Stanford professor Dave Evans teaches a two-part approach for high-pressure moments: give full attention while it's happening, then consciously detach once it ends, accepting what you can't control. This reduces anxiety and sharpens focus during exams, job interviews, and wedding toasts.
How do you keep yourself from melting down in a high-pressure moment? Maybe it's a major exam that could shape the course of your life, a toast at your best friend's wedding, a big job interview. In situations like these, many of us immediately start to ask, what if there's a big snowstorm on the day of the test? We worry that people will think our wedding speech is boring. We tell ourselves the other job candidates are going to be far more qualified than us. All of these scenarios fall into the realm of uncontrollable, what-ifs. And yet, we somehow cannot help but obsess over them. Stanford University professor Dave Evans has a different strategy. He calls it fully engaged, calmly detached. Here's how it works. When you're taking the exam, give it your all. At the wedding, deliver your toast with as much enthusiasm as you can muster. At your job interview, remind yourself and the recruiter of everything you bring to the table. In other words, be fully engaged. And then once the exam and the speech and the job interview are done, switch to calmly detached mode. You cannot control what happens next. It's out of your hands. This framework allows you to stay focused on the task at hand. It quiets those what-if questions that can derail your performance. It reminds you that you don't have all the answers. In fact, you cannot have all the answers. And it turns out that's perfectly okay. For more insights about the science of the mind, tune in to Hidden Brain on Apple, Spotify, or hiddenbrain.org.
