Tag: The Expectation Effect How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life

💎 On reframing pressure as a privilege as a way to deal with anxiety

King soon began to see that the same principle — that pressure privilege — applied to all kinds of situations and that her anxiety was sign of her motivation to succeed. ‘Great moments carry great weight — that is what pressure to perform is all about. And though it can be tough to face that kind of pressure, very few people get the chance to experience it.’ With that realisation, she saw that she should embrace rather than suppress feelings of stress — a mindset that allowed her to get through her first Grand Slam wins and the enormous media hype around the Battle of the Sexes match against Bobby Riggs in 1973. As she wrote in her memoir, ‘At first, I felt obligated to play Riggs, but I chose to embrace as a privilege the pressure that threatened to over’ whelm me. This changed my entire mindset and allowed me to deal with the situation more calmly. And as time went on, I began to see the match as something I got to do instead of something I had to do. The shy fifth-grader who feared that she would die from her nerves at public speaking became one of our greatest athletes and one of sports most prominent spokespeople.

Excerpt from: The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life by David Robson

💎 Rituals may have a benefit because they quell anxiety by giving sense of control

One study of free throws in basketball found that players were around 12.4 percentage points more accurate when they followed their personal routines before the shot than when they deviated from the sequence. Overall, the total success rate was 83.8 per cent with the exact routine, compared to 71.4 per cent without. 39 Superstitions and rituals can also boost perseverance and performance across a whole range of cognitive tasks, and the advantages are often considerable.

Excerpt from: The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Transform Your Life by David Robson