abilities that are particularly relevant to performance under pressure:

1 Emotional regulation

2 Fight–flight–freeze

1. Emotional regulation

The RED system runs essential physiological processes like sleep, hunger, thirst, sex drive and our heart and lung function. We don’t want to think much in most of those situations, so the RED system runs our internal world automatically and unconsciously by monitoring sensory information from our main organs. And we can’t switch it off – it never sleeps, even when we do.

Our RED brain is also constantly monitoring emotional information from our external world. It processes multiple information channels simultaneously to keep pace with cues in our social and emotional environment. The RED system regulates (controls) our emotions, and since our emotional self-control directs our behaviour at all times, the RED system sits at the forefront of how we experience the world around us.

Our RED brain specialises in processing social and emotional information in a non-linear, holistic way. To give us vital split-second reactions, it runs on broad images, impressions and feelings, delivering an unending stream of moment-to-moment, gut-based judgments about our constantly changing world.

The trade-off is that a lot of detail is lost or not processed, resulting in an approximate system that provides rapid judgments at the expense of accuracy. Information is combined to provide an overall synthesis of a situation, rather than being broken down into smaller categories.

To understand this, let’s look more closely at the role of the limbic system in regulating our emotions.

The limbic system adjusts our emotional state in two main ways: by regulating our level of arousal, and by controlling whether this feels good or bad. It’s like an extremely powerful internal thermostat, turning our energy level and emotional temperature up and down in an instant.

Nothing is more important to our day-to-day functioning than emotional regulation because it helps keep our body functioning within certain comfortable parameters, where we operate most efficiently. This maintenance of our physical and mental state within a relatively comfortable mid-range or zone is called homeostasis, an essential process for all living organisms. (We will see that understanding – and overcoming – this powerful force to stay comfortable can unlock our performance under pressure.)

2. Fight–flight–freeze

Life would be straightforward if we were able to function in comfortable conditions all the time. But we know that in our evolutionary past, we faced deadly threats and had to be constantly on our guard. Think of it in terms of a predator and its prey: the prey either has to react aggressively to deter the predator, or has to get away from the situation in a hurry. We saw this same response earlier in the person confronted by the ferocious dog.

Our RED system has evolved not just to keep us within a comfortable physiological window when conditions are safe and allow it, but also to keep us alive when we face significant threat. It does this through the fight, flight and freeze reactions, which are our stress reactions. Within a split second, our brain and body are ready either to flee from the threat, or to fight it off.

Our two amygdalae, considered the most primitive parts of the limbic system, act as our threat detectors. They’re constantly on high alert and exquisitely sensitive: they can be triggered simply by picking up on the dilation of another person’s pupils, a sign of potential hyper-vigilance or fear. They can respond unconsciously within 30 milliseconds, much faster than the 250 to 500 milliseconds it takes us to consciously focus attention with our BLUE brain. This is why we can find ourselves reacting to something without knowing why; then our conscious BLUE mind will catch up and recognise the threat that our RED system saw a quarter to half a second beforehand. In life-threatening situations, our amygdalae allow us to act first and think later.

If we can’t overcome or get away from our opponent, we feel trapped, and a more primitive reaction can kick in: freeze. This reaction has a slightly different biological pathway from the fight–flight mechanism, and it works in the opposite way: it shuts us down physically. It’s a last-ditch response to danger, when horror kicks in. In the animal world, this is where caught prey plays dead, hoping the predator will lose interest and enable it to escape. In the human world, we look blank and stare. Freeze starts out with a spike of arousal, but then transforms into a profoundly low-arousal state.

Psychologically, we disconnect from our body. If we can’t get out of there physically, we certainly don’t want to be present mentally. We go numb as endorphins are released to protect us from physical and mental pain. The technical term for this is dissociation, a mechanism that has fascinated psychologists for over 200 years.

Sometimes dissociation even involves a loss of muscle tone, leading us to fold or collapse – a bit like when a team of defeated players fall to the ground at the final whistle, when just moments before they were desperately trying to turn things around.

