PRESSURE

Ever had an assignment or a project or a goal that was to be executed on or before a specific day? Ever postponed that project till its one week, one day or one hour before its due? 😏 Well, you'd be in line for a very unhealthy dose of pressure. If you're in this situation, one of two things could happen.

First, the deadlines could actually help you to do your work quicker and move on to the next job to be done. Alternatively, since most humans are like me --- lazy, when the deadlines are unreasonable or you've procrastinated too much so it's impossible to do anything meaningful with the time that's left you would not get any work done.

Ever had your day totally planned out to the last second then someone that may or may not be close to you walks in and interrupts every single part of the plan?

Peer pressure, unlike what our parents and teachers have told us, can actually be good. Your friends (good or bad 😉) could actually help make you a better version of yourself. By disrupting your schedule, they could save you from the impending doom you would have faced if you continued that path you were walking on 😋.

In contrast, Peer pressure could make you a worse version of yourself and all those bad things your parents and teachers warned you about might actually happen 😅.

Ever did so well in a previous grade at school, so well that your teachers (that you may or may not like 😄) encourage you to keep it up, your parents are so excited, they give you different treats and tell you that if you continue this way the rewards would increase?

Well, pressure at school could get you to work harder than you would have and become the smartest person you could have been.

On the other hand, pressure at school could be inconsiderate to the changes that have occurred in the subjects or courses you're studying and it could be ineffective.

In some societies, when you get to a certain age, some members of society, your parents and even your friends start talking about you finding someone to "hold you down". When this happens, one of two things could also occur.

The more unlikely outcome might be that, your family and friends pressuring you to get married might actually push you to meet the one person that would change your life in the best way possible. It could also lead you to seeing 'the one' that had always been in your life but you never noticed.

The reverse could most likely be the case, your family and friends pressuring you to get married might lead you to making the worst mistake in your life 👎. 

It could come for celebrities as well. After releasing a song that has a billion hits in its first week or tops the Billboard 100 chart for 7 weeks consecutively or stays number 1 in a continent for quite a sizeable amount of time, the expectation that you would do something better than that when you obviously know that that might be your best work ever --- your peak, that expectation is the pressure I'm talking about.

Or as a writer, you write your first book and it instantly becomes a hit. It becomes a Times best seller within weeks of its release. It gets positive reviews everywhere you turn. All the top talkshows are calling for interviews. You've hit instant fame. Suddenly, they start talking about your next project. What's it going to be about? It should definitely be better than the first one. 

Or a movie is released. It grosses over a billion dollars within the first 3 months of its release. Critics are going crazy about it. The members of the cast immediately become instant sensations. It's overwhelming. Then, it's time for the sequel. Of course, the sequel must be better than the original because anything less, even if it's just as good as the original, then it's a bad sequel 😯.

For celebrities, pressure from fans could actually push their creative juices to release products that outperform the best the ever thought they could do.

Then again, it could all go to wrong.  The pressure from fans can push them to depression, drugs and ultimately suicide.

We all experience incredible amounts of pressure everyday. Pressure that ultimately leads to stress. It makes us lust after stress free zones, safe havens where we're free from this irrational burden of being better than our good or the best of your betters and ultimately better than our bests. Well... bad news is, such places really don't exist.

It doesn't mean all forms of pressure are bad though. 

Pressure could be good or bad or both good and bad, it could make you better or worse. However, living your life by trying to ignore or avoid pressure might be futile since pressure is inevitable and to be very honest I don't think there's one perfect fix to do away with pressure. But here's what I think can be done.

I think, when dealing with pressure, it's not about turning a deaf ear, it's about developing a thicker skin 😕. Developing a thick skin that absorbs the positive energy gotten from the good types of pressure and keeps the negative one at bay. This method is not exactly a perfect fix, but I think it's worth the try.

Also, we could try to resist the urge to be ourselves, we could all try to consciously and unconsciously reduce the amount of pressure we put on others. If by some miracle we all do this, everyone would experience less amounts of pressure. Easy! 😁

Let me know what you think can be done in the comment section.

Thanks for reading.