In this motivational monologue titled “Moment of Yes: March 18,” the speaker reflects on the start of March Madness, his upcoming travel to Houston for a crucial three‑game World Cup qualifying window, and the concept of pressure. He argues that pressure originates from expectation, using the upset potential of a 15‑seed St. Peter’s versus 2‑seed Kentucky as an illustration of how high expectations create more pressure on the favored team. The speaker emphasizes that outcomes and opponent labels are irrelevant; what matters is handling each moment by focusing on consistent behaviors, habits, and actions rather than the result. He frames pressure as a privilege—“no pressure, no diamonds”—and encourages listeners to recognize that their own judgments shape the pressure they feel, whether in sports, work projects, or everyday life. The talk ends with an upbeat call to have an awesome day and weekend.
Chapters
Good morning, everyone. Here is your Moment of Yes for Friday, March 18th. The madness has begun, as you can see behind me. Crazy, crazy, crazy madness. I'm pretty much already out of it, but hey, it is fun nonetheless. Enjoying my last sort of day here with the family before heading out tomorrow to Houston. This is our last national team window of World Cup qualifiers. 3 games over, what, 6 days? 3 games over 6 days to determine whether we get into the World Cup or not. So feeling a little bit of a sense of pressure, um, but pressure is a privilege. No pressure, no diamonds. All these great analogies we can come up with pressure, but it's a real thing. It's a real thing. It's a real thing because of expectation. You know, without expectation, there really is no pressure. It's been interesting watching, you know, some of the games yesterday. So when you have a team like St. Peter's that is a 15 seed playing Kentucky that is a 2 seed, the expectation of Kentucky super high, expectation of St. Peter's super low. The pressure therefore Ends up falling on Kentucky more because there is an expectation. And again, all expectation is always based on outcome, outcome or result. The game is just the game, right? The opponent is just the opponent. There is no, um, uh, extra weight or value until our perspective, our opinion, our judgment comes into play. And so you could, you could see it on the bench. It was a tight game. Even when Kentucky was winning in the last minute of the game, I kept watching the Kentucky bench and there was no excitement. There was no enthusiasm. It was just nerves. And the nerves was, we were supposed to blow these guys out. I can't believe this was a close game. What's that based on? It's just based on expectation. At the end of the day, The goal is to win and move on to the next round. The opponent doesn't matter. But that's what expectation does. When we feel we should win or we should, we should, we should, that's the external stuff. Obviously, our goal is just to handle what is happening to us moment to moment, focusing on the behavior and the action, not the outcome or the result. I'm saying all this to remind myself Because heading into this last 3-game window, definitely. I mean, am I feeling pressure? Not really. It's not about sort of, you know, me individually, anything that I'm doing per se, that I feel pressure that I've got to do things differently or anything is quote unquote falling on me, but just feeling sort of pressure for the overall situation because we obviously badly are looking for a positive result to qualify. And so noticing how that external expectation, that external pressure can try to take you out of just doing the things consistently, those behaviors, those habits, those actions, and sticking to those when you, especially when you feel that external pressure. So no matter what you got going on today, whether you've got work, big project, Something that you're working on, or you're just enjoying the madness of March. Notice that pressure is always based on your judgment or your expectation. Sure, the others around you might be influencing that, but it always comes down to what are we thinking or believing about this situation? Yeah, notice it. Pressure, it's a privilege. No pressure, no diamonds. Have an awesome day, awesome weekend, everybody.
