There's a GREAT scene in The Bear (S4 E8), where Tina is trying to figure out how to cook pasta faster. She can't do it.
This leads to a pep talk from Luca, when Tina asks him how to get rid of the pressure to perform.
His response is spectacular:
I think you get to a point where you don't want to.
At first, the pressure sucks… it's the pressure that makes you feel [terrible] at what you do… and actually that's just the pressure getting in the way.
You learn to live with it… and the next thing you know, you THRIVE on it. And before you know it, you can't WAIT to get rocked.
You want that pressure — you NEED that pressure to perform.
So then, the challenge actually becomes… 'Can you live without that pressure?'
This really resonated for me: In flight training, we learn to succeed because the stakes are so high — we need to get it right in order to stay alive. Without that critical motivation, it would be hard to master all the right elements to become a good pilot.
So… pressure can be a good thing — if we learn to harness it properly.
The catch is, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we mistake the pressure for the results we're trying to achieve. That's when we feel stressed — or "soooo busy," without leveraging that stress to drive us.
So go ahead and embrace the stress — and then use that force to fly safer, cook faster, or rise to whatever challenge you're facing.
