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

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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

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Source ISBN: 9780008313166

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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).

CHAPTER 3

Chapter 3, Balanced Brain vs Unbalanced Brain

Our emotional regulation system sits at the heart of our performance under pressure.

Our RED system evolved through repeated connections with our primary caregivers, and this determines how much feeling we can tolerate and how flexible our responses are when we become uncomfortable.

Far from being a wishy-washy system of feelings and sensations, the RED system is the primary driver of our psychological reaction in pressure situations. Our emotional blueprint – laid down in our first two years and constantly revised through life experience – has a lot to do with how we respond to pressure, and whether we become prone to unhelpful behaviours. When our emotional regulation is poor and RED dominates, our attention becomes divided or diluted and our focus is dragged away from the present moment. We lose emotional flexibility and the ability to think clearly and our behaviours default to basic survival instincts, out of keeping with the situation.

In my experience the most commonly identified pattern is for performance under pressure to cause over-arousal – too much RED – rather than under-arousal. But one trap is to assume that under-arousal comes from too little emotion, when in fact it often comes from too much anxiety and tension and a partial freeze reaction. Going ‘flat’ can look relaxed, but is actually very different – and is sure to lead to poor performance.

Trying to ignore or suppress our RED mind is a weak strategy, because it has evolved to never be snubbed or shut down. In fact, trying to overlook it actually powers up our RED response until it gets our attention. If need be, it will take over and make its presence felt.

But whatever template we have now does not fully determine how we respond to pressure. Our BLUE system is designed to exert some control over the feelings and impulses that emerge when we are emotionally uncomfortable. Our BLUE mind can kick in to provide balance and control of our RED system, and we can get the two systems back in sync.

Our BLUE system controls RED emotion first of all by naming it – remember our left hemisphere has the power of language – and simply naming a vague, hard-to-describe physical experience has a very settling effect. Our BLUE system can then reappraise the situation by focusing on the negative experience and modifying its meaning. Left-brain naming and meaning-change dampen down the RED emotional intensity.

It’s important to remember that the RED system is not inherently good or bad, any more than emotions are good or bad. Our feelings are a normal and essential part of life. Without them we would never experience the joy of close connections or the thrill of chasing goals and achieving them. The RED emotional system is what gives us drive and energy; it gets us going. It’s just when RED goes into overdrive and we lose control that we meet problems.

It would be a serious mistake to label RED as bad and BLUE as good. Both systems are very useful for their intended purposes. Too much RED may be more common, but being too BLUE can be just as harmful to performance. It can cause us to lose emotional connection, becoming detached, aloof and even cold. Team spirit would be impossible within a completely BLUE world.

This book is fundamentally about finding our RED–BLUE balance, not about casting RED as a villain and BLUE as the hero of the piece.

My aim is to help you perform effectively when you’re out of sorts and stressed, not when it’s plain sailing. As we’ve learned, under pressure we will experience discomfort, so we need to learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable – not just coping with discomfort, but thriving within it.

How well we perform depends on the quality of our attention. And our control of attention is driven by the interaction between our RED and BLUE mind systems.

Whether RED and BLUE are in sync or out of sync will have a large say in whether we can perform under pressure. If we are badly prepared, pressure can take us down. If we are well prepared, pressure can lift us up to new heights.

In this chapter, I’ll look at the most common ineffective patterns of feeling, thinking and acting under pressure, and contrast them with the most common effective patterns of feeling, thinking and behaving under pressure. Understanding these patterns provides us with a better chance of detecting when we are going off track, and more idea of how to get back on track once it happens.

Threat vs Challenge
Threat

Tony is running late for an important meeting at work with his boss. He has tension in his neck and shoulders, his heart and thoughts are racing, and he feels a little sick. There’s no direct physical threat here. He knows that in the same situation, most of his colleagues would not be bothered at all. If he does arrive late his boss probably won’t even comment. But still he feels anxious.

Now that we’ve met the RED–BLUE mind model, we can understand what Tony is going through. Somewhere in his past, being late has led to some painful feelings. Perhaps it was being late on the first day of school. Maybe it was a combination of several occasions when he was late or cut it fine for sports practice and got yelled at by the coach, which caused him some embarrassment. These painful experiences have been long since buried among Tony’s unconscious memories. But today, as he sees he’s running late, a fusion of those painful memories and the feelings linked to them is once again automatically triggered by his RED system, which is primed to react to threats (whether real or imagined). No specific memory comes to mind, but the familiar feeling does. And so Tony’s anxiety system kicks in, and he ends up tense and anxious.

Turning up on time is a performance moment. No gold medals are at stake here, but being punctual is personally significant to Tony, while for others it’s not particularly important.

It goes to show that even apparently mundane, everyday events can carry a hidden performance agenda. And so when we enter an arena where the stakes are genuinely high, it should come as no surprise that our emotional reaction can skyrocket.

Think about this reaction as an unconscious, two-stage process. The first step is that old, painful feelings get automatically stirred up. The second step is that the feelings trigger an anxiety reaction to block those feelings from surfacing. These steps happen so fast that we usually only notice the second one – the anxiety reaction – which makes it seem like that happened first. But some people pick up a spike of emotion – perhaps a hot feeling surging up through their core – before the anxiety reaction comes in over the top to shut the emotion down.

Anxiety can make us feel tense or go flat if we hit our threshold, which can disrupt our thinking and senses. It can also cause a host of other physical sensations through our fight, flight or freeze reaction. But they’re different from the primary feelings of anger, guilt or grief. Anxiety is a secondary reaction.

The combined effect of the primary painful feelings and secondary anxiety is that we experience discomfort. This discomfort doesn’t appear out of nowhere. It comes about because of a process inside of us. And it isn’t random – it’s very predictable. We will get anxious in the same types of situation, again and again, when others do not.