The autonomic nervous system

A well-organised RED limbic system will ensure that we are emotionally stable, flexible and resilient. It will allow us to fine-tune our physical and mental state when we are safe, react quickly to defend ourselves when we are under threat, and settle efficiently once the threat has gone.

It makes these adjustments using the autonomic nervous system (ANS), which, as the name suggests, functions automatically. It’s a RED system based on feeling, so we don’t have to think to turn it on.

The autonomic system has two main branches: the sympathetic branch and the parasympathetic branch. We now know that there are in fact two parasympathetic branches, both related to the large vagus nerves, which run from our brainstem at the base of our skull upward to our facial area, and downward to organs in our chest and abdomen. The two parasympathetic pathways are called the ventral vagal and dorsal vagal pathways. (Ventral means ‘front’ and dorsal means ‘back’, reflecting their relative positions within the nerve.)

The bottom line is that to properly understand how our fight, flight and freeze reactions work – and therefore what’s happening when we perform under pressure – we need to consider how three autonomic branches interact.

The sympathetic branch runs down the middle part of our spinal cord, to connect with our heart and lungs via spinal nerves. It responds to threat by preparing us for movement and action: the fight-or-flight response. To do this, it releases adrenaline, which increases our heart and breathing rates, and shifts blood flow away from our extremities to our limbs. Our vision fixates on the immediate threat. When our sympathetic system is stimulated, we feel agitated and tense.

The dorsal vagal pathway, found in reptiles as well as mammals, connects the brainstem with nerves in the abdomen. Like the sympathetic branch, it responds to extreme danger. But the dorsal vagal pathway is triggered when escape via fight or flight is not possible, so that we feel trapped, which leads to the freeze response. When this pathway is activated, we go into a state of mental and physical shutdown. Mentally, we stop feeling, our thoughts become fuzzy, and we feel alone. Physically, we lose energy, feel fatigued and become numb. If fight–flight is a mobility reaction, freeze is an immobility reaction.

The ventral vagal pathway, also called the social engagement system because it is activated when we feel safe enough to communicate with others, connects (along with some associated nerves) the brainstem to the neck, face, eyes and ears as well as the heart and lungs. It puts the ‘brakes’ on our sympathetic system activation to calm us and allow more flexible responses (except in an emergency, when it releases the brakes). Because it allows us to engage and explore rather than defend and retreat – and to compare it to the defensive fight–flight and freeze reactions – we can think of it as our face and find response: it allows us to face challenging situations, and find a way to overcome the challenge even when the way forward isn’t immediately obvious, which sets us mentally free.

The three pathways work in a predictable order. When we are at our best and feel safe and connected so that the social engagement system is operating, we can connect with others, think flexibly, see different options and follow through with plans, and are generally organised and on top of things. The moment we sense threat, the sympathetic branch of the ANS kicks in and prepares us to defend ourselves through flight or flight. And if neither the social engagement nor the fight–flight mechanism helps and we feel trapped, the dorsal vagal pathway activates the freeze reaction, driving us into a primitive shutdown state.

If our limbic system, working through the ANS, is both stable and flexible, we will be able to maintain a healthy physical and mental state, and also deal with stressful situations.

A poorly organised limbic system, lacking a good balance between the three pathways, leaves us prone to extended periods or abrupt spikes of over- or under-arousal. When this happens, it means our RED brain is overactive and our top-down, BLUE control is inadequate.

Putting it all together

So it seems the RED system is honed to get us out of tricky or demanding situations – quickly – and return us to a more even, balanced state. It provides a short-term fix to escape or resolve challenging moments. But what do these RED mind mechanisms, fine-tuned over millennia to keep us safe and sound, mean when it comes to performing under pressure?

What has been the biggest scare you’ve ever experienced? At that time, RED was dominant. It is primed for unthinking action and would have kicked into action immediately. But in other situations in which we face a daunting task but not immediate physical danger, our RED system can be less helpful, becoming activated by social threat and disrupting our ability to think clearly.

