The Neuropsychology of Performance Under Pressure | Dr Philip Hopley | TEDxMoorgate

the important thing ladies and gentlemen is to understand that I'm a psychiatrist and I work in business and elite sport and last Sunday I was at home and I watched the most amazing sporting spectacle that I've seen for a long time as with my two boys Arthur and Edward they're 12 and 10 they didn't watch all of it they were in now you know how kids are but it was not only a great game it was also an amazing example of how we start to understand performance under pressure this was the game it was the final of the World Cup t20 between England and the West Indies both teams had done remarkably well to get there England had been New Zealand in the semi final who had tipped as the favorites and the West Indies had dispatched with India who would the host country and they were fully expected to get there so big expectation big excitement but before I tell you about that let me just step to one side in the work I do I work with about 14 different team and individual sports in the UK cricket has an unusual feature it's a team sport but it's based around individual head-to-head combat that probably explains or is one of the reasons that explains why the psychological attrition in cricketers compared to rugby players football players hockey players other team sports is really high it's got the highest suicide rate we'll come back to why that might be so back to the game I was owed my boys in and out England batted first and they got off to a shocking start they lost three wickets quickly and it wasn't looking too good but the Reliant resilient Joe root came in young starving and cricket and he nudged away and he cajoled and he got the team up and they eventually scored 155 which although not a fantastic score is certainly a reliable in a final score a good enough score to defend then it was the turn of the West Indies now you may have seen in the press that a number of these players were coming up to retirement so for them it really was a big issue an opportunity to go out on top what the West Indies didn't know was that the strategists in England had been doing their homework instead of opening with our usual fast bowlers Joe root came onto Bowl and the strategy worked perfectly in the first over we took two wickets including that of Gayle who is the most destructive of bats and it was a really good start England were on top but it ebbs and flows West Indies got back into it their cricket captain had a very very good innings they got up to about the hundred mark and it wasn't looking so good for England but then we took two quick wickets and the pressure turned again so the finale was set up one over to go 19 runs I don't know how many of you know about cricket but t20 cricket is fast and furious you win it by scoring boundaries 19 runs in six balls those are big ask is nearly a boundary a ball it was set up for this incredible finale we had batting for the West Indies Carlos Brathwaite and bowling for England Ben Stokes it was a battle really between those two Ben Stokes at this end Carlos brass way that this end in come Stokes Stokes is a very combative powerful aggressive tenacious player Brathwaite his focus was incredible the first ball he smashed it out of the ground into the stands for six I looked at my boys and thought not looking good but I didn't say in the I didn't want to let them down I was thinking focused under pressure myself the second delivery came and he absolutely clubbed this back over Stokes his head he watched it go and at that point our heads went down as well bang-bang two more deliveries both for six the game was over the West Indies had won and as the West Indies understandably joyfully danced around that pitch success in that last opportunity for most of them the first team to be world champions twice the other side of the coin where there's a winner there's a loser the players gathered round the England bowler Stokes was gutted his world had fallen apart the World Cup had gone and that's the fine line between winning and losing and even though the players were very supportive and what they were saying was looking to team F it's a shared responsibility in that moment that made no difference to him is there anything that we can learn from this little vignette about performing under pressure well as a psychologist and a psychiatrist I would say absolutely yes and it's this if we think back to how Brathwaite was his level of focus his poise that lack of psychomotor agitation showed me that he was absolutely in the zone it's harder to make that assessment for a bowler because naturally he's moving he's running but certainly after the first delivery there was a sense of body language change for Stokes Brathwaite said himself when he was interviewed afterwards that when that over took place it was like an out-of-body experience what he meant by that was not some sort of spiritual happening what he meant was that he was so focused so in the zone so in the present moment we sometimes call that mindful so mindful that he was able to totally focus on what he had to do a perfect state to win that match but let's take it away from elite sport and put it a little bit closer to our real lives if I think about my first experience of this I growing up in Westland I was a very shy kid and but I was good at sport I loved sport passion sport pretty good at Rugby as you've heard earlier and that was really helpful because I got a lot of positive feedback from teammates from family from teachers that helped me kind of overcome my shyness it was good my confidence my self-esteem picked up what that didn't do though was anything for my pre-match nerves here's a bunch of guys we were 14 15 year olds at the time and for the last few years I'd been playing rugby this is a County team I would have really strong pre-match nerves we call it