Tony’s experience shows us that the common phrase ‘performance anxiety’ oversimplifies what actually happens inside our body. The external performance – being on time or not – activates Tony’s unconscious blueprint of feelings, which then trigger his anxiety.

The middle step is key. Though it usually happens so fast that we are not aware of it, it’s most definitely there, because otherwise, why would people react so differently to the same external situation?

As we’ve seen, external fear arising from real physical danger is hard-wired within us and is an automatic survival mechanism, driven by our biology. In brain terms, we react long before we can consciously think it through. And internally driven fear, or anxiety, is generated by our personal psychology. It’s not a genuine survival moment in the physical sense, although it is in the psychological sense: the anxiety is generated by doubt about our ability to mentally survive the occasion.

Although most performance situations don’t literally involve threat to our physical survival, it might threaten our psychological existence if we mentally live and die with our image and reputation. If we subconsciously frame these moments in survival terms, we will trigger survival responses.

The bottom line is that performance situations stir up deeply ingrained emotions held in our body, and anxiety in the form of tension can instantly lock things down, making us uncomfortable and affecting our ability to think clearly under pressure.

Performing under pressure usually means performing when we are uncomfortable.

Challenge: Going beyond threat

If our RED mind is primed for survival, our BLUE mind is primed for potential.

Safety comes first. If we are not safe, our RED mind is activated and dominates our thinking and behaviour. But once we are safe and the RED mind is calm enough, other opportunities open up. (It doesn’t have to be completely calm, just within the window of discomfort where you can still operate.)

The BLUE mind is well suited to looking at our immediate environment, solving problems and adapting. When we’re not forced to pay attention to getting out of a situation we don’t want to be in, our mental effort can be focused on creating a situation that we do want. In modern language, we call this goal-setting.

With its emphasis on language and logical analysis, our BLUE mind sees possibilities, nuances and opportunities by matching the current situation against prior experience. That’s how it evolved – as a creative, forward-thinking, adaptive mechanism. If the RED mind is the security at the door, the BLUE mind is the creative headquarters tucked safely inside, where plans are hatched and problems are solved.

When we engage our BLUE mind in pressure situations, a fundamental shift in mindset can occur: threat is replaced by challenge. Instead of trying to flee and bring the situation to an end as quickly as possible, our BLUE mind draws us towards the obstacle that’s in our way, using all mental resources at its disposal to adapt, adjust and improvise so we can overcome the challenge.

In a survival situation, there is a simple threat focus on outcomes such as living and dying, or winning and losing. With a challenge focus, our attention is drawn to the process of finding a way through. Judgment is replaced by movement. Instead of ‘Will I survive?’, the question becomes ‘How far can I go?’

If we regard the situation as a challenge, we’ll focus not on the outcome but on our capacity to deal with the demanding and difficult moments. Rather than a burden to bear, we’ll see the discomfort as stimulating.

Of course, with this challenge mindset, we will regularly fall short. But the key is in the method, not the outcome. What matters is our state of mind when we perform under pressure, not whether we succeed or fail. We don’t lose heart when we don’t meet the challenge, because we appreciate that the learning we’ve just experienced is precious. Moments of failure arguably create more opportunities to get better than moments of success. The critical step is to embrace the pressure situation in the first place.

No one can meet every challenge. If we do, then we’ve set the bar too low and the challenges we’ve set don’t really deserve the name.

To reach our full potential, we have to keep pushing ourselves to our limit and beyond. We have to put ourselves in a position to deal with more and more demanding tasks. It’s about full commitment to the moment.

This is more difficult than it sounds. The discomfort makes most people flinch, so they never fully test themselves.

The word test comes from the Latin testum, meaning an earthen vessel. The idea was that the vessel was used to examine the quality of a substance placed within it – like a test tube. Some material was put inside it and subjected to different conditions, like heat.

Our performance arena is the equivalent of a test tube. Our mind is the material inside it. And the condition we’re being subjected to is pressure.

Our personal properties are being deliberately examined under pressure. When we face the heat, what qualities do we display? How do we function as we approach our limit? Do we retain our resilience, or melt and lose our mental structure?

When we start approaching test situations with relish, our tolerance of discomfort increases. Don’t worry, you don’t have to actually enjoy the discomfort – you just have to appreciate what it achieves. Discomfort is not a punishment, it’s a testing moment we’ve earned, and an invitation to step up to the next level.

The big mental shift in performance under pressure comes when we can feel fear but accept deep inside that we will mentally survive the moment. Once the mental threat in a situation is contained, it loses its power to overwhelm us emotionally and shut us down, allowing us to re-energise and face the challenge.

A challenge mindset means feeling the discomfort, but facing down the challenge without flinching.

Alex, a freestyle skier competing at a big championship event, is about to start her second run after her first one ended in a fall. A second poor run would see years of hard work end in misery.

In that moment, Alex is scared. Not of falling, or of missing out on a medal, but of the shame she’ll feel when she sees her coach, parents and teammates afterwards. She feels empty inside. She’s facing psychological devastation. It’s a RED alert moment.

But she has prepared for this possibility. At precisely the instant when everyone else gives up on her and sees what she might lose, she sees an extraordinary opportunity and what she might gain: a comeback story for the ages.

She breathes in deeply and imagines energy filling her core, and as she breathes out, she pictures fire spreading heat and energy throughout her body. She stands tall and feels herself growing in power as others cower down. Nothing could be better in her mind: this is no longer a championship event to compete in, it is her championship moment to own. No longer empty, hollow and cold, Alex can feel the fire burning inside. Her confidence restored, she attacks the run.

