Ep914 Performing Under Pressure

Why do some people freeze when the stakes are highest, while others execute with flawless precision? High-pressure moments don't just test your preparation—they actively attempt to hijack your biology. In this episode, we break down the psychological and neurological mechanisms behind choking under stress, exploring how your brain reacts when the spotlight turns on and how to build reliable composure under fire.

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Yo, it's your main man. Rice yeah. Man, let's just image today. I want y'all to take y'all time just to image yourself walking on a big ass stage in front of people. Close your eyes and just walk image. Close your eyes and just image you on a goddamn free throw line. You goddamn it. It's the last you need this bitch to goddamn win the damn game, damn near. You feel me? Image yourself having to stand up in front of a crowd of a million, getting ready to speak in front of thousands. You dig? Or image just thinking about taking that damn lay that test that determines your damn near whole future. Like put that in your mind. Like your heart hammers against your chest, your ribs, your palms get to sweating, and the sudden surge of adrenaline floods your goddamn cortisol level. You feel me? Plug that goddamn blood screen. Like this single task, your brain, it faces a fork in a row. Like this is the difference. Today we're gonna get on the pressure of performing in the clutch and choking in the clutch. Like that's what we're gonna get on. Like we finna explore this shit today. Like down one path lies a clutch execution. Once it's one person who's gonna perform, and it's another person who's gonna what? Not choke. You feel me? Like when you in that state of clutch, this is a state of pressure where you hyperfocus your mind. Sharpen your reflexes and turn biological stress into peak performance. Like this nigga here's on fire. What the hell? You dig? And down the other one lies a choking, a psychological trap where the brain turns on itself a micromanagement automated skills until the even simplest actions completely collapse. To the point you can't even say your goddamn name. You done forgot what the hell the test was about. You feel me? You forgot that you was shooting a motherfucking ball. You dig because you choked, man. And this is the thing that we all have probably experienced if we have done something major, done something that we really wanted to do. Done something that we felt that was really um probably above us. Because that's why you choke when some shit like that happened. You feel like, oh, this shit is not my pay rate. They paying me too much for this. I don't I'm not ready for this. Shit, uh well, goddamn, man, they giving this this not the right test. You feel me? This is I did not study for this shit. You feel me? Like, that's what you get when you are choking, man. You just for your brain go blank. You dig? So let's get into the point, so man. First, we're gonna talk about the neuroscience of this shit, man. The neuroscience of just knowing that. What in the hell did I get myself into? Like, once you know what you done got yourself into, you're gonna be like, what the fuck? Hold up, I was not thinking. Like, to understand why we choke, we have to look inside the brain's chief executive office. You feel me? You gotta know what the brain has on. You feel me? The prefrontal cortex, the working memory, the central executive conductor of the brain, right? You got your inner eye, you know, your inner voice, which is your ear. You got your inner eye, which is your conscience. You got your sensory inputs. This always your hands, you feel me? Your eyes, your nose, your taste buds. Like this, they always working. This is your long-term memory game. Like this is your mental notepad. Like when they perform, like when you perform a skill, you are you practice a hundred times, whether it's firing off a basketball shot, typing a password, or playing a piano chord, your brain offloads that routine to the procedural memory. It runs automatically fast and smooth without needing conscious thought, right? But write again, right? But when high pressure hits, the two discognitive failures occur. And number one is the memory overload. The working memory overload. Your working memory is the essential for your brain mental scratch pad under intense grace of truthful thoughts, like what if I fail, or if or if everyone is watching me, flood this scratch pad, you're taking an exam or giving a speech. These words, these worries hijate the um this exact bandwidth you need to recall facts and process complex logic. Meaning completely sense, right? Because I hate this same thing happened to me. I'm thinking I'm ready to talk. Nigga, man, my mouth went out the window. What the hell happened to my brain? You feel me? It went out the door. I did not even know how to say my name, where I was from, or