Manage Your State – 7 Skills to impress™

Here we focus on performance under pressure. It teaches simple drills to keep you calm, confident, and effective when pressure hits.

The routines described here use your Outcome to prevent System 1 from taking over and shutting down System 2. When that happens, all your talents stay available, and you stay yourself, no matter the stress you face.

Manage Your State places your Outcome at the centre of attention. From there, your goals guide System 1’s natural Sifting and Sorting, shaping an Edited Reality that supports performance rather than undermining it.

You’ll learn two simple drills that work together:

Fight, Flight and Freeze Hits Me

I was with my team at a prestigious business conference. We were the headline speakers, and I’d organised the presentation as a thank-you to my colleagues before leaving the Police Service.

Some of our work had gained national recognition, and I wanted the team to enjoy that moment.

We were seated at the front, relaxed, being introduced. One of my team, my old friend Brisey, had written a comedy script around which we’d built the talk. It was well-crafted and genuinely funny. We were looking forward to it.

Then, without warning, nerves hit.

In the audience sat a man whose clothes, hairstyle, and build reminded me of my stepfather. During my childhood, my stepfather subjected me to regular beatings. Years later, I was diagnosed with PTSD as a result.

I believed I’d dealt with it. I hadn’t. Fight, Flight, or Freeze kicked in.

My presentation style is informal. I like to interact, to ad-lib. The talk had been designed that way. But I knew that if I didn’t settle myself quickly, I’d freeze. I’d stumble, lose my words, and the whole structure would collapse.

The introductions were ending. I had seconds to steady myself.

Emotions Intensify in Adversity

As much as we like to believe we control our reactions, Identity is in charge. Most of the time, we have little influence over the emotions it creates.

In every waking moment, we take in vast amounts of information. Sounds, faces, expressions, temperature, memories, thoughts, colours. Almost all of it passes beneath awareness.

System 1 and Identity Sift and Sort this stream continuously, shaping an Edited Reality that reflects who we believe ourselves to be and what we believe the world is like.

That Edited Reality sets our emotional state.

From moment to moment, we might feel calm, irritated, fearful, joyful, or tense.

That is what happened to me at the front of that room.

My Identity detected a familiar pattern and reached back into memory. Old experiences of beatings and humiliation surfaced without warning. The signal was clear enough for System 1.

Danger. Fight, Flight, or Freeze engaged.

Even a mild version of this response targets Edited Reality toward threat. Attention narrows. Fear becomes magnetic. Looking away takes effort.

You’ve seen this before. The Stroop Magnet holds attention in place and makes flexible thinking harder. System 2 slips offline.

At that point, effort alone will not help.

The question is not how to overpower the response, but how to redirect it. How to bring Outcome and Identity back into alignment so behaviour and performance recover naturally.

The answer lies in a simple, natural process that interrupts Fight, Flight, and Freeze at its source.

And Breathe

When FFF begins, your heartbeat changes, not just faster, but more erratic. When your pulse is steady, it’s described as being in a state of Cardiac Coherence.

The precise signal for System 1 to shut down the thinking brain is when your heart rhythm turns from coherent to chaotic.

As soon as the interval between heartbeats becomes uneven, System 1 takes over and shuts down System 2. If you can keep your heart rhythm steady, you keep System 2 online. You are able to reason and solve problems even under pressure.

The secret is to breathe through your diaphragm.

Humans breathe either through the chest or through the diaphragm. When we use the diaphragm, the stomach moves in and out. Under pressure, our instinct is to breathe short, irregular chest breaths.

Chest breathing allows an uneven, chaotic heartbeat, the exact signal that tells System 1 to override rational control.

If we can continue breathing through the diaphragm during stressful moments, we maintain Cardiac Coherence and our composure.

Together with Realisation, this is the key to composure under pressure. Resist the urge to breathe through your chest. Breathe through your diaphragm and keep your thinking brain switched on.

When stressed, breathing automatically shifts upward, so it takes practice to counter it. Practise when you’re calm so it becomes automatic later. Try this: 7-11 Breathing.

7-11 Breathing

Sit upright in a chair. Later, with practice, you’ll manage this standing or even walking, but sitting comfortably is the best start.

Place one hand just under your ribs at the top of your stomach, the other on your upper chest. Breathe normally and notice which hand moves with each breath.

Next, adjust your breathing until only the lower hand rises and falls. That tells you the diaphragm is doing the work. It may feel unfamiliar at first. You might need to exaggerate the movement slightly. Once comfortable, relax your hands.