Our mirror neurons – specialised nerve cells that allow us to pick up on how other people are feeling – allow us to feel the fear in others. And when we see people feel the fear but take on the challenge anyway, we are inspired. It is a signature moment for performance under pressure.

If we mentally flinch or fold, our performance will be compromised, but if we know we can survive this moment, we can take it on with relish. And much better to take it on with courage than to dither and stall. The true meaning of courage is to act with heart when you are scared.

We are not defined by pressure moments unless we let them define us. Move through and past the psychological threat to see the wonderful opportunity presented to us to go as far as we can. Instead of becoming mentally subdued, numb and frozen, we will come alive. It will be life-changing.

Reflect on your mindset when you hit discomfort. What’s your habitual response? Are you stimulated by the challenge of these moments, or does the threat loom larger? Do you walk towards them or walk away?

The discomfort of pressure: threat or challenge?

Overthinking vs Connecting
Overthinking

When I ask athletes to describe their worst 10 minutes in sport, one word always causes moans of recognition: overthinking.

It’s a strange word. Can we think too much, really? And are there particular thoughts that we can think too much about?

The athlete usually goes on to explain that they were trying their level best to right a wrong, or raise their game, but their best intentions backfired. The harder they tried, the worse things got. It even felt like there was pressure building up inside their head. They had too many thoughts, too fast, and it held them back.

Under pressure, elite sportspeople do not want to think too much or too fast, because it causes problems for their performance. A busy mind gets in the way of clarity. And that is universally seen as a bad thing.

Imagine yourself in a high-pressure moment. Your confidence is taking a battering. The casual remedy is just to think positively, which assumes that we can just replace our negative thoughts with positive ones. But that is simply throwing fuel onto the RED fire.

Your BLUE mind is telling you: ‘I can!’ It’s not a particularly strong voice, perhaps even a bit squeaky. Because while it’s speaking there’s a far stronger, deeper, RED voice booming out the opposite message: ‘I can’t!’

It’s like having two independent minds going in opposite directions and arguing about which one is best. BLUE versus RED. And the RED message feels authentic, while the BLUE voice sounds hollow and unconvincing. (Remember, only our BLUE mind can use words; your RED mind speaks in the language of feelings and sensations. There are no words, but it certainly sends its message.)

In these situations, RED usually beats BLUE. The RED system will not lie down and be ignored – after all, it’s in charge of our survival. The survival parts of our brain appeared on the scene first and got prime position in our nervous system – right on the centre line, or close to it. The RED system cannot be switched off, and the harder the BLUE mind tries to suppress it, the louder the RED voice becomes. Every time we think something positive, a stronger negative thought or feeling comes bouncing back.

Mental chatter overloads our BLUE head, taking the top-down brakes off so that our RED head drives our behaviour more or less unchecked. RED is only interested in the here and now, so with the loss of our BLUE ability to read the play, our sense of direction and our awareness of possible consequences, we become prone to acting too fast, or too slow. That’s why we see even experienced performers become impulsive or hesitant in big moments.

RED vs BLUE STATE

When we are ‘in the RED’ we can lose emotional control, overthink and get diverted. When we are ‘in the BLUE’, we can hold our nerve, maintain our focus and stay on task.

Connecting

When I ask athletes to describe their best 10 minutes in sport, the one response that stands out is that they felt connected.

Instead of the overthinking that is the hallmark of their worst moments, their sense of connection with their immediate environment meant that they weren’t thinking much at all. Everything seemed so obvious and easy. They perceived, and they acted. They sensed, and they moved. They saw, and they did. The usual middle piece of thinking seemed to disappear. They were ‘in the zone’.

This intensely positive experience of connection is an example of complete absorption with our immediate environment. It’s when our connection with the external environment is so complete that we can effortlessly pick out small details that are overlooked by others, and act upon them decisively. It feels simple to get the timing right; in fact, time seems to slow down, allowing us to easily anticipate events and respond to them.

This is only possible when there’s no sense of disconnection. The most common disconnect occurs when we start to think not about how we are performing the task but how we are looking while we do it. We can only be completely on task when we lose our self-consciousness. The key is to commit all our attention to the external world, rather than splitting it between the external environment and a struggle within our internal world.

Instead of being distracted by doubt, we need to trust our ability to handle what is in front of us. This self-trust forms the RED backbone to support our BLUE focused attention. Banishing doubt and worry avoids overthinking – that busy mind that arises from an internal debate about what we’re doing.

But what about our discomfort, which we’ve seen is a key feature of pressure? We have to move through it. We can’t magically avoid or escape it, but we can choose not to focus on it. It just isn’t the main issue. We can make the discomfort an internal focus, leading to overthinking, with suffering in the foreground. Or we can simply notice the discomfort and let it subside into the background, while our focus returns to the immediate task. With this external focus on doing, our mind becomes still.

When our external environment is more captivating than our internal concerns, RED and BLUE can be in sync, which makes us feel single-minded as we go about our business.

In some cases this sense of connection is so complete – and the self-consciousness so absent – that the barriers between the individual and the environment seem to disappear, and performers say they feel completely at one with their setting.

Some activities are so dangerous – doing BASE jumps, surfing huge waves or free-climbing vicious rock faces – that they demand full attention to the external world. Any major internal diversion risks serious accident or tragedy. During these activities, extreme athletes need to be completely in the zone.

The zone isn’t something that we can simply think our way into, but we can certainly think our way out of it. If we’re completely absorbed by our environment and responding intuitively, then thinking is the last thing we should be doing.

Most athletes can recall one or two times when they were in that perfect zone. But most of us don’t perform in a situation where we need to focus so completely on the external world, or in dangerous physical environments where our physiological state is heightened, or else! Is the zone – that perfect sense of connection – even a reasonable target? If the zone makes things seem effortless, then making an effort to get there feels like the wrong thing to do.