nothing. Like, what the hell, Raheem? It's because I was studying thinking about failure the whole time they was going through each person. I was like, Raheem, what if I get up there and swim my name? I was just talking about the worst shit that I can think about. Really, honestly. Not not one thought came across my mind was positive at that damn time. You feel me? I had a suit on that I did not buy. I did not. I had a um I was in a location that I did not never thought of being in. Man, it was a bunch of bullshit, right? So, anyway, I just remember not not giving myself the best words before. I did not relax at all. Relaxation was not over me. I was ready just to get it over with. Stood up before it was my time and everything. Like, it was just not good for me at that point, right? So when I gave myself thought about it, I'm like, damn, what the hell was you thinking? Nothing. But a bunch of nothing. I was about to say a lot of people, right? What happened, you guys? A whole lot of nothing. Nothing. You feel me? Explicit monitoring theory. For physical or highly practiced monitoring skills, Scrax forces the pro the pre-forceal context to intervene where it shouldn't be. Instead of letting your procedural memory run on autopilot, your conscious mind steps into the micromanagement every single step. You're starting, you start thinking about the exact angle of your elbow. You breathe in your chest and your positioning, the positioning of your feet. So this is basically saying, God damn it, man, when you goddammit, instead of running on allopadin, your mind is not, it knows what to do now. You feel me? For physical and highly practiced monitor skills, stress forces the pre-foot of context to intervene where it shouldn't. Instead of letting your procedural memory run on allopating, your conscious mind steps into micro manage every step, you start thinking that exact angle available. So basically saying, God damn it, man, these two motherfuckers here, they just start doing too much. Like you start one, two, three in yourself again. Like, nigga, do what to do, do routine. Don't think about it. We know what to do. This is conscious. But when you say when your brain is under that damn pressure, it's over with. Shit, your ass finna do one or the other. You finna have a memory overload, or you finna have explicit monetary theory. Monetary like you finna try to monitor each step. You finna look at the test like, hold up. You you thinking too hard. You feel me? That's basically what it is. You get the thinking, don't make it nigga. Stop thinking so fucking hard and just do it. You feel me? Nigga, shoot the ball. You feel me? Uh pass the ball. Just keep just keep working. You get the oh my brain's like your brain starts talking out loud to itself. This is the moment where you try to constantly control the automatic skill. You break fluid, lightning fast, neural, um, neural pattern into a clunky step-by-step piece. It's like trying to think constantly about every individual muscle movement requires you just walk across the room. You instantly stumble. You feel me? This is what I just said. Like, if a nigga having this type of go, man, you ain't trying to be around that. You gotta think about everything you gotta do. Man, just do it. You ain't gotta give up and just say you gotta go read, nigga. Just read. You ain't gotta keep thinking about it. The more you think about it, the less you're gonna do it, right? So choking isn't isn't your body panicking, it's your pre-frog context is over controlling you. Like it's on a oh dude, nigga, like you in slow motion, you too damn high at this point. You feel me? Like you too, goddammit, you too, you like Craig. Hey. Craig, Craig, Craig. You feel me? Like you overthinking this shit. Craig was too high to even hear smoking because he was trying to get, man, he's like, nigga, why this nigga really just fucked me up with this girl? I was trying to get her, but even if he went high, he would have been like, look here. God, hey, he ain't tripping. I do want you. But he was too he was overthinking shit. Setting his face and shit, had to go wipe his face off and shit, seeing dogs and shit. Overthinking, over stimulated. He was choking. You feel me? He choked on getting goddamn getting George down the first try. He got it back later on in the day, though. You feel me? The same day he that's crazy. He dubbed back in the same day and got the same God. Damn, that was this nigga. You feel me? Got over her, got them in older girl came through the same day now. Same fucking day. That's crazy. Right, for real. So, anyway, bruh, like this this that's split money theory, man. You gotta get out there, right? Like, you gonna choke yourself up fucking up like that, right? And the next thing you want to talk about is the clutch brain, the challenge versus the threat. If choking is the brain over controlling and freezing under stress, what's happening to the brain in the clutch