17 Dec 2025 · 4 min
Brian Johnson argues that under pressure, focus on your process, not the outcome. Harvey Pennock told pitchers to aim at a small target. A golfer coached by Lanny Bassham didn't even realize he'd won because he was locked into his routine.
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic one. In the last several plus ones, we've been spending some time with Dave Allred and tapping into wisdom from his book the Pressure Principle. We define pressure popped the ultimate performance enhancing pill, self talk and assumed or command posture. Now we're going to wrap up our quick tour with a look at the most important thing we want to do. When we feel the pressure, we need to dominate our protocol, focusing on the process we've defined for ourselves, which will include the posture, self talk, etc. Rather than the outcome. Here's how Dave puts it and I quote him Focusing on the process rather than the outcome is the essence of performing well under pressure. The tension between process and outcome seems to heighten and in proportion to the amount of pressure someone is under to achieve or to look at it another way, the significance of not being successful. The more there is at stake, the more likely that thoughts about the outcome will interfere with thoughts about the process. He continues by saying, this is the conflict that every performer goes through when dealing with pressure. How do I commit to the process in such a way that I don't allow any thoughts about the outcome to pollute my thinking? And that's from chapter number eight in the book Thinking Correctly Under Pressure. The correct way to think under pressure. I repeat, focus on the process. All caps. Dave references the iconic golf coach Harvey Pennock who told us to take dead aim at the smallest possible target. As he tells us, this is Dave once we become totally engaged in the process, we can then replace our thoughts about the sources of our anxiety, our worry about the outcome, and perform close to our best. He also tells us the total commitment to the process ensured that the outcome took care of itself. As in total commitment to the process. Not kind of sort of committed, but actually thinking about the outcome. Total commitment to the process. What you need to do in this moment now my all time favorite story regarding the power of a relentless focus on the process. It's in my book. Check out page number 471 for the 145th microchapter called DID I Win? For the full story, I also link to the plus one in this plus one. Here's the super short story. You may have heard me tell it before. Once upon a time a golfer got coaching from Lanny Basham, the gold medal winning author of With Winning In Mind. Now this golfer hadn't won in a while, but Lanny wouldn't let him think about winning. All he was allowed to think about was executing his process relentlessly. All caps, executing his process relentlessly. So he's playing a tournament at Torrey Pines early in the year. It's the final hole of the final round. Now, this guy's executing his process so relentlessly that after he sinks the final putt, he didn't even know he won until his wife jumped into his arms. Did I win? He asked. Yeah, you won. Spotlight back on you. What do you do when you're at your absolute best? Focus on doing that all day, every day, especially today.
