Highlights

Our experience and interviews with elite performers reveal that, even more than physical skills, it’s performers’ mindsets that separate the best from the rest. The most clutch performers know how to think on command when under pressure, and in ways that optimize their performance.

Reframing describes the skill of deliberately thinking about a situation in a new or different way. This, in turn, allows us to shift the meaning we attach to the situation, the actions we take, and the results we achieve.

When we’re under pressure, we can think about the situation in one of two ways—either as a threat or as an opportunity. Seeing the pressure situation as a threat triggers the bad pharmacy in our body and hurts our performance. Seeing the pressure situation as an opportunity triggers the good pharmacy in our body and helps our performance.

Like Izzy, we all want to come through at crunch time.