Fractured Thoughts On: Pressure
Fractured Thoughts On is a jumbled set of thoughts from my mind that are being put down on paper. They are entirely based on my own experiences and knowledge and may not be very complete, but I wanted them down on paper somewhere.
Pressure is always something I’ve been able to write off or overcome. I’ve looked at it as two types of pressure: extremely high in-the-moment pressure, and the constant pressure over time. Each has been experienced, but at different levels in different moments and I’ve found that in a lot of cases I can ignore it. However there are cases where I can’t ignore it, even temporarily and those tend to be very high pressure situations where you really find out if you’re capable of bending instead of breaking.
In-the-moment pressure is often self-induced. To feel in that moment that you must clutch up and succeed is usually because you tell yourself that you must succeed. That pressure is entirely on you, even in situations where pressure may be unwarranted. However it is pretty common to suddenly come under pressure because someone is watching. Similarly, team related tasks or games will also put you under pressure because you don’t want to let your teammates down. A lot of that pressure is self induced because you are mentally amplifying the pressure that you think you feel from teammates and trigger a desire to not disappoint everyone. The most recent example of this was during the Hearthstone collegiate circuit. Playing the games and knowing that your team essentially rides on you was very stressful for three hour stretches, even though at the end of the day we didn’t think we’d do well and didn’t have hopes to qualify for playoffs.
I’ve only really experienced constant pressure in two situations: while playing competitive hockey and in school. I wasn’t that good compared to the other players, but I was always under pressure to do better and improve. I wasn’t going to reach the level that coaches and my dad wanted, but they were always on my case about it. In school, I’ve always been under pressure to do well. There was always this expectation that I have potential and therefore have the ability to perform extremely well and I felt that I did perform throughout high school, however it had never really been true pressure. It was more like a nagging thought in the back of my head that reminded me that I needed to focus on school and not screw around for a while, so it was easy to just set it aside and return to school work as a habit.
This term has brought on a different kind of pressure. A kind of pressure that is seemingly overwhelming in so many ways because I’m being pulled in multiple directions. Pressure to do well in school, the extra-curriculars I’m leading, job hunt, self improvement, final projects, literally everything that is current ongoing in my life is now building up to this overwhelmingness that I generally feel helpless against.
It sucks. Sucks even more because I have never really had experience in these types of situations. The pressure I’m used to the most is in the moment, which comes and passes within a few days at most. But to have this level of mounting pressure that you might just collapse under is a completely different type of mental impact. This, accompanied with some potentially self destructive tendencies of never stopping, is a kind of instability that has never really happened before to me. But here we are.
The only real path is to keep moving forward. Sure, it would be good to take a break but that means that you stop moving, and at this point stopping is the same as going backwards. It’s up to me to improve to become a better version of myself, and that is only going to be found by working my way through the pressure and coming out the other side.
