Positive Pressure Versus Negative Pressure
How can we transform pressure from a burden into a privilege?
I’ll start this essay with the disclaimer that I’m the kind of tennis fan that tunes in for a few Grand Slam matches per year and has to google how the rules and scoring work every single time. Still, I’ve found myself captivated by recent Australian Open winner, Madison Keys, and the long road to her first Grand Slam title. Keys was identified as a future tennis star at a very young age. She turned pro at age 14 and became one of the youngest players to win a WTA tour level match a few months later. At age 17, she entered the top 100 of the WTA rankings. Today, at age 29, she’s a Grand Slam champion. I’d be remiss to not mention that she defeated a formidable opponent in the final, Aryna Sabalenka, the current world no.1 and a 3x Grand Slam winner.
In her post win press conference, Keys shared how working on the internal pressure she was putting on herself ultimately prepared her to go out and win. She said:
“I felt like from a pretty young age that if I never won a Grand Slam then I wouldn't have lived up to what people thought that I should have been. That was a pretty heavy burden to carry around. I finally got to the point where I was okay if it didn't happen. I didn't need it to feel like I had had a good career or that I deserved to be talked about as a great tennis player. I feel like finally letting go of that kind of internal talk just gave me the ability to actually go out and play some really good tennis ... to actually win a Grand Slam.”
The iconic tennis player, Billie Jean King, is widely known for her famous saying: “Pressure is a privilege.” However, Keys comments suggest the importance of understanding the nuances of how pressure functions in our lives: When is pressure truly a privilege? When does pressure support us? And when does it get in the way?
Sports psychologists often talking about focusing on process over outcome. I like to think of this idea conceptually by differentiating between what I call “positive pressure” and “negative pressure.”
Positive pressure is typically internally driven and motivated by loving the process of improvement and a desire to learn. This type of pressure can be found in a nearly endless supply because it is not attached to a particular result and is sourced from enjoying the process. As a result, it has the benefit of giving us the fuel to chase goals for long periods of time. Furthermore, positive pressure helps cultivate self trust because we see ourselves deliver on our commitment to improve and put forth continuous effort.
Negative pressure is typically externally driven in that it is heavily influenced by others expectations and what we believe we should be doing and achieving. In contrast to positive pressure, negative pressure is often tied to a particular outcome or result and influenced by our lack of something. This type of pressure often causes us to beat ourselves up and live in the shadow of the fear of failure. Those effects often drive burnout and poor performance because they gradually chip away at our motivation and enjoyment over time.
World renowned origami artist and laser physicist, Robert J. Lang, eloquently described how this type of positive pressure can lead to building expertise, and even greatness, in my interview with him last year:
“When I say I love being an expert at origami, what I mean is that I love to fold. I’ve folded for tens of thousands of hours and in doing so I've gotten good at it, but it's not because I wanted to become good at it. I folded because I loved folding, and I think there's something that plays there. I don't remember who the basketball player was who would spend hours doing free throws. If his motivation was, “I want to be great at free throws,” he’d probably lose motivation pretty quickly. But if it’s loving the process of honing the ability to make those shots, you can spend hours doing it. The getting good at it comes from that.”
The funny thing about negative pressure is that it often hinders our ability to obtain the very thing we’re so desperately trying to whip ourselves into achieving. As Lang suggests, you don’t necessarily become great by being motivated by achieving greatness. Rather, committing yourself to loving the process of improvement, without attachment to any outcome, is the kind of pressure that produces expertise. As it turns out, it’s also the kind of pressure that can win Grand Slams.
It’s inevitable that we’ll experience pressure in the pursuit of chasing a goal we really want. It’s how we learn to use pressure that not only defines enjoyment of the journey, but often the success we find in the end. If positive pressure feels like an elusive concept to you, I invite you to consider a question inspired by Billie Jean King’s words: What would transform your experience of pressure from a burden into a privilege?