How to Reframe Your Relationship With Pressure

Olympians and Paralympians face a singular kind of pressure: Competing at the highest possible level, after years of preparation, in front of millions, with dozens of potential points of failure—and national pride on the line.

Phew.

You might think elite athletes are wired to revel in intense situations like the Games. That performing in such charged circumstances feels natural, even fun.

You’d be wrong, according to Dane Jensen, BCom ’04, who sits on the board of directors of the Canadian Paralympic Committee. The author of The Power of Pressure, Dane is the CEO of Toronto-based performance consultancy Third Factor, and an instructor on Smith’s MBA and executive education programs. He and his team have worked with hundreds of elite athletes and thousands of high-performing business leaders. This has given him a unique understanding of a surprising truth: Almost no one loves high-pressure moments. Not the CEO staring down a negotiation that could change the entire trajectory of the company. Not the straight-A student walking into the final interview for a dream job. Not even the athlete about to vie for Olympic or Paralympic gold.

Yet in business—as in competitive sport—high stakes are table stakes. Pressure-filled situations are part of the job.

So, does pressure have to be something you dread? Or can it be something a little more productive?

As thousands of Olympic and Paralympic athletes begin competition in Italy at Milano Cortina 2026, Smith Business Insight sat down with Jensen to discuss how high-performing pros reframe their approach to pressure—and how you can do the same.

Just thinking about the high stakes of Olympic and Paralympic competition is enough to make most people break out in a sweat. Are elite athletes simply wired differently?  

Dane Jensen:
Believe it or not, I have yet to talk to anyone who feels very comfortable in a high-pressure situation—even people who do very well in those situations.

That said, there is a difference between the anticipation of a highly important, highly uncertain thing—like an Olympic or Paralympic performance—versus the undertaking of it. When elite athletes are actually competing on a course, or in a race, or on the ice, they often get into a flow state. They’re very activated, but they are experiencing mastery, so they can feel relatively at ease.

But the lead-up to the event is another story. That’s when most people really struggle with pressure. Think of what it feels like five minutes before an exam, or 15 minutes before a job interview—that feeling of unease, like you might throw up. Elite athletes feel that too. Before they go out to perform they are thinking, “Why do I do this to myself?” and “How can I get out of this?” just like you might. The situation is so intense that it’s just a profoundly uncomfortable place to be, for anyone.

So, if high-performing athletes can’t overcome the discomfort of pressure, what’s different about how they handle it?

High performers don’t try to insulate themselves from pressure, nor do they try to push it away. Instead, they anticipate that pressure comes with the pursuit of excellence. They accept that pressure is going to be uncomfortable. And they use really thoughtful tools and strategies to channel it effectively.

Such as? 

To start, they are able to put pressure into perspective. While most of the elite athletes I speak with don’t enjoy the lead-up to their highest-pressure moments, they can learn to enjoy what the pressure of those situations allows them to do. It leads to satisfaction and pride, and a feeling of accomplishment that ultimately imbues their discomfort with a sense of meaning.

Wouldn’t attributing more meaning to the task at hand only increase the pressure?

Not necessarily. There is often an interesting duality at play among elite athletes that experience flow: They are able to think, “This matters so much to me,” while at the same time thinking, “I have to be able to let it all go and accept whatever happens.” The first thought pattern can lead to feeling overwhelmed by importance, where everything feels life or death; the second can lead to a crisis of meaning, in which nothing seems to matter. Both can be pressure traps. The highest performers tend to avoid toggling between the two thought patterns; instead, they are able to balance both. That is hugely valuable.

Back to your earlier point that elite athletes tend to get into a flow state once the anticipatory period ends and the high-pressure activity begins. What allows them to activate that?

People respond to pressure in a variety of different physiological ways. You might enter a “threat” state: It’s a panic state, and it tends to cause people to shut down. Or you might enter a “challenge” state. It’s still an activated state: Your heart is racing, your blood is pumping, your breathing is deep. But it’s also a high-performance state: You’re focused. You’re aware. You don’t go into brain lock.

What makes the difference in experiencing a situation as a challenge versus as a threat? Among elite athletes, it’s a split-second question, asked consciously or subconsciously: “Do I have the capability to handle this situation?”

What does that do?

Your body is a very discerning receptor: It’s hard to fool. As performance coach and author Steve Magness says, confidence requires evidence. It’s one thing to try positive self-talk, to tell yourself: “You got this.” It’s another to have four years of training logs you can refer to as proof that you have acquired the skills, that you have done the work, that you can handle something.

When people feel prepared, they feel confident, even in intense situations. They go in with a good understanding of how pressure will impact them, and of how they can channel all their energy to be useful in their performance.

Confidence doesn’t take the discomfort out of pressure. But it flips you out of a threat response, which is not a high-performance state, and into a challenge state, which is.

It can’t be easy to remember to ask, “Am I prepared?” in the heat of a stressful moment. What mental skills can make this kind of check-in a habit?

When I was writing my book, I had a chance to talk to a now-retired Navy SEAL. He told me that his approach was not to attempt to prepare teams for every eventuality, because doing so would be impossible. Instead, he focused on preparing teams with the confidence to adapt to whatever might take place.

Visualization can play a big part in that. It allows you to imagine multiple scenarios, including disastrous ones. It helps you to see situations play out, and run the images in your mind that allow you to plan different approaches. The more you do that, the more you build confidence in your own adaptability.

And this works in high-pressure business contexts too?

Yes. But this is the area where I see the biggest delta between sport and business. In fact, I find that the role of imagination and visualization in the business world is very under-appreciated.

Our minds are always running movies—whether we’re directing them or not—because our bodies respond to the images in our brains. Our body’s operating system is visual. So it can be extremely helpful to notice what we’re imagining, and then redirect it to a productive use.

Can you give an example?

Say you’re going into a big presentation. Imagine the first five minutes: How do you want to enter the room? How do you want to open the talk? What do you want your body language to be? Run through those first five minutes from your perspective, then do the same from the audience’s perspective, then do it again and again until you get a feeling of mastery. You may also want to do some problem-solving: What questions might you get, and how might you imagine yourself handling them effectively?  

Look for what we call gaps in the film—potential problems you can imagine but don’t know how to handle. When you look for these gaps, you not only often practice ways to fill them, but also build confidence in your ability to handle the situation.

This all takes self-awareness: What are you imagining? Is it supporting what you want? If not, what can you imagine that will enhance your confidence in your performance? If you train your attention to focus on these things for a sufficient length of time, it starts to impact the way you show up, whether you’re in a meeting room or on a ski hill.

What else can business professionals do to reframe their relationship with pressure? 

Author, psychologist and educator Kelly McGonigal has a great TED Talk called How to Make Stress Your Friend that I highly recommend. It references a piece of research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison that shows that it’s not stress that’s bad for people, it’s the belief that stress is bad for people that makes it bad for people.

If you have made the choice to pursue a high-performance life, you are going to experience pressure. It’s part of the journey, and it’s part of the job. You can’t delude yourself that it’s going to always feel good or comfortable. If you frame pressure as a thing that is a toxin that you need to push away and insulate yourself from, it only feeds a sense of helplessness.

But if you start to see pressure as a sign that you are pursuing a life that balances meaning and performance, and that discomfort is part of the energy that you need to rise to these challenges, it can flip a switch. It can help you welcome pressure as a fuel that can help you achieve things. And that can make a massive difference.

Smith School of Business is the official national business education partner of the Canadian Olympic Committee and Canadian Paralympic Committee, as well as a founding partner of Game Plan, Canada’s holistic athlete-support network.