Do we swim faster if we are being chased by a shark? Do we jump higher if the hurdle is as sharp as a giant razor blade? I sincerely hope that few of us have had the opportunity to test these extreme situations staged in Tag Heuer’s commercial. But can we surpass our limits by imagining that a shark is hot on our heels? Whether it be in athletics or in our personal and working lives, isn’t the best pressure the pressure we put on ourselves?

Once the project has been well thought through and put together, once the opportunities and risks have been analysed, and once all the planets are aligned, there is always a little something that escapes our control and that can either lead us to success… or ruin everything. That little impalpable thing is the power of our mental toughness. It is our capacity to remain focused and to keep doing our very best right to the end, despite the thousand and one reasons that could make someone else give up. But how can we “beef up” our mental toughness so as to gain endurance and performance? By telling ourselves a story.

The story we choose is the film that we watch in our head to transcend our performances and to channel our adrenaline. It is the story that makes us want to surpass ourselves and to raise the bar even higher… while also down playing the drama of the situation. It is the little private script that transforms our working lives into an XXL game environment or into a life-size video game…

The story is the Rocky soundtrack that we hum in the elevator before we go into a meeting. It is the student revising for exams with a headband on to give him the strength of the Ninjas. It is a rather shy friend making difficult phone calls wearing a tiara so as to have the assurance of a queen (remember to take it off if you are video-conferencing!). It is the sales rep who is visualising climbing Mont Blanc to celebrate each stage towards her target (€10,000: first refuge). It is the manager who sees himself as a commander in chief gathering his troops around him before winning the invitation to tender, and the manager who has a basketball in her office to see herself scoring a basket each time she succeeds…

And what if, ultimately, the little story we tell ourselves in our heads were a much more powerful driver than pressure applied by a line manager, a competitor, or a colleague?

In the Tag Heuer advert, the golf player who imagines her green covered with Chinese vases definitely attains a level of concentration that is much more advantageous than if she thought about the stakes of the competition. By inventing this storyboard, she adds a level of pressure, but also transforms her swing into an exceptional moment. Every one of us can tell ourselves our own story to spice up our working lives while also down playing the drama in them. It may stay secret (better not to spread that story about the tiara), or not (how many of us have a ball in our office?), but in any event it should help you to script and stage your objectives so as to reach them better…

And what about you, what story are you going to invent to put positive pressure on yourself?

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