More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
February 9 - May 1, 2025
As we move from low to moderate physiological arousal, mostly good things occur, because arousal does several things: Enhances memory and cognitive functioning. Helps us focus, enhancing the signal-to-noise ratio and allowing us to pick up relevant information. Prepares our body for action. Physiological arousal prepares our muscles to work, improving our reaction time and freeing up energy to fuel the task at hand. Motivates us. Enhancing the saliency of the reward with a hit of dopamine.
As stress and pressure increase, our PFC goes offline and lets our amygdala start shouting as loud as it wants. We lose our brake and the sensory information we start relying on changes. In the body, it’s much the same. We tend to clump all pressure, stress, or physiological arousal together.
When we see the stressor as more of a challenge, we tend to have a bit more testosterone and adrenaline, nudging us to approach the task at hand.
When pressure takes over, we’re more likely to: avoid instead of approach; be selfish instead of selfless; get stuck too narrow, unable to see the forest for the trees; freeze, faint, or flee; and discount future rewards.
Getting stuck, choking, and freezing results from finding yourself in a predictive doom loop. We feel threatened, so we avoid, escape, or shut down. Over time, that loop becomes ingrained, so much so that we stop seeing it as an error but as reality. When we believe we’re under threat, we set the stage for poor predictions. We default toward just trying to survive.
Choking is a threat and survival disorder. It’s an act of self-preservation, a desperate attempt to shut down, to avoid, to insulate our sense of self, ego, and status from the deluge of attacks it’s experiencing. Sometimes that threat is conscious. Other times, it lies deep underneath. It doesn’t originate only from physical danger. It doesn’t occur only in sports. In a world filled with constant stimulation, comparison, and stress, we all spend a lot of time in survival mode, where protection is the name of the game.
Under preparation is a coping strategy to protect our sense of self. Not giving our all is about shielding our ego from harm. This is the real-world version of choking.
when we feel threatened, we try to find some way to achieve closure as quickly as possible.
when our world and our place in it add up, we have hope. We orient ourselves toward growth. We are more likely to feel energized, motivated, and happy. And almost as a by-product, be successful and fulfilled. We approach instead of avoid. We turn down the desire to protect and up the desire to play, create, pursue, and live.
Research shows that acute low-level pressure can improve performance, but chronic or high-level pressure—from rank-and-yank systems, for example—degrades performance.
Earlier in this chapter, I outlined two paths to success: the quick and the slow. The former focuses on chasing status and external rewards. The latter is based on enjoyment and intrinsic drivers. Smith outlined a similar idea centuries ago. “To deserve, to acquire, and to enjoy the respect and admiration of mankind, are the great objects of ambition and emulation. Two different roads are presented to us, equally leading to the attainment of this so much desired object; one, by the study of wisdom and the practice of virtue; the other, by the acquisition of wealth and greatness.”
The external game is amplifying our threat system and mistakenly believing that our drive system will help us avoid feeling rejected, insignificant, or alone. If we just reach the top of the mountain, our threats and insecurities will disappear. They won’t.
Rick Rubin, who has worked with a who’s who of successful artists, agrees, writing, “How shall we measure success? It isn’t popularity, money, or critical esteem. Success occurs in the privacy of the soul. It comes in the moment you decide to release the work before exposure to a single opinion. When you’ve done all you can to bring out the work’s greatest potential. When you’re pleased and ready to let go. Success has nothing to do with variables outside yourself.”
Wang reported, “Our data shows that people ought to explore a bunch of things at work, deliberate about the best fit for their skills, and then exploit what they’ve learned.” Or, as we’ve learned in this chapter, broad exploration opens the door for a deep, narrow dive.
For most, the common advice to “go all-in” or “burn the boats behind you” so that we have no other option but to succeed is terrible. It puts us in a place of playing not to lose and responding out of fear of failure. We’re
An overemphasis on rewards, accolades, and success sends a clear signal: achievement is what matters and is what is rewarded. Anxiety soon follows, and creativity and inner drive are often extinguished.
