Ep. 76: How to Overcome Olympic-Sized Pressure with Dane Jensen

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Do you think you have what it takes to be an Olympian? Nevermind the athletic ability—could you withstand the pressure, the weight of the world watching you compete on the world’s biggest stage? Dane Jensen—CEO of consulting firm Third Factor and the author of The Power of Pressure: Why Pressure Isn’t the Problem, It’s the Solution—is the guy Canadian Olympic-level athletes and coaches call when they need help handling that pressure. An expert on the subject, Jensen believes that we can not only manage pressure, but learn to use it to our advantage. And while he may mostly work with elite athletes and high-level executives, his invaluable advice can be applied in our own pressure-filled lives too. This week, Jensen joins host and Medcan CEO Shaun Francis to discuss his book, how Olympians are feeling in Tokyo right now, and share some of his best coping strategies.

LINKS

Read more on Jensen and his work at Third Factor here. He’s also on Twitter and LinkedIn. 

Find out more about his book here, and order a copy over at Indigo.

Listen to Jensen talk about pressure and resilience on The Impactors Podcast. 

Read his Harvard Business Review piece “Turn Your Team’s Frustration into Motivation.” 

Check out this Best Health story on Olympian-worthy coaching strategies.

INSIGHTS 

“Uncertainty is one of the biggest drivers of pressure,” Jensen argues. He adds that the human body actually experiences uncertainty kind of similar to physical pain. Research has shown that if you put somebody under a brain scan, the same centres light up under uncertainty as physical pain. So, leading up to a typical Olympic games, athletes are mentally preparing by building up as much certainty as possible — specific routines, knowing set information about their events, anything that they can control. This allows them to focus on the process, which ultimately helps them manage pressure. [03:09]

In his book, Jensen has devised a pressure equation: Pressure = Importance x Uncertainty x Volume. Uncertainty, of course, functions as mentioned above. Meanwhile, importance is directly related to the amount of pressure that you feel during a given moment. “If I’m feeling pressure, this must matter to me — I must be doing something that’s actually important to me, which is good,” Jensen explains. The final component is volume, basically the sheer amount of uncertain, important circumstances you have to deal with at once. And these days? You’re likely dealing with more pressure than ever. [10:38]

During the conversation, Jensen cites Harvard’s Alison Brooks, who has written about anxious reappraisal. Physiologically, anxiety and excitement manifest in very similar ways: sudden sweating, a quickening heart rate, you know what it feels like. Brooks says that when you’re nervous, you can actually manipulate your emotional state by instead telling yourself that you’re excited. This is a technique Jensen often works with others on as well. “I want an athlete, I want somebody who’s standing up to give a big sales presentation, doing a job interview, whatever, I want them, in advance, to viscerally imagine what their body is going to feel like in that situation,” he explains, adding that you’re training yourself to expect these physical reactions, which means they’ll be less distracting when they do arise. “That ability to anticipate physical activation and then … be able to productively label those physical sensations is actually much more of a high-performance state.” [16:06]

One of Jensen’s favourite stories from his book is about Johann Olav Koss, a decorated speed skater from Norway. In the lead up to the 1994 winter games, which were held in his home country, Koss was feeling so much pressure that he actually broke down crying in a stairwell just days before his races. He didn’t think he could handle it. “The ability to separate ego-driven by stakes from what’s actually at play is an important tool,” Jensen explains. Luckily, Koss had a great sports psychologist with him to work through the situation. She said: “Johan, I know you want to be a doctor after your athletics career. Will failing at these Olympics impact your ability to be a physician?” No, he realized; in fact it might teach him even greater empathy. Then she asked: “There are many Norwegeian skaters competing. Do you think your country will care which one of you wins?” Probably not, he realized. “Literally, brick by brick, they unloaded the added importance he placed on himself in that situation so that they got a balanced view,” Jensen says. “When it comes to [pressure], I really have to be able to see how what I do is important to me, while at the same time not getting overwhelmed by the stakes.” In Koss’ case, it worked, too: He won three gold medals and broke all sorts of records at those games. [18:17]

Under situations of pressure, Jensen says you should be able to answer at least one of three questions: How is this pressure helping me grow? How is enduring this pressure benefiting others? And how is this pressure bringing me closer to the people I care about? If you can answer these questions, you’ll be able to equip yourself better to handle whatever it is. Oftentimes, Jensen has found that those who can’t answer these questions look back at how they handled the pressure with regret. [25:04]

EPISODE 76: HOW TO OVERCOME OLYMPIC-SIZED PRESSURE FINAL WEB TRANSCRIPT

Christopher Shulgan: Welcome to Eat Move Think episode 76. I'm executive producer Christopher Shulgan. Tokyo Olympics, they're well under way, and can you imagine what those athletes are going through? The immense pressure of being someone like young Canadian swimmer Penny Oleksiak, the eyes of an entire nation on you. You step up to the side of the pool, are you gonna crumble? Are you gonna thrive?