Perfection – aiming for the zone – can be a trap. Instead, let’s return to the simple idea of trying to connect with our external world and removing our focus from our internal world. Let’s put more emphasis on the process of how to get where we want to go, and less on how we feel about where we are at the moment. Let’s regard being in the zone as something we may, or may not, achieve.

Being in the zone – physically and mentally – is an outcome. The process we use to get there is to control our attention. We set our external target, lock on to it and maintain our focus of attention, with full acceptance of our internal world. If we become diverted by internal discomfort, we just notice it then return to the task at hand.

When it comes to dealing with turning overthinking into connecting, acceptance beats resistance. Being deliberate about our external focus and allowing the discomfort to subside kick-starts our BLUE mind and allows us to find our RED–BLUE balance and get moving smoothly. And occasionally, very good things can happen.

Cast your mind back to the best 10 minutes of your best performance. How did you get into that state of mind? Was there anything deliberate you did other than focus intently on the task in front of you? Or did it just come out of the blue?

Yes, that’s right. It did indeed just come out of the BLUE.

Split Attention vs Dual Focus
Split attention

‘Pay attention!’

Growing up, how many times did we hear that from parents, teachers, coaches and others?! The reason why we heard it so often is that it’s great advice! It cuts right to the heart of performance under pressure, because the prime issue is our control of attention.

But as sound as it is, this advice is so familiar that it washes over us. We hear it all the time and so we stop hearing it. How ironic that the single best piece of advice we can receive for performing under pressure – ‘Pay attention!’ – doesn’t get our attention!

All those adults saw what was going wrong inside our head: we had lost our focus. We needed to learn how to deliberately pay attention to what we were doing, to hold it there despite potential diversions, and to shift it to a new focus when needed.

It sounds so straightforward because these are everyday mental processes that we take for granted. Surely something so basic and commonplace cannot be so important for performance?

It’s not only important, it is core to performing under pressure. In most demanding situations this most fundamental mental ability of all – how well we pay attention – has the largest influence on the outcome. If we don’t get that part right we are definitely going to struggle.

The emphasis on attention is important because it is arguably our greatest limitation. Our capacity to pay attention seems very big but it is, in fact, very small.

Remember that under pressure, the rules change, and the capacity of our working memory plummets. When the task in front of us is demanding, we can really only focus on one thing at a time. For conscious, demanding tasks, multitasking is a myth. No problem to talk on our phone while shopping at the supermarket: two easy, almost automatic tasks. But even then, mistakes can occur – we accidentally pick up the wrong item, we miss things that were on our list. Now add some pressure – a screaming child, time pressure to get to an urgent appointment – and the errors flood in. At the brain level, RED has disrupted BLUE and our once-clear mental screen has shrunk down and clouded over.

When we take on a demanding task but our attention is split, we go downhill fast. Doing two tricky things at a time – such as playing the piano while reciting verse – makes our performance deteriorate not just a bit, but dramatically. The fall-off is more a cliff than a gentle slope. I often tell athletes that when their attention is divided, they are half the player.

The magical question to ask ourselves when reviewing our performance under pressure is: ‘What were we paying attention to in that moment?’ Paying attention in performance situations is our most powerful – but vulnerable – mental tool, and so understanding what disrupts it is a revealing starting point. One of the most common attention traps is the negative content loop: a self-defeating, circular pattern of thinking and feeling. Instead of focusing fully on the task in front of us, we find our attention diverted towards potential or past negative outcomes, such as losing, making a mistake, or missing a deadline. We see threat in the situation, our negative perception of the threat sparks an emotional response, and our emotions lead to unhelpful behaviours. Those behaviours reinforce our negative perception, starting the loop off again, causing a self-reinforcing, downward spiral.

Remember Tony? He’s running late for another important meeting; this time he’s due to present an important pitch to senior colleagues. In his mind he can already imagine the looks of judgment as he walks in late. He’s angry with himself for miscalculating how long it would take to get ready, and at the same time he’s worried about the potential fallout for his pitch. He feels anxious and tense, his thoughts are racing and he can’t concentrate. Despite a late night rehearsing, his mind is suddenly foggy about his presentation and he feels himself starting to freeze. That alarming realisation only reinforces his negative self-judgment, and the negative content loop is set up.

Initially Tony had a positive picture in his head about how the situation would ideally work out. But the threat within the situation – his lateness and the negative attitude it will spark – has changed his perception. What he wanted and what he is likely to get are now at odds with each other. His fantasy and the reality clash, creating an internal conflict.

It’s almost as if he has one mind trying to do its best to prepare for his performance, and another mind that’s much more concerned about how he’ll be judged. He’s caught in two minds.

Instead of focusing on his presentation, he finds his attention stuck on exactly the outcomes he didn’t want. Sure, some of his attention still seems to be carrying him along, so that it’s not as if he’s completely stopped functioning. But a good chunk of his attention is now caught up in the negative spiral. He’s drowning in a flood of pessimistic thoughts and uncomfortable feelings, and is fast losing focus and effectiveness.

And it all seems to feed into the loop and strengthen it, so Tony finds it more and more difficult to get back on task. The loop becomes a downward spiral: the deeper he goes, the harder it is to climb out.

The reason why a negative content loop is so damaging for our focus is that it takes us out of the current moment. It diverts our attention from the present into the past (a mistake or missed opportunity) or the future (negative outcomes and the criticism and judgment that will result). Our mental horsepower is cut in half right when we need it most.

This looping into the past or future also gets our mind and body out of sync. Our body can only exist in the here and now, but when we are trapped in a negative content loop our thoughts are fixated on the past or future and drag us there mentally. This mind–body split takes its toll on how we think, feel and act.