In some aspects, the RED system provides precisely what we need for performance. But in others, it seems to create more problems than solutions. Instead of a world of performance, it can take us into a world of interference.

Which is why, to counteract RED, we need BLUE.

Blue

The BLUE world is one of logic and reason. As we’ve seen, this system is responsible for higher mental functions such as prioritising, planning, abstract thinking, decision-making, goal-setting and problem-solving. These more advanced intellectual functions are linked to the frontal lobes, which sit behind the forehead.

There are three BLUE brain abilities that are particularly relevant to performance under pressure:

1 Logic, language and numbers

2 Metacognition

3 Working memory

1. Logic, language and numbers

The BLUE system processes information that has already been handled by the RED system. That means that it is a secondary system to the RED, always dependent on the information it is given, but it also means it can provide a feedback loop and revise the RED information. And because it has the capacity to form words it enables us to communicate all this through language. The RED system uses images, but the BLUE system is able to put names and labels to things, and to number them.

BLUE brain processes are conscious, slow and rule-bound, in contrast to RED processes, which are fast and unconscious. Our BLUE mind processes information in a linear way, one piece after another. Timelines and sequencing are its specialities. This means that the BLUE mind is often explaining and making sense of events that have already unfolded.

The BLUE mind is constantly interpreting our environment, breaking it down into a basic architecture of structures, categories and sequences to enable logical analysis. These attributes help with reflection, interpretation, planning and goal-setting. It allows us to understand the environment in an objective way and therefore try to anticipate and predict what happens next, based on stored information.

It is not suited to new situations or operating under stress, and is more at home with using a narrow focus to detect patterns, so it can create a narrative about the past or the future.

2. Metacognition: Thinking about thinking

Our BLUE mind enables us to think about how we think and feel, an extraordinary ability shared only with some primates in the animal kingdom. This process of stepping back and reflecting on our own and other people’s mental states is called metacognition, and it is this ability that allows us to adjust our emotional reactions. If we can’t reflect and review, how can we ever learn?

Metacognition occurs when our RED brain processes information from our body and environment through the limbic system, then passes it over to our BLUE brain for a second look. The RED and BLUE systems meet at the right orbitofrontal cortex, which is located in BLUE territory (as we’ve heard), behind the right eye socket. This is the key way-station, where the information is handed over for further review by the BLUE brain, particularly the left pre-frontal cortex. It assesses and adapts our perception of the current situation, considers how this matches with our goals and objectives, and makes conscious adjustments, before the information is returned to the right orbitofrontal cortex, which arrives at the final RED–BLUE combination.

Metacognition is critical for maintaining control over our mental responses, and for learning to perform under pressure. (It sits at the heart of the RED–BLUE tool, which we’ll meet later in the book.)

3. Working memory: Our mental laptop screen

Picture the mind as working like a laptop.

A laptop has a lot of files stored away in its hard-drive memory, where we can’t see them. We’ve forgotten most of the files, but they’re still there somewhere. Our mind is the same, with a huge number of files stored away in our unconscious mind, beyond our awareness.

The working surface of our laptop is the screen, which sits at the interface between the inside and outside worlds. We draw up information from memory storage (our inside world) and we also draw in information from the internet, or by inputting new data (our outside world).

Although it occupies the crucial interface position, the screen has a big limitation: we can only work on a small number of files or channels at a time, otherwise we quickly become overloaded and lose track of things.

Our brain works the same way. The mental equivalent of our laptop screen is called our working memory, a vital mental function located in prime BLUE-mind real estate in our pre-frontal cortex, the part of the frontal lobes that sits just above our eye sockets.

Though our long-term memory has enormous storage capacity, the capacity of our working memory is tiny. A famous psychology experiment in the 1950s showed that we can only hold between five and nine items in our working memory at any one time. (This is one reason why telephone numbers are usually seven or eight digits long, and why we break them up into chunks.) This experiment was later revisited because it was based on simple, learned sequences of items like numbers. When pieces of real-life information were used, the capacity dropped to just four or five.