[00:00:29.28]

Christopher Shulgan: Even if you can't imagine the pressure that Oleksiak is facing, you are human, and you do know what pressure feels like—whether it's some kind of family situation, a big presentation you've worked on for months, or trying to negotiate a well-deserved raise at work.

[00:00:43.20]

Christopher Shulgan: Dane Jensen is an expert on pressure. The CEO of consulting firm Third Factor, Jensen has worked with major companies like RBC, Uber and Twitter, as well as Olympic athletes and coaches in Canada's sport system. He helps them all learn to cope with the pressure they deal with every day. Pressure, Jensen argues, can not only be managed, it can also be used to our advantage. Jensen's tips work wonders for Olympians—and they can apply to the rest of us non-elite athletes, too.

[00:01:12.00]

Christopher Shulgan: Now, Jensen has put his thought-provoking expertise down on paper in his first book, The Power of Pressure: Why Pressure Isn't the Problem, It's the Solution. Just before the Olympics began, Jensen sat down with our host, Medcan CEO Shaun Francis—who Jensen features in his book—to offer an inside look at what Canada's Olympians may be feeling, to share his advice and help us understand how we can all thrive under pressure. Here's their conversation.

[00:01:40.25]

Shaun Francis: So welcome Dane Jensen. I'm Shaun Francis, CEO of Medcan and primary protagonist in the Eat Move Think podcast. Dane is a longtime friend of mine. I'm delighted to participate in his new book. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to tell my story. Dane is the CEO of Third Factor Consulting, and has a long history and family history of sports psychology and just general coaching for elite athletes and leaders. So I'm really glad to have you with us today. And the timing is amazing, because of course, the Olympics starts I want to say Friday, it might be the opening.

[00:02:20.03]

Dane Jensen: Yeah. And in fact, there's already competition underway. The women's softball team played yesterday, the women's basketball team kicked off. So even though the opening ceremonies haven't yet occurred, yeah, it's happening. The pressure's here, the long lead up and all the uncertainty is starting to resolve a little bit.

[00:02:34.28]

Shaun Francis: First of all, it's bizarre. There are no fans.

[00:02:36.25]

Dane Jensen: Yeah.

[00:02:37.10]

Shaun Francis: They've travelled a long way to get there. There's probably all these COVID protocols, and then you're not even sure if you're competing next week. So, you know, what's going through the head of an athlete right now?

[00:02:47.24]

Dane Jensen: You know, the word unprecedented has been thrown around a lot over the past year and a half. I think this is truly unprecedented in terms of the nature of the lead up to the games, when it comes to the athlete preparation, the family preparation, the coach, the support team preparation. You know, I think one of the things we'll talk a lot about in this podcast—because it's a big theme in the book—is uncertainty. You know, uncertainty is one of the biggest drivers of pressure. The human body experiences uncertainty kind of similar to physical pain. If you put somebody under a brain scan, the same centres light up under uncertainty as physical pain. So we really are wired to flee uncertainty. And so if you look at the run up to a typical Olympic or Paralympic Games, it's entirely about building as much certainty as possible. You go and visit the venues so that when the athletes are doing their mental preparation, they can do it where they're actually going to have to compete. They have very clear and specific routines of what's going to happen when, who's going to have access, who's going to be there. You know, all of that stuff is as much as possible, timed and laid out so that the athlete can start to build certainty and focus on process, which is a big part of managing pressure.

[00:03:57.05]

Dane Jensen: So I think part of what's made this so challenging for so many athletes is an inability to do a lot of the things that in the past have typically built certainty in the lead up to the games. And right to the last mile, you know, the experience of arriving in Tokyo, which has been really well documented by a lot of the Team Canada athletes, you know, many of them were in the airport in Tokyo for nine hours with no food, no water, not sure when they were going to get out, not sure exactly what step of the process they're in. And I think all of that stuff, when you have to compete in five days, and are processing a 13-hour time change for something you've prepared your entire life for, you know, it has the potential to create a tonne of pressure and a fair bit of distress. And so, you know, I've been unbelievably impressed with the athletes that are in our orbit in our world, and their ability to adapt. And, you know, as much as we like to prescribe routine, their ability to be flexible and kind of cultivate a little bit more of an elastic mindset.

[00:04:58.26]

Dane Jensen: And I think one of the things that's really challenging in an Olympic context in particular is the levels at which these athletes have to train, the discipline that they have to enact every single day, the human brain is always looking for like, just a little bit of an escape hatch from that relentless discipline, right? "Well, maybe I can take today off," or, you know, "If I just do this, that won't rip." And so when you add in the, "Hey, this might not happen at all," all of a sudden you have this whole additional kind of willpower requirement to will yourself to do this stuff with the uncertainty of whether this is even going to transpire. So I think it has been a real test of resilience and mental toughness. And listen, the athletes are up to it. I mean, they're there, they're committed, they're engaged, and they're ready to rock. But it's been a—yeah, it's been a journey for sure.