One classic negative loop is the ‘poor me’ loop. Something goes wrong in our environment. We start to feel sorry for ourselves, seeing ourselves as the victim of circumstance. Life is unfair; we don’t deserve this. This swirl of feelings and thoughts makes us uptight, frustrated, angry. We get stuck on the injustice, feeling more and more self-righteous. And the situation just keeps compounding itself.

In a nutshell, we’re sulking. This kind of behaviour is meant to be restricted to children, but adults can turn it into an art form. Sulking involves both passive and aggressive elements: we withdraw and go silent, but make sure that everyone knows we are far from happy! We’re moody and resentful, and our sullen, brief replies, when we give them, are intended to annoy others.

Many of us demonstrate this behaviour. A lot.

From the performance point of view, sulking is a very unhelpful mental state to adopt. It leads to a lack of action and movement. Not only that, but the sulker also deliberately affects those around them. Because they feel like they are being punished, they punish others back.

Some people really know how to hold grudges. They are so adept at sulking that they can remain in that state not just for minutes or hours, but days, weeks, months, even years on end.

Next time you’re watching a sporting event, follow the competitors’ eyes. When an unfortunate incident occurs, they often look downwards, which can show they’re stuck in a ‘poor me’ loop, turning their attention inward. Or they may look upwards, questioning whatever higher power they deem responsible for the injustice. The origins of this type of ‘poor me’ behaviour lie in the attachment behaviour we looked at earlier. When the parent is well attuned to their child’s distress, they can provide comfort through non-judgmental facial contact and a soothing voice, but when the relationship is unpredictable or unresponsive, the child will come to associate their discomfort with a lack of eye contact. Later in life, when the same individual faces disappointment and discomfort the same pattern will emerge. The ‘poor me’ loop, and other negative content loops, are a deadly attention trap for performance. This kind of mental state doesn’t matter that much if we’re just going about our everyday tasks. But when we’re in a more demanding situation, it can become our sworn enemy. It sucks away treasured attention that we could be using to extract maximum information from our environment, solve problems or overcome obstacles.

Think about our golfer from earlier, feeling anxious as he takes the final shot in his first big championship. He might be focusing on where he wants the ball to go, but because his RED mind has taken over, part of his attention is also diverted to the water trap and where he doesn’t want the ball to land. He starts to worry about the water trap and a negative content loop is triggered. Out of nowhere, some self-defeating self-talk – ‘I’m going to miss the shot … I’m going to lose the championship!’ – and negative feelings – shame, frustration – seem to burst onto the scene.

His mind now contains images of two ‘targets’: the one he wants to hit and the one he doesn’t. And because he’s trying to perform while he’s split in two by doubt, his shot inevitably falls somewhere in the middle.

Cast your mind back to a recent performance moment when you lost mental focus. What diverted your attention in that moment? Did you get trapped in a negative content loop and partially fixated on what you didn’t want to happen? It was as if part of you was doing everything it could to defeat you in that moment.

You were caught in two minds.

Dual focus

For a head chef in a reputable restaurant, which is more important: having a laser-like focus on the food, or keeping an eye on her team, the supply chain, the wait staff, the table service and a long list of other factors? Narrow focus on food, or broad focus on the general restaurant situation?

The answer is that both are necessary. The head chef cannot afford to take her eye off the overall situation, and she most definitely cannot let substandard food pass. Both the overview and the specific detail are required. One without the other would be a recipe for disaster.

Our actions should always take place within the big picture of what we are trying to achieve, which requires attention to context. At the same time, we need a narrow focus on the specific task we’re engaged in, which requires attention to detail.

While the RED mind can process many things unconsciously at the same time, the BLUE mind is linear, allowing us to concentrate on only one thing at a time. The head chef is intuitively aware of both the wider situation and specific tasks through her RED mind, but still consciously focuses on each in turn. It seems simple, but it works.

A dual focus requires a tight, constant feedback loop between the overview and the specific task, with each informing the other. At any one time, our dominant focus will be on either one. The key is to move back and forth between the two, rather than splitting attention between them.

Here’s a puzzle: dual focus and split attention both imply that our attention has to be in two places at once. So why does dual focus feed performance, while split attention starves it?

Let’s use an example to paint a picture of the differences.

Leo has just dropped a simple catch and gifted the opposition the upper hand in the closing stages of an important match. In the minute or so that follows, his mind goes back and replays the memory of his fumble and the moans of the watching crowd over and over. At the same time, he’s constantly looking at the clock and seeing the final seconds of the game tick by, and his mind keeps flashing forward to the devastation of his teammates in the dressing room after the game finishes. His attention is split between the present, past and future. His RED mind becomes hyperactive and he loses the capacity to think clearly. Mentally pulled in different directions, he becomes stuck – a deer in the headlights, frozen to the spot.

Now, imagine Leo is able to use dual focus to keep his focus in the present moment. He glances at the scoreboard and sees that he has two minutes left. He has the overview.

He then focuses on the immediate task, which is to help get the ball back in a coordinated team effort. The team have practised two-minute scenarios many times in training to prepare for this type of situation. He has the specifics.

He goes into dual focus – moving flexibly back and forth between the situational overview and his specific tasks – as the end of the game unfolds. There is a vague feeling of discomfort at the back of his mind that seems to be calling out, but he just accepts it and focuses his attention on communicating with his teammates. It’s time to hold his nerve, find his move and nail any opportunity to emerge, while maintaining a good RED–BLUE balance. In the final two minutes, Leo sets up teammates in good attacking positions three times. Although his team fall just short, afterwards Leo’s coach praises his ability to rebound from his disappointment and remain focused and engaged in the game.

Split attention divides attention in time and place; the different parts interfere with each other, and they all seem to occur simultaneously. Dual focus keeps the connection in the present moment.