But in some ways the human mind doesn’t work like a computer. On our laptop, our files are emotionally neutral and stored in a binary system of 0s and 1s, which allows the exact same file to be reopened every time. But in our mind they’re stored according to emotions, which constantly adjust the file contents, so that files are continually modified over time.

When it comes to operating under pressure, our working memory capacity can plummet. Normally we call up files (memories) when we want them, but when we’re under pressure, any memory that’s emotionally similar to the ones we have open can make its way to the surface. Worse still, thanks to our RED brain, any memories that contain threat – and therefore emotion – take precedence. Our working memory loses capacity quickly, so that we can only focus on one thing at a time, and have trouble accessing even basic information. We become self-conscious, just as worried about how we look as what we’re doing. And the content of our working memory changes from minute to minute, so we keep losing what we were working on.

In the end our screen may overload and freeze, and we need a moment to shut down and reboot before we can see things clearly again.

As the screen sitting at the interface between our internal and external worlds, our working memory sits at the heart of our mental performance under pressure. It acts like Brain HQ, because it’s where we gather information from our immediate environment, match it against information and patterns that we call up from our memory banks, manipulate the information a bit, then make a decision and act.

When our screen is clear and at full power, it drives us forward. But when our RED mind interferes, our crucial BLUE capacity is compromised.

Through metacognition, the BLUE pre-frontal cortex has a huge role in keeping RED activation in check. RED overdrive, which leads to shrinking or disintegration of our BLUE mental screen, and loss of braking power on our RED system, is a double whammy for performance under pressure. Our BLUE logical analysis, metacognition and working memory can all be severely affected – and quickly.

Zac is a competitive gamer in the middle of a tense duel. He doesn’t want to lose and face the social media backlash he suffered last time around.

He’s playing right at his limit when he receives a text message from his girlfriend, asking why he hasn’t turned up to meet her as promised. He completely forgot in the midst of his online battle, and now he’s facing an argument.

He loses concentration, and his opponent strikes and gains the advantage, which makes Zac angry and even more distracted. Things go from bad to worse. He gets tunnel vision and starts missing background details. He becomes erratic, swinging between being too hesitant and being too impulsive. He can’t think straight, and his mind keeps jumping to how he’s going to explain things to his girlfriend. He feels like he is playing against two opponents – the one online and himself!

Performing effectively under pressure is about keeping our BLUE mental screen clear even during significant RED mind activity.

Red and Blue

Like it or not, our RED and BLUE minds have an intimate reciprocal relationship. It is, in a sense, like a lifelong marriage.

How we manage that marital relationship will go a long way to determining how far we travel towards our potential. When RED and BLUE are working harmoniously together, we are in a position to do more with our life. When they are at odds, our performance suffers.

For effective performance under pressure, we need RED and BLUE to be operating in the right proportions to suit the situation.

In life-threatening moments, RED beats BLUE because survival beats potential. When we’re in genuine danger it’s time for emergency action, not reflection. The RED fight–flight mechanism goes into overdrive and more or less shuts down BLUE functioning.

In the reverse direction, the BLUE system can dampen down the RED response, but can’t switch it off. Survival never entirely goes out of fashion!

So the RED–BLUE dynamic is that RED operates in the here and now and can at any moment severely disrupt BLUE with emotions; while BLUE constantly works away to keep the emotional RED reactions and impulses in check, probing the past and scanning the future. At our best, our RED and BLUE minds will complement each other as they work in tandem.

RED and BLUE are both important to performance under pressure, but both are able to undermine it too. The key lies in our ability to adjust the balance, because that will govern how we pay attention in any given moment. Our ability to balance the two will go a long way in influencing which mental pathway we go down when we are uncomfortable.

