How Nervous People Can Perform Under Pressure - Steve Magness

How many elite performers do you think have got the talent to be able to become world-class but don't actually have the inside game to actualize that potential?

I think it's a much larger percent than we realize, and I've seen it. I've seen it at the junior, the high school, the college level. Athletes who were insanely talented, better than those who became Olympic medalists, but they just kept getting in their own way. (laughs) They weren't able to express that talent, and I would bet you that any coach or somebody who's spent enough time in this field has dozens of stories, uh, just like I do.

Yeah. There's a... (clears throat) Do you know who Lewis Capaldi is? British singer?

No.

Okay, so he... I mean, you'll have heard his tracks. He's done billions and billions of streams, and, um, he's having a tough time mentally at the moment. He found a lot of pressure in between his first and his second album, uh, the... A- a- as it's known, The Difficult Second Album, and, um, had this pressure to perform, wasn't really too sure whether he could live up to his own expectations, and what was needed by the label, and what was wanted by his management, so on and so forth. And (clears throat) he had Tourette's, and he developed kind of a Tourette's tic, which was his shoulder, which is very common, uh, and a lot of anxiety came along with it, and a couple of times now on very big stages, I think he did this at Glastonbury last summer, uh, he's certainly done it in a couple of his own live shows, he's choked onstage doing his own songs. And, you know, the- the anxiety's gotten so bad that he hasn't been able to get the words out to the songs that he's written, doing the very thing that he wanted, and I feel so bad for him 'cause I- I adore his music, and I think he's a, like, a wonderful, kind, funny guy, at least inasmuch as you can tell from someone through the internet. Um, but I always think about him as having this really unique blend of insane talent, gorgeous voice, wonderful songwriting ability, real insight into the human condition with what he sings about and how he puts it into words and lyrics and sounds, and then this other side, which is his performance, his inner game, and the challenges that he faces, and the fact that his inner game is limiting his capacity, and I think for most people, we assume, well, l- people just aren't good enough. They're not good enough at the thing that they're trying to do, and so many people have got the desire, and the drive, and they want, and they try hard, and so on and so forth, but they're j- they're kind of just not that good. They're not world-class. But there's this very unique and kind of, um, particularly vicious category who've got it the other way around, who are better than they need to be to be world-class, and yet don't have whatever it is, the c- the constitution to be able to handle the pressure, the performance, the anxiety, the stress.