FREE SAMPLE OF^ SUCCESS UNDER STRESS^1137ent Hall of Fame. Instinctively, you know you’ll get it done somehow,
but you expect it will be stressful. Worse yet, you don’t know if you’ll
be proud of what you produce. You feel completely trapped!
You sit down at your desk and try to brainstorm, but you experi-
ence tunnel vision. You keep having the same ideas over and over; it’s
hard to focus. You’re racking your brain trying to remember where
you filed that presentation your colleague did at the kick-off meeting
so you can reference it. But you’re running out of time. So you tell
yourself to go with the first idea you had, which is to describe the
project and its milestones.
Just as you b egin to build a little momentum, s omeone who works
for you pops in to hand you a report. You give it a glance and notice
the numbers in the last column are off. That means you’re going to
have to take some time to re-explain it to him. You think about your
packed schedule. When will you even have time to review it again?
You feel crunched. Your voice has a tone of exasperation as you give
him feedback.
You finish a draft, and then rush to your daughter’s play, arriv-
ing with a minute to spare. It takes so long to settle in that you aren’t
really present until the second act. That night, you sleep restlessly,
worrying about the presentation. In the morning, you’re nervous as
you enter the meeting, still unsure if you’ll deliver exactly what your
boss wants. Your presentation goes without a hitch, but you get pep-
pered with a lot of tough questions about the go-forward strategy.
You feel intimidated, so you avoid speaking up, even when you have
something important to say. After the meeting you soldier on, but
feel rattled for the rest of the day. When you pass your boss in the
hallway you’re anxious whether she’ll say anything about it.
In this scenario, your response to stress is a series of interlocking
effects, each compounding the one before it. A physical reaction to
stress leads to panicked and scattered thoughts. It limits your abil-
ity to see the best solutions and interferes with your best judgment.
When you don’t perform at your best, you chip away at your confi-M
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