[00:05:52.01]

Shaun Francis: Yeah. What kind of tactics would an athlete, or would you be recommending they employ given this added dimension?

[00:06:01.06]

Dane Jensen: So, you know, we kind of started into it a little bit when I was talking about the kind of balance of routine versus an elastic mindset. You know, the book really started with this one fundamental question, which is what's the most pressure you've ever been under? And I started asking that question pretty informally. Like, I teach on pressure at Queen's University, at UNC, and so I would just ask that of students around a table, at break, at lunch. And what I very quickly realized was that on the other side of that question—it really doesn't matter who you ask that question of—there is a really interesting story. And that story typically has a lot of wisdom and insight. So I started to ask it really deliberately. And I asked it of hundreds of people individually, thousands of people in groups, and I started to hunt for patterns. So when people talk about what creates pressure, when they talk about what works under pressure, when they talk about what doesn't work under pressure, when they talk about what other people did that helped and didn't help, as much as there was just vast diversity of experience, which there was, you know, everything from an active shooter situation in a school to, you know, being caught too far from shore, a guy who was worried he wasn't going to be able to get back to shore because he'd swam too far out, to an Olympic final, and a big exam, right?

[00:07:09.00]

Dane Jensen: These are all things that people classify as pressure. But in as much as the experiences are so diverse, there's actually a fair number of patterns in terms of how pressure manifests, in terms of the problems it creates, but also in terms of, you know, what are the techniques that actually work when we are put under pressure? You know, I think when we talk about what are athletes doing to manage this, obviously, this is a podcast for everybody, and I think the tools that elite athletes are using, yes, your context is going to be different, the things that create pressure for you are not going to be necessarily an Olympic final or the uncertainty of an Olympic Games, but when it comes to uncertainty, I think the same fundamental set of skills actually apply for us as they do for Olympic athletes. And uncertainty in particular really boils down to this kind of tension between I need to relentlessly take direct action on the things that I can control, I need to identify what I can control and then I need to move as quickly as possible to build certainty around the areas that I can control, while at the same time embracing the uncertainty that I can't control.

[00:08:18.02]

Dane Jensen: And embracing uncertainty is actually quite different than tolerating uncertainty. So that word "embrace" is important. But there is this kind of tension of okay, you know, exert control where I can, but at the same time not get addicted to trying to exert control, because that's where we get into spinning our wheels. And actually, that's where a lot of high achievers I find fall down, is they're actually really good at taking control of things that they can control, but because it's so effective, they get addicted to it and they try to control everything. And so a big part of what we're working on with athletes and teams is, okay, what are the things that are within your control? There are certain elements of routine, of process that are within your control. There are elements of breathing that are within your control, there are elements of rest and recovery that are within your control. Those are things that you really relentlessly want to be focusing on and having the discipline to exert the control where you can. And at the same time, you got to sort of cultivate this elastic mindset, which is, if I'm in hour seven at Tokyo Narita Airport, and I'm freaking out because I can't stick with the rest and recovery routine that I've so carefully laid out, and I start to let that create an additional layer of pressure, that's not actually helpful.

[00:09:29.09]

Dane Jensen: So you have to balance this. Okay, here's what I can control, and when things don't necessarily go according to plan, here's what I'm going to do to embrace that uncertainty. And that has its own set of skills as well which have to do with a combination of accepting the limits of control and having a patient faith that things will work out the way that they should, which may or may not be true, but actually holding the belief is what allows you perform when the pressure kind of hits. So yeah, so I think there is an interesting duality there that we're building from a skills standpoint.

[00:10:01.07]

Shaun Francis: And so talk to me about those skills. I mean, what are they doing physically to manage that? And are they also practising any kind of mental mindsets?

[00:10:11.25]

Dane Jensen: Let me take one step back, Shaun. I'll talk a little bit about the different kind of flavours of pressure, because I think the tools that they're going to use are going to be a little bit different depending on where the pressure is kind of coming from and what's dominating for them. So, you know, broadly speaking, when we started to unpack pressure, and I looked across all these interviews as well as a bunch of the research obviously, that's already out there on stress and pressure, you know, when we think about what creates pressure, for me, as an individual, as a human being, you know, there's really three things that layer on to create the experience of pressure. The first thing that creates pressure is importance. So the amount of pressure I feel in a situation is directly correlated to how important the outcome of that situation is for me. Which is great, because it means if I'm feeling pressure, this must matter to me, right? I must be doing something that's actually important to me, which is good.

[00:10:59.18]

Dane Jensen: The second thing though, that has to be there is what we just talked about, which is uncertainty. So if something's really important to me, but the outcome is certain, it's not really going to create much pressure. It's that kind of intersection of, hey, this really matters to me, and I don't really know how it's going to turn out, I don't know how it's going to go. And then the third part of pressure is volume. And that's really the multiplier, right? The sheer volume of important uncertain circumstances or situations that I have to deal with. And so broadly speaking, when we look at interventions into pressure, we're kind of looking at okay, how do those three things intersect? Like, is the pressure coming from the fact that I am attaching so much importance to this event or this moment or this routine, that I just can't stop thinking about, you know, oh my god, This is so important. I've been training for this for 15 years, I've been training for this my entire life, like, now I'm stuck in this airport for seven hours with no water.

