Dr Dave Alred on how to cope in high-pressure situations – and excel in them.

Pressure is awful. It’s the thing that makes you fail your driving test. Or stumble awkwardly through the gags in your best-man speech. It’s the reason you miss your tennis serve, or mess up your guitar solo. It forces you to accidentally insult people on first dates and say ridiculous things such as “I think my main weakness is my perfectionism” in job interviews. (That last one is particularly unforgivable). Most would agree that pressure is not a nice thing. But Dr Dave Alred, one of the world’s most respected performance coaches – he  has worked with a range of elite athletes from rugby great Mr Jonny Wilkinson to champion golfer Mr Pádraig Harrington – has another way of looking at it, as he explains in his new book The Pressure Principle.

Pressure, says Dr Alred, is not just part and parcel of a great performance, it can actually fuel it, provided you approach it in the right way. Bringing together a vast amount of wisdom on the subject, drawn from Dr Alred’s far-reaching experience in everything from Australian rules football to dolphin training (“one of the things that really hit me sideways”), the book outlines key ways in which you can steel yourself not only to cope in pressurised situations, but to excel in them. Elements of this involve sustained practice and conditioning, but there are also plenty of simple tips for quickly improving your reactions to pressure. Below, Dr Alred takes us through three of them.

Dr Alred notes that a lot of the most successful professional sportsmen adopt a “big”, controlled posture when they’re in high-pressure situations, such as taking a penalty or converting a rugby try. Such physical control, he says, can help in any situation.

“The mind and the body are a continuum,” he says. “How many times, when you’re over the laptop, do you suddenly arch your back, stretch your neck and reset your posture, only to slump back to your original posture? I would suggest that you sit on a Swiss ball with your shoulders back. Now you’re upright and you’re more efficient. You’re in control and you’re in command, rather than being subservient to the situation.”

In his work with athletes and professionals, Dr Alred often writes affirmations, a series of positive statements that can be read through (out loud or in the mind) before taking on something you know is going to be challenging.

“Language is the currency of your brain,” he says. “If your language is productive, front-footed and proactive, chances are you will be. For example, if you’re going in to see a difficult client, you should reset your posture and tell yourself: ‘I’m going to be calm and in control. I’m not going to be bulldozed. I’ll listen to you, but you also need to listen to me.’ It’s so much better than standing outside thinking, ‘It’s going to be tough, but I’ll do my best.’”

Part of the effect of pressure is a feeling of tunnel vision. Dr Alred calls it “sensory shutdown”, where you zero in on one element of what you’re doing. This often means, however, that you focus on the outcome (or fear of failure) and don’t pay attention to the specifics of what you’re doing. Instead, you should train awareness on the manageable, smaller elements of your performance.

“You need to break down goals into bite-sized chunks,” says Dr Alred. “The point is that the goals should be realistic and identify processes that will improve your performance. Just stating the obvious – ‘You only sold 10 cars this month; we want you to improve’ – doesn’t give you the how-to. In the car business, or any business, you have to master the processes.”

The Pressure Principle by Dr Dave Alred is out now