Dual focus also trumps split attention because of the type of information being processed. When our attention is split, the diversion is inevitably about the negative meaning of a situation. Problems become jumbled up with solutions. When we have dual focus, we’re tightly focused on the process of completing our task (detail) while constantly reading shifts in our environment (overview). It’s about looking ahead without disconnecting from the moment.

I find that many people assume they already routinely use this two-level control of attention without any significant interference, when in reality they habitually fall into attention traps that lead them to think too much or too little.

Some fall for one-level attention, becoming preoccupied with either the overview or the detail, but not both. Having a single focus is simplistic: we will either miss shifts in the wider context and react slowly, or miss crucial detail in the specific task we’re working on.

Others add a third element to the dual focus and let themselves be diverted by a negative loop. Having a triple focus is too complex when it involves a RED mist that interferes with BLUE clarity.

Yet experts across countless fields have the capacity to switch their attention between perspective (the overview) and precision (the detail) when the heat is on. Skilful control of attention – avoiding negative content loops and maintaining their dual focus – is what separates them from the rest.

The lead violinist in an orchestra doesn’t just look at the music (detail) but also focuses much of the time on remaining in sync with the conductor and setting the rhythm for the whole orchestra (overview). This is so important that the second violinist turns the pages for their more senior colleague.

For flight crews, losing focus on the overview (called situational awareness) can and does lead to tragedies. Dual focus isn’t a desirable add-on, it’s a sharp-edged performance essential. It’s vital for flight crews to execute tasks accurately but it’s also vital for them to remain alert to changes in their environment.

It’s common for surgeons to face complications within an operation, or timing issues requiring careful rearrangement of their surgical list. Experienced surgeons have told me that as their decision-making abilities have developed in these areas, so has their execution. They make fewer errors when they make better decisions. If we are constantly updating our overview and continuously adjusting the specifics of the task we’re doing, we are in a good place.

Dual focus is nothing more than an ordinary, everyday mental process – paying attention – but maintaining this focus under an extraordinary set of circumstances is another matter again. High performers do not have different mental apparatus when it comes to paying attention. Everyone can check the overview and focus on the task, in ordinary circumstances. Whether you’re a surgeon, teacher, taxi driver or graphic artist, the trick is not letting your focus fall away into split attention when the pressure is on.

Under pressure, do you tend to get diverted into the RED and halve your mental efficiency, or do you do double time into the BLUE and accelerate with undivided attention?

Which are you more skilled at: the situational overview or the task detail? Would other people who know you well say that, under pressure, you are both aware and accurate?

Going APE vs Deciding to ACT
APE

Under pressure we all fail in predictable ways.

We’ve looked at how the same emergency reactions seen in animals – fight, flight or freeze – are triggered in modern-day performance situations, although usually more by social threats than physical danger. To help us translate them from the animal kingdom to our world of performance, let’s modernise the behaviours by renaming them.

Rather than fight, think aggressive. Under pressure, people raise their voices, threaten, bully, confront, insult, reject and exclude.

Rather than flight, think escape. Under pressure, people remove themselves from the fray by being late or not turning up, taking sick leave, resigning, or getting sent off the sports field.

And rather than freeze, think passive. People who can’t get out of a situation may not go completely immobile, but they go quiet and look down when volunteers are requested, always letting others go first and staying a step behind, just generally going through the motions.

For my money, the passive reaction is the invisible killer of performance. People can hide in plain sight by being present and operating at a minimum standard, doing just enough to avoid drawing attention to themselves as not contributing. It’s a silent epidemic that can completely undermine a team dynamic.

Many team-sport athletes know this type of player: the one who is on the field but never really gets their hands dirty, and always seems to be one step off the pace. Large organisations are often full of people who say the right things but whose actions lack impact.

Sometimes the passive state can be misread as being relaxed: a basic but common error in the sports world. Unless we are an animal playing dead and hoping to escape, it is a poor performance state.

These three styles of behaviour, aggressive, passive and escape – APE – are the three most unhelpful reactions we have under pressure. They all arise from RED, high-arousal reactions; even the passive reaction, involving low arousal, follows an initial high-arousal spike. The APE acronym reminds us that we share these responses with most members of the animal kingdom – and they are most definitely within us all.

In our early years, we all develop a personal pattern that means one of these three becomes our default reaction to extreme pressure. Or it might be a combination of two, or all three. Passive–aggressive behaviour is a classic example.

Recognising our personal defensive behaviour style and how it hurts our performance will show us what traps to avoid in the future. If we take this step, we are already in a stronger position to perform under pressure.

What APE pattern do you default to when you fall apart under pressure – A, P, E, or a deadly combination?

ACT

Under pressure we all succeed in predictable ways.

Peter is a foreman leading an expensive new house build that is just three weeks out from the date when the owners expect to move in. His team is facing pressure on several fronts. The architect has identified a large area of plastering that will need to be redone. One of Peter’s senior builders has had an accident onsite, which has triggered a health and safety investigation and left Peter short-handed. Plus, Peter’s usual subcontracting electrician isn’t available because of a family bereavement, and the replacement is not fitting in well with his team. On top of that, there’s been an extended spell of poor weather.

It would be very easy for Peter to fall into APE behaviours that block progress instead of moving his team forward. The pathway ahead, though, is clear.

First, he needs to stay aware of his internal reactions, to limit any APE behaviours. It won’t help for him to go deep RED right now!

Second, he needs to be clear about the proper process for the health and safety investigation, the repair timeline for the plasterers, and his expectations of the replacement electrician.

Third, he must stay on top of his crew and make sure that each task is finished calmly and efficiently, so that they get the house built on time.