[00:11:51.26]

Dane Jensen: So that's one kind of toggle is how do we intersect with importance? The second set of skills is the uncertainty skills. So if I start with importance, one of my favourite stories from the book is—well, it's from a guy that you know, actually Johann Olav Koss, who is, you know, one of the most decorated winter Olympians of all time, right? Norwegian long track speed skater, facing one of the highest pressure situations in sport that I think you can, which is, you know, going into the '94 games in Lillehammer, here is a guy who was a gold medal favourite at an Olympics in his home country, in an individual event. And to me, it doesn't really get much higher pressure than that in sport, right? It's like, you're the guy, it's at home, this is it. And so he talked about how in the lead up to those games, the fear of failure got so strong for him, that he felt like failure at the Olympics would mean failure for the rest of his life. And that actually led to about 10 days before he was supposed to compete and supposed to win a gold medal, he was literally, like, crying under a stairwell in his hotel. Like, he just couldn't get it together. He said the pressure was so overwhelming, I couldn't cope, and I didn't think I was going to be able to get there.

[00:13:04.10]

Shaun Francis: Okay, so hold that thought just for a moment because we're going to finish this story. Because you talk about pressure. How does pressure manifest itself emotionally? So in this case, Johann had the breakdown, right? Like, what are you feeling? Massive anxiety? Are you feeling despair? Like, what do you ...

[00:13:22.20]

Dane Jensen: Yeah. Well, and inherent in your question is a really important insight, which is, you know, pressure is not a context, pressure is an internal experience, right? Two people can be in the exact same situation, one person is excited, and one person is terrified. And so, you know, pressure is found in our response to a situation, pressure isn't found in the situation itself. So broadly speaking, there are two kind of relevant systems in the body that relate to pressure. There's the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. And those are like the gas pedal and the brake pedal in the body. And so when we are in a situation that we tag, our brain goes, "Holy crap, this is really important and there's actually a lot of uncertainty here." All of a sudden, the sympathetic nervous system starts to activate the body to get it ready to handle this pressure. And that has a number of knock on effects: the body starts to produce more adrenaline, our heart speeds up, our respiration rate gets quicker, our muscles start to tense, our pupils dilate. Even though the heart is pumping faster, blood is reserved for our core organs, so our peripheral temperature starts to fall. So there is just a straight physiological side to pressure, which in sport is really important to manage. Because if all the blood drains that are your extremities and your muscles get really tense, that's incredibly bad for physical performance.

[00:14:39.27]

Dane Jensen: What then starts to happen is, because there is a nerve that's known as the vagus nerve that connects your viscera, your gut, to the base of your brain, it is constantly relaying signals from the body that says, "Holy crap," right? The heart rate's 180, the muscles are tense, right? Everything's churning down there. Wow! And then the brain loop starts to go. By the way, there is debate, as with many physical processes, there are cognitivists, who say it starts in the brain, the brain starts by going, "Oh, my God, this is so important," that cascades to the body, and that starts the physical reaction. There are also people that believe the body responds precognitively to stress, and then that sends the signal to the brain. So the direction is a little bit uncertain, but for our practical purposes, they kind of happen simultaneously. Like, everything starts to go.

[00:15:25.08]

Dane Jensen: And so then the emotional state that is triggered alongside these physical and cognitive responses, what's interesting about emotions is that for the most part, emotions are just labels that we as human beings put on a bundle of physical sensations, right? So when my heart rate gets elevated, when my respiration rate gets quicker, I go, "Oh, my God, I'm nervous." You know, there's a phenomenal technique, I think it's Alison Brooks out of Harvard talks about anxious reappraisal, which is if I feel those same physical sensations, but I say, "Hey, I'm really excited," it actually changes your emotional state, right? Because at the end of the day, it's just a label that we put on a bunch of sensations. So when you talk about tools or techniques, you know, that's actually one that we work on a fair bit, is, in advance of a high-stress situation, I want an athlete, I want somebody who's standing up to give a big sales presentation or, you know, pitching for a funding round or doing a job interview or whatever, I actually want them in advance to viscerally imagine, "What is my body going to feel like in that situation?" You know, are my knees gonna be weak? Are my palms going to be sweaty? You know, is my heart going to be racing? What's it going to feel like in that situation?

[00:16:39.25]

Dane Jensen: And the reason I want people to get really grounded in that before the experience, is because if you're not anticipating that, once you get into that job interview or sales presentation, and boom, the heart rate spikes and your palms get—you're like, "Oh, my God, like, I'm nervous, right? I'm gonna choke." Versus it's like, "Okay, I expect that," right? This is what I expect. I'm put under pressure, this is a natural physical response. That's my body flooding me with adrenaline because, you know, it knows that pressure's coming. And so that ability to anticipate physical activation, and then to your point on emotion, to be able to productively label those physical sensations in a way that doesn't trigger the Johann sort of crying under the stairs scenario, but leads more to the "Hey, now I'm on a challenge response," you know, as opposed to a threat response. And that's actually much more of a high performance state. So yeah, I think emotion is a really interesting key into a lot of the stuff that happens under pressure.