Now pay attention to depth, rhythm, and pace. Make the out breath longer than the in breath: breathe in for seven seconds, then breathe out gently for eleven.

7-11 Breathing works because biology says it must. Breathing in this rhythm keeps your heartbeat coherent or brings it back to coherence after chaos. It may take a minute or two, but the body always responds, whatever your mind is thinking.

A High IDQ Upgrade

7-11 Breathing alone would have helped me at that presentation. It would have let me beat the stress response and perform despite it.

But I wanted more. I wanted to be at my best, so I used another method that gave me confidence and belief: Realisation.

My Identity had triggered FFF in response to echoes from childhood. Back then, standing out often meant being hit. I learned to stay in the background.

At the conference, I was about to stand out again. My subconscious saw a man who resembled my stepfather, connected the two cues, and drew the wrong conclusion. System 1 decided I needed to hide.

It was reacting to a danger that no longer existed. My Identity was running outdated software, and FFF was the last thing I needed.

I needed a mental update, a software patch that aligned Identity with the present. That update was my Outcome, installed through Realisation.

Realisation

Realisation coaches your subconscious to create an Edited Reality that supports your Outcome. Instead of scanning for threat, your mind begins to scan for the sights, sounds, feelings, thoughts and possibilities that belong to success. Stress falls, confidence rises, and performance becomes easier to access.

It’s effortless, which is why it works when pressure peaks. You can do it anywhere, any time.

Ask yourself: What will success be like? Then wrap your senses around the answer.

What will I see?
What will I hear?
What will I feel?
What will I think?

(Include taste and smell if they’re relevant.)

Realisation works because it refocuses System 1. In your mind’s eye, you move out of the present into the future. The problem is now behind you. You’re teaching System 1 that the challenge is Fleeting.

The more vividly you picture this future, the more completely System 1 accepts it. Fill the image with colours, sights, feelings, sounds, scents, thoughts, everything that belongs to your success.

When you combine this with 7-11 Breathing, your mind is in the ideal state to absorb these messages. It’s like self-hypnosis.

Composure Returns

At the conference, I sat there, 7-11 Breathing. Nobody noticed. While I breathed, I focused on what I wanted to achieve:

To be calm and confident
To let my thoughts flow freely

I pictured the talk unfolding, the audience laughing, clapping, and shaking hands afterwards.

That was enough.

As the introductions ended, I turned slightly and looked at the audience, still breathing in rhythm. I looked from face to face and imagined them smiling and nodding, applauding at the end.

Then we were on.

The breathing and Realisation released the dam holding back my potential. My heartbeat steadied, my thinking brain switched back on, and composure returned, along with gratitude and excitement to be there.

Adrenaline was still present, but now it wasn’t blocking me. I welcomed it. I breathed it in and felt it fuel my awareness.

My mind was free.

The script and ad-libs flowed. We got a standing ovation, and the organiser said it was the best presentation in twenty-one years of the conference.

That recognition was for the whole team, of course. The content was strong, and my colleagues were excellent.

But in that moment of pressure, I’d turned myself from a liability into an asset. On my feet, in seconds, I overcame FFF, took charge of System 1, and refocused it on perfect performance. It obliged.

Putting It All Together

There are three simple steps to perform at your peak in adversity:

Identify Your Outcome
Manage Your State 1 – 7-11 Breathing
Manage Your State 2 – Realisation

These link Outcome and Identity so that even under pressure, your Identity scans, Sifts, and Sorts to create a High IDQ Edited Reality that supports performance.

If you hit a wall, your System 1 resets and searches for new routes to success.

Use the Adrenaline

You’ll still feel the adrenaline that comes with challenge, but now it no longer triggers FFF; you can use it.

I teach my elite athletes to welcome adrenaline as fuel. With every inward breath, feel it circulate through your body. It’s there to make you sharper, faster, and stronger.

What’s Next

So far, 7 Skills to impress™ has been about building calm, confidence, and composure under pressure.

Now it’s time to influence and inspire.

You’ve learned how to direct your mind toward what you want through Identify Your Outcome, and how to remain steady when pressure hits through Manage Your State. Together, that’s referred to as IMP.

When Outcome is clear, Systems 1 and 2 work together. Your intuitive mind stops chasing fear, and your rational mind stays switched on.

That harmony creates clarity, composure, and presence, qualities people instinctively trust.

Those two skills are the foundation of influence, but influence only exists in a relationship.

The next step is to take that inner balance outward: to connect, listen, and inspire.

Practice Rapport is Next. Click here.

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