The researchers concluded, “Emotional numbness was a result of the application of domain-specific knowledge.” When our predictions of self and the world narrow, we stop listening to our actual experiences. However, Rocklage and colleagues found a solution: Get them to focus on and reconnect with the feelings of consuming art or drinking wine, and the numbness subsided. Or, put another way, to remember what it’s like to explore, to play.
play functions to teach us to: Develop intrinsically driven interests Learn about rules and problem-solving Regulate our emotions Navigate relationships and make friends Experience joy
The Journal of Pediatrics, Gray and colleagues compellingly argue that “a primary cause of the rise in mental disorders [in youth] is a decline over decades in opportunities for children and teens to play, roam, and engage in other activities independent of direct oversight and control by adults.”
Bruce Lee, expressed in Be Water, My Friend, “What you do and who you are is not as important as how you express your ‘what’ and your ‘who’ in everything you do. How are you being . . . To embody an idea, a practice, a value or concept is to integrate it into your being.”
Robert Sapolsky has noted, “We can be part of multiple hierarchies. And while you may be low ranking in one of them, you could be high ranking in another. You have the crappiest job in your corporation, but you’re the captain of the softball team for the company. You better bet that’s somebody who’s going to find all sorts of ways that 9 to 5, Monday through Friday, is just stupid paying the bills. What really matters is the prestige on the weekend.” We can use our storytelling machinery to our advantage.
It goes against everything we know about the psychology of losing. Joking around, realizing that it is, in fact, a game and not real, and moving on from sorrow to excitement are the exact behaviors that research shows lead to better performance the next go around.
research found that relative skill didn’t explain the streaky ability. It’s not just that winners tend to win because they are better fighters. The result changes the animal’s biology.
The winning animal experienced a surge of testosterone, and this surge was tied to dominance, aggression, and a willingness to take more risks. On the other hand, losers saw their testosterone flatline while the stress hormone cortisol skyrocketed. Submission and anxiety soon followed.
an area called the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC). They took the losers, who had become timid and submissive, and flipped a switch to activate the dmPFC. Almost like magic, the losers transformed, winning 90 percent of the shoving matches in the tube. According to one of the authors, “It’s not aggressiveness per se, it increases their perseverance, motivational drive, grit.”
Whether via hormones or our brain activation, winning and losing have lasting effects. A surge of testosterone and a rise in status can push us toward confidence and persistence. A drop in testosterone and an increase in cortisol nudges us the other way; sending a message that it’s better to retreat, lick our wounds, and not engage.
a surge of testosterone in humans following a win has been linked to increased risk-taking, putting forth more effort, and trying harder. And in terms of functional outcomes, it’s linked to better endurance performance in both men and women.
a study on professional rugby players, a bump in testosterone levels after a game was tied to better performance in a game a week or so later. Higher cortisol levels were linked to worse performance in the subsequent game.
When cortisol is high, even the bump in testosterone from doing well isn’t enough. In such cases, status ceases to matter. Survival does. When we live in survival mode, we don’t even get the biological perks of winning.
We are more likely to have the classic cortisol-dominated response when we are under attack—when a loss threatens something important and meaningful to us, such as our identity, sense of competency, or perhaps the stability and coherence of our inner narrative. When losing puts things that matter in the direct line of fire, we spiral. We ruminate, experience frustration and anger, and if it’s so intertwined that it feels deeply real and not a game, we may just unleash a tirade on the bus ride home.
resilience is an active process tied to a “rapid activation of the stress response and its efficient termination. Resilience is associated with the capacity to constrain stress-induced increases in corticotrophin-releasing hormone and cortisol.” It’s the efficient termination part that is vital. It clears the way for dealing with and hopefully learning from the actual thing.