[00:17:34.09]

Shaun Francis: So what's Johann in this situation feeling? What emotion is that?

[00:17:38.14]

Dane Jensen: He was feeling fear. And he used the word "fear" a couple of times, right? A fear of failure. And you know, that story for me is a perfect example of the pressure where importance dominates, right? So he had mentally built up what was already an important event. Like, nobody's denying that the Olympics are important. Like, you've trained for it. But he had built it up to a referendum on his entire life. Like, this is going to determine am I a success or am I a failure? And if I fail here, that's it, right? That's failure for me as a person.

[00:18:09.21]

Shaun Francis: His identity is wrapped up.

[00:18:10.21]

Dane Jensen: Exactly. Right? And ego is a big part of importance. You know, when we talk about disassembling mistakes, which is where I'm going to go with the story a little bit, like, the ability to separate ego-driven stakes from what's actually at play is an important tool. But I mean, Johann started much more practically than even the ego. You know, one of the questions that features large in the book is this notion of what's not at stake, right? When I'm in a high-pressure situation, my brain quite naturally orients its limited attention on what is at play here, right? When I go into a sales presentation, I am thinking about the sale that's at stake. When I go into a job interview, I'm thinking about the job that's at stake. To balance the scales a little bit, we have to have the conscious discipline to go, okay, great. I'm not denying that that's at stake, and what's not at stake here? And so Johann was really helped in this in that he had a sports psych with him under the staircase, and she really worked him through this process of "Okay, you know, Johann, I know you want to be a doctor after your athletic career finishes. Will failing at the Olympic Games impact your ability to be a physician?" And he had to actually think about it, right? And he went, "Well, no." Actually, he got to a place where he said it might actually make me a better physician, because I'll have more empathy for people who are going through tough times, I'll be able to, you know, relate to people that are experiencing failure." Okay.

[00:19:34.22]

Dane Jensen: So that's kind of one brick off the scale of importance. And then she kind of said to him, she said, "You know, Norway has a really strong speedskating team here. Do you think the Norwegian people care whether Johann Koss wins a medal or another Norwegian speed skater wins the medal?" He's kind of like, "Well, you know, that's the ego part. Probably not." Right? Like, as long as it's a Norwegian, like, they're not really going to care one way or another. And so literally, brick by brick, they are unloading the added importance that he has placed on himself in this situation so that they get a balanced view. And this is not denying reality, right? We're not trying to get to a place where we're going, like, "Oh, yeah, the Olympics don't matter." You know, it's can we see all of what is true? And what's really interesting, this is one of those dynamic tensions that I talked about with uncertainty, you know, uncertainty, we have to take direct action, but also embrace uncertainty. When it comes to importance, the dynamic tension there is I really have to be able to see how what I do is important to me, while at the same time not getting overwhelmed by the stakes. And so that balance is quite tricky to strike sometimes.

[00:20:39.00]

Shaun Francis: In other words, what's the worst that can happen, right? I mean, is that another way to frame that question?

[00:20:46.10]

Dane Jensen: So that's an interesting one. So, you know, there's a wonderful stoic technique, which is negative visualization. Comes out of stoicism, and that's exactly the question, right? Like, let me get comfortable with the worst possible outcome here, and then I can build myself back up. So I definitely think that's part of it is—and by the way, this is why sometimes the importance techniques don't work in truly life and death situations. That's where you want to turn to the certainty and the kind of uncertainty tools. But yeah, when you're talking about, like, an Olympic race, or a sales presentation, it really is that question of, hey, when I'm walking into a big sales presentation, in the preparation for that big presentation, it's really important for me to think about why is this important to me? Maybe it's an input to early promotion, right? There are compensation components to this. When I'm actually standing and delivering, like, when performance time comes, I've got to be able to flip the switch and go, "You know what? Like, at the end of this thing, I'm still going to have a job, I'm going to go home, my family is going to be there, I'm going to have dinner one way or another, you know, all those things are going to remain the same." Because that's the freedom that lets me perform. And so there is value to connecting with importance in the lead up, that's what gives them the energy to prepare. You can't carry that with you into the performance or it becomes overwhelming, as in Johann's case.

[00:22:04.04]

Shaun Francis: But what if the situation is my identity is global speedskater? And if I do lose this or, you know, I don't get the gold medal, the way people perceive me and I perceive me, is, even though I want to be a doctor, is irreparably different now.

[00:22:25.03]

Dane Jensen: Yes. And that would have been true, right? So if—and by the way, just to wrap this story up, Johann won three gold medals, set three world records, it's one of the all time great individual performances.

[00:22:36.13]

Shaun Francis: But if he didn't?

