How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure - Steve Magness - #897

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
How many elite performers do you think have got the talent to be able to become world class, but don't actually have the inside game to actualize that potential?

**Steve Magness** (0:10)
I think it's a much larger percent than we realize, and I've seen it. I've seen it at the junior, the high school, the college level. Athletes who were insanely talented, better than those who became Olympic medalist, but they just kept getting in their own way. They weren't able to express that talent. And I would bet you that any coach or somebody who spent enough time in this field has dozens of stories, just like I do.

**Chris Williamson** (0:43)
Yeah, there's a... Do you know who Lewis Capaldi is? British singer? No. Okay, so he... I mean, you'll have heard his tracks. He's done billions and billions of streams. And he's having a tough time mentally at the moment.
He found a lot of pressure in between his first and his second album, as it's known, the difficult second album. And had this pressure to perform, wasn't really too sure whether he could live up to his own expectations and what was needed by the label and what was wanted by his management, so on and so forth. And he had Tourette's and he developed kind of a Tourette's tick, which was his shoulder, which is very common. And a lot of anxiety came along with it. And a couple of times now on very big stages, I think he did this at Glastonbury last summer. He's certainly done it in a couple of his own live shows. He's choked on stage doing his own songs. And the anxiety has gotten so bad that he hasn't been able to get the words out to the songs that he's written, doing the very thing that he wanted. And I feel so bad for him because I adore his music. And I think he's like a wonderful, kind, funny guy, at least in as much as you can tell from someone through the Internet. But I always think about him as having this really unique blend of insane talent, gorgeous voice, wonderful songwriting ability, real insight into the human condition with what he sings about and how he puts it into words and lyrics and sounds. And then this other side, which is his performance, his inner game, and the challenges that he faces and the fact that his inner game is limiting his capacity. And I think for most people, we assume, well, people just aren't good enough. They're not good enough at the thing that they're trying to do. And so many people have got the desire and the drive and they want and they try hard and so on and so on. But they're kind of just not that good. They're not world class. But there's this very unique and kind of particularly vicious category who've got it the other way around, who are better than they need to be to be world class, and yet don't have whatever it is, the constitution to be able to handle the pressure, the performance, the anxiety, the stress.

**Steve Magness** (2:58)
Absolutely. And it's interesting because you generally see it in those who have performed well either young or their first go out. So like the singer you were talking about crushes the first album. And then the follow up often elicits more pressure and anxiety. Why? Because it's like the expectations rise. And in fact, there's some research on, we call it the one hit wonder effect. Right? You have your hit. You're the musician who finally has the breakthrough. And what happens is that follow up is really difficult and often doesn't match. And researchers study this actually in authors. And they found that one of the main reasons that that follow up is so hard, and there's so much pressure and expectations, is because our identity literally shifts. Before we had our hit, we were the guy expressing our talent. Right? We were the singers and, hey, I'm good at this. This is what I like to sing about. This is what I'm going to throw into the world. Who cares? Let's see what happens. Once we had that hit, our identity shifts to, I am the singer. I am the singer that is known for being creative at this.
What research tells us is that when our identity cements around that thing, now anything that could potentially throw that off is seen as our threat. Our brain literally defaults towards threat mode. That's why the singer you mentioned struggles because he's on the stage, not expressing what he knows, but his brain is going into this is life or death, run away from here, get off the stage, play dead, whatever have you. And that's why he chokes.