performer, right? It comes down to how your brain cordizes the stress response itself: a threat appraisal versus a challenge appraisal. When you view a moment as a threat, your brain focuses on the loss, danger, and self-preservation. Blood vessels constrict, cortisol spike, and your focus turns inward. Okay. When we view a moment as a challenge, your brain focuses on a gain, agency, and execution. Heart rates increase, blood vessels dilate, blood pumping rich directly to your brain, muscles, and adrenaline. Adrenaline releases, but instead of inducing panic, it sharpens the vision, speeds up the uh neurophobe uh process and narrows your focus perm purely on the external goals. So this all this shit is saying that this is all mental. This is shit is all motherfucking mental. It said if you uh what view it as that when you view a moment as a challenge, when you view, when you view it as that. So it's saying, nigga, this is why I didn't get back to reading this. I'm still reading my book called Um The Power of Awareness, right? And it's just like nigga, fuck anything. It's how I'm looking at this shit. If I'm looking at this shit in peace, permanent love, you know, a positive point of view. Oh, I can do this the same shit you doing, but I'm doing it, I can do this shit way easier. I done told my body, nigga, this is what we do. This is how we you feel me? Whatever you do, you just gotta get your groove and that shit. Let your body know, nigga, we cool. Shit, this alright. No, we can't know we this is gonna feed the family. This gonna do this, this is gonna do that. You feel me? When your body do that, it's working in harmony. But once you doing some shit and and and goddamn it disgrace, and goddamn it dishonor, dishonor, dishonest, and just this, just this, this, this down, dirty, down, nasty shit, right? You gonna you your body gonna hate it. You're not gonna be breathing. You're gonna be ready for a smoke break. You're gonna smoke most cigarettes, you're gonna smoke a whole pack at work every day. Because you're so stressed out. Every break you're trying to smoke though. On lunch, you smoke four of them if you got an hour break. If on fucking on a 10-minute break, your ass smoking three. On lunch, you smile to smoke 20. Damn near 10. Just running the fuck out sometimes. Because you're so stressed, right? So let me get out that motherfucking stress mindset. Let me move to okay. When I see a motherfucking threat, like when you when you re-somet the threat, man, I ain't there. Ain't no motherfucking threat. No, ain't no threat. Nah, nigga, this is a challenge. This is a a challenge to get my shit a praise. They're trying to see what I'm working with, right? So let's like let's sharpen our memory. Like, let's move faster. You feel me? What one man see in the jail cell, he see goddamn it the bright sunshine on another man's shit. What he see is nothing but goddamn it the moon. You feel me? It's what you see, it's just it's your goddamn, it's your mindset. That's why I've been so pertinent on it. I ain't thinking like that with your bitch ass. I'm not finna get on that level with you. No. Drinking, that's why drinking been out of my out of my mind. No, I'm not, I'm not no drinker like that. I'm not finna be right here drinking and not thinking. Like that's what a lot of people get into. Right? I'm glad I'm glad I wrote shit down. But man, once you thinking, man, you can you can really move. You feel me? Like that, like that's a clutch brain. Like when you ain't got stuff just in your mind that you know you need to do, man, you're not gonna move the way you need to move. You're not gonna do the things that you need to do. You feel me? Because your brain is too messed up. Your brain is not a place where you should be bullshitting or where you should be feeling, have your mind feeling the way. You feel me? You should brain should be looking at everything from the best perspective. No matter what you got going on, I'm looking at this from the best perspective, right? No matter what I got going on, this is this is what I do, right? You feel me? Because your brain gotta know. You gotta have an agreement. Like, you gotta be agreement with yourself on every level for your pressures to be riding right. If you overstimulate it, that's not good. And if you under stimulate it, that's not good. You need to be at a balance, a good base. Well, I don't need this to be, I don't need no drug, I don't need no food, I don't need no goddamn uh, I don't need none of this shit to be happy. You feel me? But it's always there. You feel me? You can still keep it as a requirement. You feel me? Because you know this is needed, but you don't tell yourself that I need it to relax. I don't need it to feel good. I don't need that approval. I don't need that approval from that food to say, ooh, I can do it. I can spend some money today. I can go buy me a big ass steak, big ass steak, big ass steak. No matter how.