How Our Early Years Set the Pattern

The way our brain develops in the first two years of life will have a large say in whether we can hold our nerve in high-pressure situations as adults.

Attachment theory is based on the idea that strong emotional and physical attachment to at least one parent or caregiver is essential for early development. This psychological model can help us understand the impact our early years have on our ability to regulate our emotions later in life.

A strong emotional connection between infant and parent allows the infant to retreat to the parent when they are fearful (attachment), but to continue to explore the world if the parent is reassuring and seems unconcerned about the situation (exploration). The key is that the infant reacts to signals that reveal the parent’s mental state.

The interesting thing is that this attachment behaviour is learned without words. It’s a constant process that happens before we can talk, and even before we can move independently. Our parent intuitively matches our emotional state, providing signals through tone, touch and look, with the eyes being the critical connection point.

On the biological front, our brain goes through a massive growth spurt over the first year of life, to more than double in size to weigh over a kilogram. Our brainstem and limbic system are already maturing, with the amygdala – our superbly sensitive threat detectors – fully functional at birth. Our sympathetic nervous system develops in our first year, to give us the energy to engage and explore visually. If bonding goes well, this first year has a very positive impact on the infant, and most interactions are soothing and joyful.

In the second year of life the parasympathetic branch of our ANS matures and connects with our right orbitofrontal cortex. This happens as we’re becoming more mobile and therefore more in need of frequent interventions from our parent to set limits that keep us safe. The signals increasingly come from a slight distance, and largely through face and eye contact.

This is a big change in tone. We’ve become used to mainly positive parental reactions, but now we’re faced with a real mixture of encouragement to explore, and signals to hold back. When we see our parent’s concerned reaction, our anxiety spikes, but our parasympathetic nervous system down-regulates our stress levels and careful matching from our parent restores the connection. When there is a good connection, our parent is said to be attuned to us.

By 18 months, we’ve been exposed to many, many interactions. The right orbitofrontal cortex is providing the final adjustment of the output from our limbic system, regulating our arousal level and emotions up or down.

By the end of the second year, we’ve built up an ability to cope with some fear and stress, and to quickly return to exploring when the situation is safe enough. If it’s not safe, we’re able to quickly seek contact with the parent and come back under emotional control so we can re-energise (a process known as refuelling). We learn to tolerate fear without becoming overwhelmed or lost, and to settle quickly if we do become distressed. This is called a secure attachment.

However, an unhelpful pattern can be set up if the parent is unresponsive, or too responsive, or if their behaviour is inconsistent and the infant is never sure what to expect.

If the parent is too quick to soothe, the infant isn’t exposed to any fear and doesn’t learn any tolerance of stress and discomfort. Over time, the infant will develop a tendency to become agitated, restless and over-aroused.

On the other hand, if the infant is looking for reassurance and it is delayed, or not provided, the infant’s distress increases. If the distress continues to rise, the infant can reach its threshold and suddenly shut down, becoming quiet and still. It learns that help and reassurance should not be expected, so it starts to isolate itself and become lethargic (under-aroused).

Both of these patterns – and a situation where there’s no clear pattern – are called insecure attachments, where the infant’s ability to regulate their emotions is impaired. (A word of caution: no parent can be attentive all of the time, and this is not a platform for judging the quality of our parents – or anyone else’s.)

The quality of the parent–child interaction is more important than the circumstances in which a child grows up. People can be emotionally resilient despite a difficult early family life, while emotional fragility can sometimes emerge from what appears to be a solid family environment.

Memory

The signals we receive from our parent and our reactions to them are absorbed into our memory and act as powerful automatic templates or ‘scripts’ for our responses to later events. By the time we’re 18 months old, encoded memory scripts are ingrained in our limbic system and automatically guide how we manage our arousal in new situations.

During our critical first two years, a huge number of nerve cells are produced, which are pruned back to reflect our dominant reactions, good or bad. Our RED reactions become hard-wired. We form memories of automatic procedures that are either healthy and flexible, or rigid and unhelpful.