[00:22:37.21]

Dane Jensen: Yeah. And listen, I think that's one of the things you got to get to peace with in these situations, right? And so there is one thing, which is like, let's even out the scales, let's see what's at stake and what's not at stake. You might get to a point where you go, "You know what? My public perception is actually at stake here." Now you're starting a much deeper, more personal work of going, "Okay, so how important is that to me? And how much of my identity am I going to let other people control?" You know, I reference—this is a wonderful book, two actually, great books on this topic. So Anthony de Mello, he passed away a few years ago, unfortunately, but a wonderful irreverent Jesuit priest, he wrote a terrific book called Awareness. And his point, which I'll butcher the direct quote, but it's basically like, if you let yourself feel good when other people like you, you are just setting yourself up to feel bad when other people start to think less of you. So I think there's that piece. There's also another great book called The Courage to Be Disliked, which the name is pretty self-explanatory. That ability to cultivate kind of an objective view of importance that is free of ego-driven stake.

[00:23:36.14]

Dane Jensen: I talked to one CEO, Andrew Blau, who's now the US head of thought leadership at Deloitte. Really interesting guy. And he took over this global scenario planning business called GBN in 2008. I think it was six weeks before Lehman Brothers collapsed. And this was a job he had wanted for years. Like, this was, you know, a huge part of his identity, he had grown up in the firm to become the CEO of this storied firm. He felt incredibly proud, you know, he was excited. Six weeks later, the whole place fell apart. And so he said a huge part of his journey was he had to come to a place where he could escape what he called the psychic validation that he had been seeking, you know, as the CEO of this firm, and recognize that at the end of the day, what was actually important was how he kind of acquitted himself through this period. And he actually did use your question. It's funny that you asked what's the worst that could happen? Because that's where he was able to get to, you know, the worst thing that can happen in this situation, is that the business performs poorly for a few quarters, and maybe I go back to being, you know, a partner at the firm as opposed to the CEO. And when he was able to get comfortable with that, I think that's when things kind of unlocked a little bit for him.

[00:24:45.20]

Shaun Francis: I mean, it's tangential, but that whole, what's the worst that can happen, and what's your identity and purpose? You know, like, how do you manage that question of sort of—like an Olympian, that identity question is maybe more linear, like, I gotta win, right? My life could fall apart if I don't do this, but it's sort of linear. I don't have all these other buffeting forces.

[00:25:06.03]

Dane Jensen: You know, this is one where I don't think there is a quick pop psychology fix here. My kind of read as I talk to folks is, broadly speaking, there are kind of three high-quality sources of importance. And I think if people are pursuing those versus the social validation, the opinion polling the status, I think they are better served over the long haul. And those are growth, contribution and connection.

[00:25:31.29]

Shaun Francis: Personal growth?

[00:25:33.00]

Dane Jensen: Yeah, so not necessarily financial growth. Personal growth, basically. And you can kind of think of these as questions. So, you know, when I am going through a really high pressure period, when it feels like there's a lot at stake. I think as long as you can answer one of three questions, you know, how is this pressure helping me grow? How is enduring this pressure benefiting others—that's the contribution question—and how is this pressure bringing me closer to the people that I care about? Those, to me, are the three kind of high-quality sources of fuel under pressure. And so to your point, if I'm in a leadership role, I actually think those are the three things that I personally want to be anchoring myself to. So how would I equip myself in this situation in a way that helps strengthen and grow my capacity as a person, where I feel like I am making progress in the way that I want to grow and develop as a human being.

[00:26:22.14]

Dane Jensen: And that could be demonstrating a greater capacity for empathy, that could be demonstrating a greater capacity to speak truth to power, you know, but some way that I am growing as a human being. The contribution piece? I mean, listen, you're in the healthcare field. I think the reason our frontline health care workers have been able to physically sustain the pressure they've been under—which has been horrific and enduring for 16 months—is they have a really clear line of sight to how is enduring this pressure benefiting others? How am I contributing, right? Like, that's a big source of meaning and importance to others. And then the connection piece is, you know, how is this bringing me closer to people? And I think that's one where when I asked people about the pandemic period, and I asked them, talk about a really meaningful memory or a meaningful moment that you've had in the past year and a half, they almost always default to a moment of connection, right? Like, yeah, it's been a really tough year, and I've never seen more of my kids. Like, we have dinner every night, there's great conversation. Or it's been a really tough year, but you know what? I finally picked up my phone and called my idiot brother in law that I hadn't talked to for a decade, because I go, "You know what? Life is short."

[00:27:27.09]

Dane Jensen: I think one of the most significant things that was raised across the board was, when people come out of these high-pressure situations, so when people talked about, okay, here's the most pressure I've ever been under and here's what happened afterwards, the number one thing was regret minimization, right? Like, how I handled that period actually really mattered to me, and in some cases, they said, "I look back on that period, and I feel very proud, it's built satisfaction." And other people go, "I carry regret from that period for the rest of my life." And so I do think, you know, whether it's a politician going through a tough period, it's a CEO who has to make tough decisions in the middle of the pandemic, it's a parent who's dealing with the pressure having their kids around the house all the time, you know, when we go through those periods of intense pressure, optimizing for a moment to moment, happiness, I actually think in the long run is a terrible pressure strategy because it tends to lead to more regret down the line. And that's kind of the shadow that pressure can cast if you don't acquit yourself holding to those ideals that you talked about when you come into it.