This aware–clear–task sequence – or ACT – stands in contrast to the RED-fuelled APE reactions, which are characterised by lack of self-awareness, lack of clarity, and off-task behaviours. No matter how big the moment of pressure, we are well served by an ACT approach because it leads to specific actions that create movement.

ACT needs our BLUE mind to fire strongly. Because the BLUE mind is linear, it loves short sequences, so the three ACT steps are a good fit. (As we’ll discover, the RED–BLUE tool is based on the very same sequence.)

To be aware requires us to step back and reflect, which is a core BLUE-brain activity. Once we have a good idea of our external situation and our personal reaction to it, we can ensure we’re clear about what needs to be done first, and how to do it. Plenty of people start doing things without being aware and clear, and so the impact of their actions is diluted. There’s a lot to be gained from a deliberate process of considering alternatives and consequences before deciding to act.

Once we’ve made our decision, we can carry out our task accurately. If we are aware and clear, there is no doubt or vagueness to divert us, and our actions will have impact.

BLUE-based ACT responses are based on a desire to function better in challenging situations, while RED-driven APE reactions are based on getting out of threatening situations.

When we are in the zone, we will already be in an ACT state of mind. But for the majority of our lives we need a simple set of steps to follow under pressure. The great thing is that by not concentrating on getting into the zone and just following the process, we are more likely to end up in the zone anyway.

The ACT sequence is intended for repeated use because most performances involve a series of separate challenges. Aware provides our personal overview of the situation. Clear gives us a strategy to put into action. And task gets us going.

Instead of reacting to pressure defensively with APE behaviours, we can use the ACT sequence to face the pressure, and find a way to adapt and move forward.

It wouldn’t make sense to bury ourselves in the task without constantly reviewing our context and strategy. Every time we check on the context, we can adjust our strategy. Every time we adapt our strategy, we can adjust our actions. And every time we act, the context changes slightly, so we can circle back to the top. A key mental building block for performance under pressure is flexibility.

Choose a recent moment when you had to step up under pressure, and did. Can you recognise a moment when you put a stop to your APE behaviour, and got a grip on your reaction to the context (aware), formed a strategy (clear) and went to work with conviction (task)? If so, you’ve already intuitively discovered the ACT structure and applied it successfully.

ESC-APE vs IMP-ACT
ESC-APE

Some moments are just too big for us.

Sometimes, under pressure, we hit our threshold, and it’s then that our damaging APE behaviours emerge.

Most pressure arises from our fear of possible judgment. And the key elements of judgment are expectations, scrutiny and consequences (ESC).

Before we perform, people are expecting us to reach a certain standard. During our performance, we are scrutinised, often publicly. And afterwards, the quality and outcome of our performance will have consequences.

Sometimes we will be affected by one element more than the others, but generally they work together as a tight, inescapable sequence. As the level of expectations, scrutiny and consequences rises, so does the pressure. And it works in the opposite direction: if expectations, scrutiny or consequences are reduced or taken away, pressure evaporates.

More expectations and scrutiny always mean bigger and wider-ranging consequences. These consequences extend beyond success and failure to include material outcomes such as salary increases and promotion. And these material outcomes are rocketed upwards by media reactions and – perhaps the ultimate judgment – the impact on our reputation. The higher the level we are operating at, the more we have to lose through consequences.

Not all moments are equal. Every elite performer has had moments that carried greater significance, when they failed to cope.

Most people, when they go to work or undertake an activity, are not looking for ESC. In fact, most people try to avoid judgment as much as possible. The less ESC there is, the more comfortable they are. This returns us to the idea that operating when we are uncomfortable is at the heart of performance under pressure.

The external origins of pressure – ESC – plus the most unhelpful behaviours under pressure – APE – create the ESC-APE model. There are some moments that carry too much pressure for us to bear because of the level of ESC, and this level of discomfort causes us to go APE. Rather than thinking clearly, we act impulsively out of emotional tension. We avoid the discomfort through aggressive or passive behaviours, or by escaping from the situation altogether.

Try applying the ESC-APE model to your personal performance history. If you’re honest, looking back, which behaviours are you least proud of? Which behaviours have damaged your reputation the most? Can you recognise how expectations, scrutiny and consequences created pressure that affected your behaviour? Perhaps you stepped out onto a bigger ‘performance stage’ than normal, with a larger audience watching to see whether you could cope. But instead of performing at your best, you got loud, boisterous, and belligerent; or you cried off and said you were unwell when you really could have turned up; or you performed, but you were quiet and restrained and just never got going.

IMP-ACT

Newton’s first law states that an object will remain in its current state of motion unless an external force acts on it to change its momentum. We humans are the same: we only move because of pressure. It’s all about inertia, a resistance to change.

Most people need external pressure to move them. But there’s a smaller group driven by pressure from within – and they’re the ones who inevitably go further.

If externally driven people respond to pressure, it’s because they’re moved by expectations, scrutiny and consequences (ESC) from their employers and others. But what if we’re internally driven?

Instead of someone else’s expectations, we’re driven by our own intention. Instead of being affected by someone else’s scrutiny, we have a clear sense of where we are right now, in this moment. And instead of someone else’s consequences, we are focused on our current priority. The mental recipe for internally driven people is intention, moment, priority, or IMP.

Start with the context: think of a current situation that’s challenging you. First, in that situation, what is your intention? Look into the future and decide what outcome you want and the way you want to operate. How it will look and feel to close observers? Second, what is the reality in this moment? What is currently working well and what isn’t? There’s probably a gap between your intent and your current reality. Third, what is your priority for closing this gap and making progress towards the desired outcome? Be specific: what will your first step be?

If we are internally driven, we are far less affected by external pressure, because the drive from within is stronger. We are not immune to it, but it is less disturbing.

Performers who are externally driven also tend to identify external factors that are limiting their ability. This is more comfortable because it makes it not their fault. Internally driven performers tend to look at internal obstacles and see their primary opponent as themselves.