Our memories can be divided into two main types:

1 Explicit memories, which encode facts and events

2 Implicit memories, which encode procedures for how to do things

An explicit memory records what happened and when, and labels it as either pleasant or unpleasant. To form an explicit memory, we have to consciously focus our attention, which requires our BLUE mind. But explicit memories are not true records of what happened, because they are also encoded with emotion from our RED mind, which makes them more vivid. In addition, they are influenced by the way we are paying attention at the time. We can generally recall a memory more easily when we’re in the same emotional state we were in when the memory was formed.

Implicit memories are unconscious records that show us how to do something, such as writing. As we’ve seen, these are formed from birth through repeated experiences. We don’t consciously have the experience of ‘remembering’: when we are writing, we just do it. Our implicit memories run automatically.

The early scripts that capture how we think, feel and act in response to cues from our environment are examples of powerful implicit memories. We have no sense of recall when they are triggered; we just ‘find’ ourselves functioning in a certain way that feels entirely natural, whether it is helpful for us or not.

But certain implicit memories formed during childhood can modify this early emotional template, and can have a particularly powerful effect on our performance under pressure.

Shame and trauma

Emotionally overwhelming events are stored in the brain as traumatic memories. Because they are processed in extreme conditions, our memory only records fragments of the event. It seems that during the recording, our RED brain emotion disrupts BLUE brain attention.

Sometimes people do not mentally process the scene and only the body-based experience is recorded as an implicit memory, which is why people can re-experience the same feelings as in the original event, even without a visual memory.

But it’s important to make a distinction between big-T trauma – reserved for major events like natural disasters and violent incidents, commonly associated with helplessness and loss of control – and little-t trauma, referring to lesser events that are not life-threatening but still carry some emotional impact.

In big-T trauma situations, some people can develop highly distressing memories that come into their mind out of the blue. Some powerful memories called flashbacks actually take us back into the moment as if we were re-experiencing the trauma; the sense that it happened in the past is lost. People suffering from post-trauma syndromes have symptoms of high arousal (feeling jumpy and on edge, experiencing flashbacks) or low arousal (detachment, numbness), or both, often swinging erratically between the two.

Most of us have a lot of little-t and perhaps a few large-T traumas encoded in our memory systems. And some of our first little-t traumatic memories date from the attachment process during our early years.

When we become mobile and our parent starts setting limits, we’re suddenly confronted by the sight of their face showing disapproval of our behaviour, and our urge is to feel shame. It’s an abrupt, painful reaction that leads to silence, avoidance of eye contact, and feelings of isolation. These emotions can be seen in the face of a child before they learn to talk.

How we manage shame in early life plays a major role in how we learn to regulate our emotions. These moments are absorbed as implicit memories and become automatic procedures when similar moments are encountered later. If moments of shame are managed well, we’ll be able to maintain emotional control while experiencing moderate levels of discomfort. But if the attachment traumas become consistent, we’ll feel like we can’t tolerate and cope with the strength of the feeling and develop a strong tendency towards becoming anxious and agitated (over-arousal), or washed out and flat (under-arousal) when we become uncomfortable.

None of us can recall our earliest traumatic experiences. But most of us can remember moments of shame or embarrassment from our schooldays – whether we tripped on the stage at school, fluffed our lines in the school play, failed an exam or missed an open goal.

Our RED system doesn’t forget these moments, because they’re moments of social threat. The RED brain is brilliant at storing these moments away as implicit memories, even if we can’t recall the moments explicitly, so it can warn us if similar situations reappear. When that happens, our RED memory of the event – apparently asleep for years but in reality only resting with one eye open – springs to life. It reminds us, in an instant, of the social threat, and our RED survival system is reactivated. It doesn’t matter that these days we don’t consciously recall the original threat; the RED system makes us feel it anyway.

