Performance Under Pressure: Taking Action - Identifying the Challenge

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Under pressure, responses to situations are often emotional and based on automatic thoughts. These include having a negative bias, blame, emotive reasoning, and exaggeration. To begin taking appropriate action in the face of pressure, you need to recognize what exactly the challenge is, and distinguish between automatic thoughts and emotional reactions.
Recognize the Challenge
The next step is to determine what exactly needs to be accomplished. This allows you to minimize emotional distractions and focus on dealing with the situation. Finally, this clarifies your priorities and, when others are involved, helps to establish a common understanding of the issue.
Take Alan, for example, a salesman at an online advertising agency. He's been missing his sales targets lately and is facing pressure to improve his performance. During the last week of a sales period, Alan still hasn't reached his target. In response to this pressure, Alan's thoughts are being distorted by his negative bias, blame, emotive reasoning, and exaggeration.
Negative Bias
Alan thinks he's struggling because he's unlikable. He can't make sales because his personality simply turns his customers off before he can make his pitch. Following this train of thought, Alan's sales continue to decline.
Blame
Alan shows his frustration by blaming himself for being a poor salesman, and blaming his boss for not providing him with adequate training. Alan is very upset about this by the time his performance review arrives, and he confronts his boss about his lack of training.
Emotive Reasoning
Alan feels that he hasn't been trained properly. He thinks this is because his colleagues see him as a lost cause. Alan imagines that the other salesmen think that he'll never succeed as a salesman, but they aren't able to be honest with him. Alan figures that they're simply humoring him until finally he becomes frustrated and quits.
Exaggeration
Alan's sales aren't as bad as he thinks. But his train of thought allows him to believe that something is fundamentally wrong, leading to a host of negative conclusions.
It would be a great help for Alan to consider how the real challenge before him is being colored by his emotions and automatic thoughts. By stripping away these emotional hooks, Alan would recognize that what he needs to accomplish is an increase in his sales. Reducing his emotional distractions would help him focus on improvement — such as seeking the training he feels he needs – which could also increase his confidence. (...)

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