[00:28:26.12]

Shaun Francis: I mean, you coach not just to that moment, right? Like, you're coaching people through a continuum. The identities continually change, right? And it's like, does the practical advice he gets when he's an athlete, are these things that he can take with him to manage these transitions?

[00:28:40.27]

Dane Jensen: Yeah. You know, one of the things that came through kind of loud and clear in the interviews is, you know, being good at pressure is not one thing. And in particular, there's really kind of two different flavours of pressure, what I call peak pressure moments. And those are the Olympic final, you know, that is being in the firefight, that is, taking the exam, doing the big sales presentation. Then there is the long haul, right? And actually, the skills that make people really good at nailing peak pressure moments are not the same skills that make people really good at navigating the long haul of a pressure-filled life. So a very public and painful example of this is a guy like Tiger Woods, right? Like, on lock, peak pressure moments, Sunday at the Masters, right? On lock. The long haul of the pressure of life? A little messier, to put it lightly.

[00:29:38.09]

Dane Jensen: And, you know, I think it's because, if you look at importance, uncertainty and volume, the imperatives are almost opposite for peak pressure moments than they are over the long haul. So if we make this really practical for folks, when you're going into a peak pressure moment, when it comes to importance, it's about asking what's not at stake. It's about shedding importance. It's about, like, I need to keep this in perspective. When it comes to uncertainty, it's about routine, you know, tame as much uncertainty as I can. And when it comes to volume, it's my ability to radically simplify down to just focus on the one thing that's right in front of me.

[00:30:11.08]

Dane Jensen: The long haul is almost the exact opposite, right? When it comes to importance, the long haul is about can I bring importance close? Can I get really connected to why this matters to me, to what's important about this to me, to how I'm growing, how I'm connecting, how I'm contributing. When it comes to uncertainty, the long haul is about embracing uncertainty, because if I try to control and act on everything over 20 years, I'm going to burn myself out. And when it comes to volume, it's actually can I build a container that allows me to hold the volume of a busy life? Am I getting sleep, nutrition? You know, where's my routine for exercise and movement? So, you know, I think this notion of—I talk about it in the book as being pressure ambidextrous, of, you know, we have to cultivate the skills both to maintain our energy, focus and performance over the long haul, which really, for me, is about getting close to importance, embracing uncertainty, and building a physical platform for volume, but that long haul is going to be punctuated by these peak pressure moments, which really have the potential to bend the arc of my life in one direction or another.

[00:31:11.03]

Dane Jensen: And it's in those moments where some of the tools that we talked about today, when I'm heading into those moments, I want to anticipate my physical activation, right? I want to deeply imagine what's it going to feel like in that moment, right? Physiologically, what's it going to feel like, and how am I going to manage that? I want to have a really clear mental preparation plan in place for what are the direct actions that I can take to enhance certainty in that moment. So I give a lot of speeches for a living. When I'm stepping up on a stage in front of 3,000 people, what's my direct action? It's the first five minutes of the speech, I'm going to practice that thing 200 times, because in the first five minutes, I might not be able to feel my fingers, you know? My muscles might be tense, so I better have that one thing I can control on lock. And then eventually, I'm going to get into a place where I'm a lot looser and a lot more in control.

[00:31:59.13]

Dane Jensen: And then finally, you know, I want to carry into that peak pressure moment, what are the two or three attentional cues that I'm going to use to redirect my brain when it starts to get away from me to the stuff that is going to help me get myself under control. One of the big human limitations, but also human advantages, is that we can only pay attention to one thing at once. And so much of managing peak pressure moments is that ability to take that spotlight of your attention, this thing that can only really highlight one thing at once, and wrench it away from the thing that is debilitating, that is detracting from performance, and focus it on the thing that's going to help you perform.

[00:32:37.22]

Dane Jensen: And so, you know, that attentional control piece, when I am in a peak pressure moment, I want to have that pre loaded, right? I want to know that okay, when my mind starts to go over here, I'm going to redirect my attention solely to the one person in the audience who is nodding vigorously at everything that I say. And there's always at least one of those people, right? That's an attentional cue. I might realize that in the moment, if I feel like I'm getting off the rails, I'll use, you know, Brian Orser, the figure skater, he has a great question, "What's my average?" Right? And his whole thing was, I don't have to be superhuman, I just have to do my average, because my average is 99 out of 100. And so if I'm on stage, and I'm feeling overwhelmed, I go, "Hey, what's your average?" Right? You know, I haven't screwed one of these up in a couple years, right? I'm probably going to be fine. So you want to make sure that you've got the physical activation prepped for. Like, you know what it's going to feel like, and you've embodied that before you get into the peak pressure moment. You want to make sure that you're seeing it in perspective, you're not attaching importance that doesn't need to be there. Have your couple of direct actions that you're going to take, and walk in with a prep plan for how am I going to redirect my attention?