Feder and team found several factors that underpin our ability to be resilient: facing fears and active coping optimism and positive emotions reappraisal, positive reframing, and acceptance social competence and social support purpose in life, a moral compass, meaning, and spirituality
Whenever I’ve worked with professional sports teams, I’ve simplified this research into four key components after a game, win or lose: Shift out of protect and defend Kee...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Research on professional rugby players found that watching what they did wrong after a game led to elevated cortisol and worse performance the next game. Watching what they did well had the opposite effect: a bump in testosterone and better performance in the games that followed. It’s not that we want to avoid criticism forever. It’s that after a tough match, we are in a sensitive period. Our brains are looking to validate our feeling that we are a bit useless. We are hypersensitive to any sign of a threat.
A variety of research shows that oxytocin is released when socializing, giving hugs, or performing physical activity with others. Second, it gives us time to work through our losing experience with people who are supportive and not threatening. Decompress, debrief, and connect.
It’s creating just enough space so that a loss doesn’t cause you to spiral, to overcare, to be hypercompetitive at all times. But at the same time not so much space that you don’t have that bit of tension pushing toward growth, or can self-delude so that you never see the lessons poor performances can teach you. That’s what Giannis captures. Losing hurts. But it’s part of the process. One that can’t be avoided.
I’ve used similar tactics, having athletes smile during the recall or having them watch a comedy routine or tell jokes after watching themselves mess up. Research backs this up: when we change our somatic state, we modulate the emotional punch behind whatever we are doing.
If we let it, failure brings clarity. It peels back the layers of pretense, cutting through our protective self-deceptions, so that we can see our self and pursuits as they are. We realize that most of our fears and insecurities are misplaced. That the world didn’t end when we lost the game or didn’t get the promotion. That we can go down a path that fear was previously blocking. Failure gives us a chance to own and update our story.
Dan McAdams found that how we tell our stories matters. Those who tell redemption stories, where we go from a low to a high, turning our suffering into something positive, score higher on measures of well-being than those who tell “feel good” stories, where everything is generally pretty good. The old adage that the bad makes the good better holds true. But in further research by psychologist Jack Bauer, it wasn’t the sequence that mattered the most. It was the themes in those stories.
The egosystem domination even prevents us from doing the thing we need most: detaching. In organizations that adopt an excessively high-pressure environment, stepping away and taking a break from work backfires. Researchers found that high-pressure workers feel more shame when they try not to work. This shame leads to more unethical acts and artificially elevates the impression that we are always working hard. When we feel excessive pressure, we self-preserve.
psychologist Gábor Orosz and colleagues defined four approaches toward competition. There’s the person who lacks interest and is neither motivated to take on a task nor avoid it. They just don’t care. Competition doesn’t excite or intrigue them in the least. The second approach is the hypercompetitive person whom we’ve just discussed. They tend to need constant validation. Competition is where they derive meaning and value. The results matter . . . a lot! The third approach is the anxiety-driven avoidance orientation. These individuals shy away from competition. They often suffer from a need
...more
The more we care, and the more our job or pursuits feel a part of who we are, the harder we’ll work. When our goals feel relevant to our sense of self, we’re more likely to move from apathy to action. When what we are doing feels a part of who we are, it becomes more meaningful. Away from the sports fields, the same holds. If we transition from seeing ourselves as someone who dabbles in writing to someone who identifies as a writer, it helps our consistency in the craft. We write because that’s what we do. When we move from a verb to a noun, from “I cook” to “I am a cook,” we’ve signaled to
...more
When something feels a part of who we are, we’re more likely to make sure our actions align with our identity. We follow through.
after a setback, the group that tied their identity to helping, played not to lose. They were fine helping when the victory was clear but hesitant when a potential failure was on the horizon. Making things personal can lead to great success, but for most of us, it doesn’t transform us into a clutch performer.
Overly linking our identity with our actions makes us hesitant to take the shot when the game is on the line. There’s a fine line between caring deeply and too much.
When it comes to our jobs, we’ve often let our desire for success push us too much to the I am side. Our pursuits are going to be meaningful, but if we hold on to them too tightly so that they have a near full overlap for who we are, we start moving from a self-development approach to a maladaptive and hypercompetitive one. And if we’re honest, if you are a pusher or striver, someone who cherishes the American dream model of success, then chances are you need to course correct.