anticipatory or performance anxiety from about a day and a half before the game I would be conscious this sense of impending doom sense of anxiety worried my focus was absolutely on this it would affect my schoolwork physiologically physically what would happen I would feel quite tense I'd have a sense of my tummy being maybe overactive and sometimes get the odd cramp of course I didn't realize at the time that this was a normal but slightly maladaptive physiological response to fight flight the stress response that Kenan referred to earlier so as I was getting older I also noticed that this response is discomfort this unpleasantness went away as soon as the whistle blew and the game started so something was changing something about my focus something about my attention allowed me instantly to get out of this unpleasant fight-or-flight of state that didn't do anything about the pre-match anxiety the anticipate your anxiety what really helped me with that and I'm not sure whether it is something I discovered myself or a sensible parent or teacher pointed out was to try and shift the focus of my thoughts instead of thinking about the forthcoming match the advice was think about positive previous experience visualize doing something good in the game project your thoughts forward to what it feels like after you've finished after you've played when you're with your teammates win or lose that shared endeavor that sense of achievement working together that kind of tired but enjoyable sense of having worked hard focus on that and that worked really well it would reduce it wouldn't take away but it would reduce the intensity of the anxiety that I felt if we step it back even closer to everybody in this room the number one feared activity if you speak to people in our parts of the world professionals is public speaking it's almost guaranteed to trigger that stress response and in the short-term an acute stress response is a healthy adaptive thing doesn't do any harm the problem arises when it becomes chronic or exposed to stress over a longer period of time that's when we start to see health and performance impairments so in order to persuade the audience of this in a moment I'm going to bring one of you up onto the stage I'm going to get you to just do a little task a little bit of a public speaking task some of you would know if the radio for program just a minute so I'm going to give that lucky person one minute to talk about a topic I'll tell them without hesitation deviation or repetition but before I do that just think about that it could be one of you lucky people bear in mind that if we take an acute stress like that actually even though it's short-term think about me speaking today I had the capacity to be worried and stressed about this talk from a few months ago when I was engaged I got the capacity to be worried about it now and actually if I don't do a good job I can go away and I can take that with me so as humans we've got this ability to lock up stress and take it with us wherever we go and that's the maladaptive bit so the person who's about to come up and actually everybody on that side can relax because I'm going to choose from this side so just ease back the person is going to come up likewise is probably worried a little bit now when they come up they may be even more worried I'd expect their stress response to tick up we can check with my heart rate monitor and afterwards if they feel embarrassed about what's happened in front of someone they know then they've got the possibility to carry that on with them so there's this gentleman here with glasses and you'll be very pleased to know sir you can stay right where you are and probably as I was going through that little buildup some of you would have been a little bit anxious that you might have been chosen and when I pointed at you I imagined that you started to feel a little bit anxious sir so let's not focus on you let's focus on me my personal experience of public speaking I was this shy kid sport helped me but I wasn't one of these kind of extroverts I'd like to get up on stage and being the end of your show but in my last year at school I was called in with Headmaster's office just before the end of the previous year I should say and the headmaster said Hopley he said congratulations he said we're going to make you head boy next year and I was I have to admit I was delighted but I was also surprised but he said hope you don't get carried away he said you'd like I and all the teachers know it's not a particularly strong year they weren't that many competitors for the job so some benefits come with that a silly uniform didn't like that but also the need to get up onto the stage every morning at assembly and quieten down the mass of 300 people before the headmaster came up to start morning prayers now the young kid United's young kids at the front and they go back as such and you've got the upper six my mates right in the back underneath the eaves you know what they're up to I had no ability to fast forward into a positive experience of this the coping strategy I had for rugby didn't exist this was my very first time so how do you how do you manage this it's your first time or one of the things you do is you try to anticipate how things are going to be you think to yourself this will happen so I can expect it that will happen so I can expect it that can happen so I can expect it and up I came and I was nervous as hell apps yourself and I got the things you would expect I got the odd sort of grimace I got the odd sort of bit of rustling and tussling going where I had to say calm down boys keep nice and easy I got the odd name called out I got the odd reverse one of those if you understand what I mean from the back but what I wasn't banking on when I wasn't banking on and what really threw me was the sheet noises a boy in the lower 6 over in that corner I forget his