Being internally driven also feels different. Instead of feeling the weight of expectation coming down on us from the outside, we feel power flowing up from within. External pressure breaks us down, makes us shrink, and burdens us; internal drive builds us up, makes us grow, and energises us.

IMP sets us up to be far more resilient mentally in the face of external pressure. When we need external ESC pressure to move, we are vulnerable to RED aggressive, passive, escape (APE) reactions. The two go hand in hand, forming the unhelpful ESC-APE pathway that leads us to disengage under pressure. In contrast, the internal IMP factors tend to drive the BLUE aware, clear, task (ACT) responses, forming the constructive IMP-ACT structure, which keeps us engaged under pressure.

Instead of feeling or deciding that the moment is too big for us, which causes us to ESC-APE, we stand our ground and have IMP-ACT. Moderate performers are pushed along by others and tend to escape when the pressure comes on, while elite performers are pulled forward by their own ambitions.

But the acronyms ESC-APE and IMP-ACT represent more than words, because when we follow them, they lead to different biological responses. ESC-APE behaviours follow threat, setting off our RED mind. IMP-ACT is linked to challenge, which strongly activates our BLUE mind, especially our left pre-frontal cortex, a part of the brain stimulated by goal-setting and new learning.

Sophie and her teenage daughter Emily are exploring the capital city of a foreign country. Sophie, an experienced traveller, deliberately takes a back seat when it’s time to head home from a day visiting various landmarks so that Emily has to work out how to get them there.

It’s getting late and they are tired, so Sophie suggests to Emily that she can lead the way back to their hotel despite the different language (expectation), that Sophie will be watching her as she works out the way on public transport (scrutiny), and that they can’t rest or stop for food until they get home (consequences).

It would be easy for Emily to go RED – become aggressive or passive, or escape (in a taxi) as quickly as possible. But she checks herself and decides to go down the BLUE IMP-ACT pathway.

First, she reminds herself of her intention, which is to demonstrate that she can be trusted to travel independently. Second, she focuses on the moment, and sees that she has no idea where they are or the quickest route home, and has only a smattering of the local vocabulary to get them out of the situation. Third, she works out her priority, which she quickly sees is to get to the nearest underground metro station and find a transport map to work out a good route home.

Following these three steps allows Emily to move towards BLUE behaviours, remaining aware of her emotional tone, clear about what she needs to do, and ready to get on with her task. She takes the IMP-ACT pathway and comes across as composed, clear and collaborative.

In the same high-pressure moment, we have two alternatives: to ESC-APE the tension, or to have IMP-ACT despite the tension. That first step – refusing to step over the RED line into ESC-APE territory – is critical. Sometimes there is no coming back.

When we stand near the RED ESC-APE line we are at an emotional crossroads. If we decide to be drawn over the line, we need to be clear that we have allowed that to happen, not blame others and justify it with excuses – the ESC-APE artist’s signatures.

If we make it our decision to step over it or not, rather than relinquishing the decision to the forces of pressure, we will be stronger mentally. We might not immediately get on top of the situation, but stepping over the line into BLUE IMP-ACT territory is a good start, because it ends our internal debate about whether to give in to the pressure. We have enough on our plate in this moment. It’s not a time to overthink the situation, it’s a time to take emotional control.

Riaz, a surgeon, is moving smoothly through an operation, but the cosmetic result at the end does not look neat. He feels disappointed, angry and tense as he imagines explaining it to the patient later, and in that moment he notices a junior assistant laughing with the anaesthetist. He feels on the verge of an aggressive outburst, but sees the RED ESC-APE line in his mind, takes back the control, and decides to have IMP-ACT. He takes a deep breath and closes up the final wound again with extra care.

Ari, a 17-year-old, is on an outdoor leadership course, and although he is very comfortable with the physical activities, he is having difficulty overcoming his social anxiety. The course leader asks for volunteers to lead the next task. Ari wants to raise his arm, but tension holds him back. He feels himself going passive, but sees the RED ESC-APE line in his mind and realises he is allowing himself to be dragged over it yet again. In that moment, he chooses to have IMP-ACT. He thrusts his arm up into the air and takes a step forward.

Refuse to mentally buckle. Instead, choose to have IMP-ACT.

When you look at your personal performance history, would you say you are more externally (ESC-APE) or internally (IMP-ACT) driven?

Are you reliant on your coach’s stirring words before the game, or your chief executive’s rousing speeches? Or do you become even more energised when things are not going to plan, drawn in by the challenge rather than discouraged by the obstacle?

Make sure your energy comes mostly from within, and draws you forward into the challenge.

Overload and Overwhelm vs Overview and Overcome
Overload and overwhelm

Right in the middle of the ESC-APE process, we can have an experience so destructive that without it, I would not be writing this book: overwhelm.

The state of overwhelm feels like a force overpowering us, a load so heavy we think we can’t cope with the weight.

The heaviness comes from the burden of the external ESC pressure – the expectations, the scrutiny and the consequences of judgment. When those three aspects are rolled into one dense load, the situation becomes too much for us to bear. Our thinking, our feelings, in fact our whole perception becomes overloaded. And that mental overload pitches us into a state of overwhelm.

We all have a particular load that we can tolerate. It is not set in stone, and fluctuates with time. But the mental formula is always the same: when our current limit is reached, we become overloaded, then overwhelmed.

As well as overpowering us mentally, it feels like the external world of pressure is having a physical impact on us. Our posture changes, shrinking us down. We start to stoop, tense our jaw, hunch our shoulders, and bend at the knee, bracing ourselves against the invisible weight. Our breathing becomes shallow, our voice weak. We are a picture of tension, as if we’re really

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