This explains why we can find ourselves in a performance situation, thinking (with our BLUE mind) that we have it under control, but feeling anxious without really knowing why. Our subconscious mind is recognising some aspect of the current situation that is symbolic of the old event, and the old feelings come up. Some subtle aspect of the situation – a tone of voice, certain words, even a smell – triggers our deeply stored RED memories, and the reactions that follow. Instead of growing large and facing the moment down, we find ourselves shrinking and hesitating under pressure.

Remember the golfer facing the final hole in Chapter 1? He experiences fear not because of a physical threat, but because of the potential judgment of the crowd. He’s undoubtedly faced other situations involving judgment throughout his life. Some of those experiences will have been associated with strong emotions like anger, guilt and grief.

The golfer won’t, and can’t, recall all those situations right now, but he still gets an instant negative emotional hit. The golfer has an unconscious emotional blueprint, which has gradually formed throughout his life, and is now triggered during any situations involving judgment.

In RED–BLUE mind-model terms, uncomfortable feelings like fear occur when our RED mind dominates our BLUE mind. Our ability to face and handle these uncomfortable states provides the template for our performance under pressure.

Although you may not have thought about it this way before, your performances started at birth. When you did something – anything – you performed, and that elicited a reaction, good or bad, from your parents or caregivers. This happened with your first milestones. Then at school. It happened with your friends. At work. On the stage or on the sports field.

Our lives have developed into a sequence of performances, and nuanced emotional interactions with those who watched us. Our responses to this have been encoded as a collection of performance memories. Over time we have developed a highly individual, and strong, mental blueprint relating to performance. It has been built on the numerous occasions in which we felt we have been exposed to judgment, and it is this subconscious blueprint that is activated when we encounter new performance or judgment situations.

Significant physical injuries suffered in the past, or psychological blows such as major losses or humiliations, can all affect our current performance. But the greater the emotional regulation we have, the more we’ll be able to cope with the trials and tribulations of harsh, distressing or even traumatic performance experiences.

What little-t performance trauma can you recall from your childhood or adolescence? What was your emotional reaction at the time? Can you see a link between this and how you react to similar situations now? Do you become too ‘hyper’ and lose your ability to think and feel clearly? Do you become distant or shut down? Or can you cope, recover and recharge yourself to continue with your performance?

Changing our brain

The great news is that however our RED system reacts under pressure, we can increase our BLUE control over those reactions, thanks to a property of our brain called plasticity.

As much as our mental blueprint is laid down during our childhood, one of the major discoveries of modern science has been that our brain continues to adapt and adjust itself at the microscopic level throughout our life. Remarkably, if part of the brain is damaged, then other nerve cells, especially the adjacent ones, can sometimes help out to compensate for the loss.

Much like the memories in our brain, the patterns encoded in our nerve-cell networks when we were young still influence how we feel and act in current situations. Like a pathway through a forest, the more we use the same nerve-cell pathway, the clearer and easier it becomes. We find ourselves following the path without really thinking why we are doing it; it just feels natural. Which it is: it is now in our nature to react a certain way in difficult moments.

The opposite is also true. If we stop using a particular pathway, it will become overgrown and not so easy to go down. In a high-pressure situation, every time we resist the urge to escape the discomfort by following a certain path, that nerve-cell escape path is weakened – and the uncomfortable path is strengthened. What we consciously experience is that the urge to escape that moment is reduced and we can tolerate a little more discomfort.

The pathways in our brain are constantly being strengthened and weakened. We strengthen the impulse to escape every time we reward it by moving away from discomfort – and we weaken it every time we tolerate the urge to move away.

Our performance habits are not random. If we want to change our performance under pressure, then we need to change the biology that drives it.

The RED–BLUE tool is all about being comfortable being uncomfortable. Under pressure, do we give up or rise up? As someone wise once said: ‘Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.’

THE HUMAN BRAIN

Structure & function

The brainstem and limbic system connect primarily with the right hemisphere to provide emotional regulation, operating through images, feelings and direct experience (RED). The left hemisphere operates through language, logic and reflection (BLUE).

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.