name as she was Kevin Dutton that Dutton and muttons or stuck in my mind and he just started going very quietly because the teacher over here but anyway the lovely thing was the humour helped me to get through it which was positive so let's go on to look in more detail why these things occur because short-term stress is fine longer-term stress is not so good psychologists understand that we all react very different in the certain circumstances there are some people who had had done that job as head boy and loved it they'd have been up there and they'd have been cavorting around but why is that let's take a common scenario two people on a tube going to work train gets jammed no announcement person number one very calmly opens his bag takes out his laptop starts doing some work thinks might as well use my time nothing I can do about it person number two sits there feeling quite tense becoming increasingly irritable saying to themselves this is disgusting I pay all this money for my season ticket these people should be able to get me to work on time not only that if I'm late for the meeting it might cause the wrong impression that might affect the contract I'll then be badly appraised so he starts to catastrophize psychologists have a theory we like simple theories the ABC so in this situation you've got the activating event something happens and it leads to consequences there will always be physiological emotional and behavioral the first two you can recognize the behaviors are important because in the workplace sometimes we see people's irritability spinning over they're a bit short their communication isn't great I imagine all of you at some point have sent an email and then later said why didn't I stop and think about that before I sent so behavior is affected but of course a doesn't cause see because we got the same activating event two different sets of reactions what's happening is that this is all going through a prism our beliefs or our perceptions so the gentleman that was very calm and relaxed his belief set is that is not nothing I can do about it I'm not going to be able to make a claim that's going to make any difference to my life the other gentleman is thinking this is disgraceful and it's going to really affect me so gentleman number one reduces the level of his stress response his consequences are much more ProHealth and gentlemen number two goes the other way and of course the downside of the Hat is the impact that's going to have on our performance short term on our health long term we're trying to avoid carrying stress around with us these are not new ideas the ancient Greeks knew about it but we haven't yet really assimilated all this we don't use it in our day to day lives in the way that we should be able to let's just show you an example perceptions are so variable five seconds show you the dress what color is it okay could you tell me what color you see sir hands off you see blue or blue and black turn around have a look is about two-thirds the audience hands down and you one see a different color what do you see sir white and gold okay hands off white and gold about 10% so the interesting thing is this was very controversial at time recent fMRI studies at the Institute's are currently show that those of you like me that see the white and gold on average have better attentional abilities and a 5 to 10 mark higher IQ or IRM oh I'm joking now all this is showing we see things differently and the fact that we see things differently means we often think and perceive things differently that visual image is a metaphor for our thoughts let me take you through the common mind traps that we try and encourage people to step away from catastrophizing talked about it before fast-forwarding to the worst case possible scenario appraisal one areas bad reads it the catastrophize ergos my god it's going to be a terrible appraisal not gonna get the bonus they're going to be watching after me at work I might not be in the team for the next big pitch that means I might lose my job if I lose my job the mortgage is gone and my wife might leave me okay it's not going to happen but some people start to go that way here's another set I live by the rule of should I grew up in a Catholic family went to a Catholic school my uncle was the parish priest no pressure there and then made head boy of senior cadet in the CCF it's all about rigor rule routine doing things properly so my default is I should do this you should do that you should write that report that way it's the rule of should and all of these mind traps are amenable to change but they become problematic when we get stuck with them and here's what we do to change check your thoughts challenge them and change them look for evidence look for support for why you think some way why you think that's happening now why is it happening to me most of us find it difficult we're not good at questioning ourselves so try this technique try instead of saying it's yourself imagine particular scenario is something that you are advising a friend on D personalize it it makes it a lot easier to approach it but before I finish there's always a catch because this stuff's been around since the age in Greece but we're not that good at it and why is that this is why but if we want to we certainly can so if you get out there you tap your mind traps and you're minded to try and think things differently the impact of stress on you will change and I'd expect you to see improvements in your health and your performance thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 72,685

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United Kingdom, Life, Behavior, Body, Brain, Business, Change, Decision making, Health, Mental health, Neurology, Neuroscience, Psychology, Sports, Success, Work

Id: cPxyGeagKwg

Length: 17min 21sec (1041 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 05 2016