[00:33:38.27]

Shaun Francis: Like, I could go on. There's a whole other thing here. Like, I'm the 55-year-old exec at the bank and I just got terminated. It's who the hell is gonna hire me? What are my kids gonna think about me? I used the tactic for the presentation, right? And I thought it was good, but no one cares, because I'm a 55-year-old exec and I didn't bring in the fees this year. And it's like, I have to totally reinvent myself, right? So I—well, this happens at every stage. So yeah, I think that performance and how do I respond, and asking myself, what's the worst that happens repeatedly.

[00:34:13.10]

Dane Jensen: There was a woman I interviewed Heidi Turan, her story really stuck with me. She had been working out of the home, she'd been with the kids for 18 years, I believe. She had a 16 year old and a 14 year old, I think. And her husband just walked out, said, "Tough shit, I'm out of here. Good luck with the kids." No financial support, nothing. She had about two months of funding in the bank and hadn't had a job in 20 years, a paying job in 20 years. You know, you take your 55-year-old exec, who's probably in slightly better shape than that, hopefully anyways. You know, has a little money in the bank, has a resume. And to me, she was the perfect example of this is the domain of direct action, right? Like, she talked about, you know, she cried on the bathroom floor for three days, and then at some point, you reach a point where you go, okay, what am I going to do with all the energy I'm feeling right now? Because pressure is energy, right? So where am I going to put this? Am I going to put it towards, you know, wishing things would go back to the way they were? Am I going to put it towards, you know, cursing my idiot husband who just walked out on me? What am I going to do with the energy that's under this pressure right now? And that's where we get to the domain of direct action, which is if I'm the 55-year-old bank exec, I go, "Okay, what are the two things that I could do, that I could channel this energy that I'm feeling right now?" Which might be fury? It might be frustration, it might be fear, but it's all energy. Where am I going to channel it? And that might be, "You know what?" I need to pick up a skill that is particularly in demand right now. So I'm going to go and I'm going to take, you know, an analytics course at Queen's, and make sure that my chops are where they need to be on machine learning.

[00:35:45.16]

Dane Jensen: So I do think when you hit those critical moments, there is inevitably a period of—I don't think you can call it anything other than grieving. Like, there is a grieving period where you go, "Like, oh my God, you know, the life that I had is getting—" that takes time, right?

[00:35:59.17]

Shaun Francis: It's probably almost inverse. Like, the more of a high achiever you are, like, the more down you're gonna feel, potentially.

[00:36:05.16]

Dane Jensen: Yeah. Yeah, I think the depth of the fall definitely has an impact in terms of how long it takes to step back out, for sure.

[00:36:14.20]

Shaun Francis: So Dane, thanks. We've covered a lot of territory today. It's super interesting. And, you know, I think, you know, my vantage point is that it's unprecedented times, we're feeling, everyone's feeling pressure. The Olympics will be super interesting to watch. You guys have had so much experience with our athletes. But I think I know what you do goes beyond just those peak pressure moments, which is why I'm so intrigued with sort of that life journey and these transitions, and how do you stay motivated? How do you stay on purpose? How do you stay up? And I think you have a lot to offer across that frontier. So appreciate it if you could share with our listeners where we can find your book and find you online. That would be terrific.

[00:36:54.11]

Dane Jensen: Well, yeah. Thanks for having me. It was a great conversation. Very thought provoking. Yeah, if you want to know more about the book, it's called The Power of Pressure. It's coming out August 31. You can find it at Amazon, Chapters, Powerofpressure.com. You can find me on LinkedIn at Dane Jensen. I'm on Twitter @Dane Jensen, and always happy to have a conversation on pressure. So thanks again for having me. Really appreciate it.

[00:37:16.03]

Shaun Francis: Yeah, thank you, Dane.

[00:37:30.12]

Christopher Shulgan: That was Medcan CEO Shaun Francis in conversation with Dane Jensen, the chief executive of Third Factor and the author of The Power of Pressure. We'll post a link to the book at Eatmovethinkpodcast.com, as well as a full episode transcript.

[00:37:43.21]

Christopher Shulgan: Eat Move Think is produced by Ghost Bureau. I'm executive producer Christopher Shulgan. Senior producer is Russell Gragg. Patricia Karounos is associate producer. Social media and strategy support is from Chantel Guertin, Andrew Imecs and Campbell MacKinnon.

[00:37:57.22]

Christopher Shulgan: Remember to rate and subscribe to Eat Move Think on your favourite podcast platform. Follow our host Shaun Francis on Twitter and Instagram @ShaunCFrancis—that's Shaun with a U—and Medcan @Medcanlivewell. We'll be back soon with a new episode examining the latest in health and wellness.

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