High performance and pressure go hand in hand. If you’re a leader or high performer in athletics you know what pressure feels like. If you want to be a high performer, you will have to deal with pressure.
From a sports psychology perspective, “pressure” is considered any factor or factors that increase the importance of performing well. High performers feel pressure because what they’re doing is important. Important to themselves and important to other people. There’s expectation.
If you’re the CEO of a company, there’s pressure. Pressure to execute, to handle problems, to increase revenue, to win.
If you’re a coach of a team, there’s pressure. Pressure to win games, to develop players, to reach the next round, to recruit.
If you’re leading anything. There’s pressure to not screw it up. To take ground. Protect what has been built.
Pressure is all around us, often manifesting itself in the form of stress and strain. It hums in the background of a high performers’ life and craft.
Before the start of the 2024-2025 basketball season, Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla shared an interesting take on pressure. When asked if he feels pressure heading into the season he said, “I feel ZERO pressure.”
Standing in front of a row of Boston and national media members, Mazzulla exclaimed that he doesn’t feel any pressure from the ruthless Boston media. “It’s just words.”
Recently I shared this viral 2 minute clip of Joe Mazzulla’s take on pressure with a coaching client who also works in the athletic industry and he was floored. His response:
“I don’t get it. How can he not feel pressure? Of courses there’s pressure.”
It’s Not Pressure It’s an Opportunity
The leading questions from the Boston sports media come just 5 months after Joe Mazzulla led the Boston Celtics to the top of the mountain. In just his second season leading one of the world’s most heralded sports franchises, Mazzulla led the Celtics to an NBA title after they defeated the Dallas Mavericks in five games.
They’re the defending world champions. And oh by the way, they return all of the key pieces from last year’s championship team. There’s a growing sentiment that last season was not an outlier and the Celtics are possibly poised for a historic run in the next few years. IF they don’t screw it up. That’s pressure. It’s the perfect recipe for pressure while also showcasing the fleeting pleasures of success and achievement. Five months ago, they’re raising the trophy, and now Mazzulla is standing in front of reporters alluding he’s under extreme pressure to lead the franchise to the top again.
The day before the season starts, and last year’s championship banner is revealed from the rafters of the TD Garden, reporters press Mazzulla.
“It’s not normal for a champion to bring back nearly everyone. What kind of pressure do you feel to maximize this opportunity?” One reporter asks. Here’s Mazzulla’s response:
“Zero. No pressure. We’re all going to be dead soon. It really doesn’t matter any more. Zero pressure. You’re either going to win or you’re not. If you win you forget about it a week later. If you lose you forget about it a week later. It’s not pressure, it’s an opportunity. We have an opportunity here over the next few years to carry the organization forward. I wouldn’t expect our organization to expect us to lose, that would be debilitating. We just have to work to maximize that.”
In the 56 seconds it took for Mazzulla to respond to the question, you could almost collectively feel the eye rolls from social media online, the Boston faithful sports fans, and the reporters in the room. Some call this kind of perspective “coach speak.” The empty fluff soundbites that coaches and public relations specialists have to throw out to fulfill their media time obligations.
He can’t possibly mean this for real can he? It’s just coach speak?
A few minutes later another Boston media member presses him on exactly this question.
“It seems like you operate in two different worlds here. It’s the Boston sports world where you operate with pressure from media, fans and stuff. But you’re keeping it very cute “we’re all going to die soon” and all that stuff. How do you bridge that because you have to live in both worlds? How do you manage that?
Mazzulla proceeds to rattle off another bar.
“I just don’t look at it like pressure. A Boston media member, it’s just words. They don’t have a weapon. They’re not going to come after me. They’re just words. You can’t do anything. It’s just a made up word. We don’t have pressure. We’re not losing our life. We’re not surgeons. We’re not in the military. We coach basketball. No one is putting more pressure and expectation on us than we are on ourselves. That’s what we signed up for”
The reporter refutes his claim and presses him even more.
“But words have power.”
“No they don’t.” Mazzulla interrupts him. “If you allow words to take your personal power then yes. I don’t allow words to take my personal power. Words only have power unless you allow them to. There’s nothing anyone in this circle can do to hurt me or impact my identity and who I am as a person or coach. 40 years from now, none of you are invited to my funeral and that’s it.”
Not just coach speak. In fact, in 2 minutes and 56 seconds, 2nd year head coach Joe Mazzulla may have just enlightened the world with a mindset that says it’s possible to attain pressure free high performance.
How can a high performer operate with a mindset like this? You may be reading this as a high performing coach in a contract year needing to reach a certain status on the field to be retained in your job. Another high performing CEO may be reading this and things look bleak. The stress and strain of high performance is real. As the Boston sports media member pressed Mazzulla “you have to exist in both worlds.”
How do you personally exist in both worlds? Leadership and high performance don’t happen in a vacuum. We’ve got to get real results. There are legitimate factors that increase the importance of performing well. There’s real pressure. Can it be coped with effectively? Or are we just destined for stress, burnout, and destructive coping mechanisms at our fingertips.
I believe it is possible and the secret to it is illusive and requires training and commitment. It requires a high performer to flourish by way of a mind-body approach that Joe Mazzulla is alluding to in his 2 minutes and 56 second masterclass on how to flourish in the presence of pressure, not just in the absence of it.
Mind Your Mind
It’s important to remember - it’s going to take a mind-body approach. When the stakes are the highest, we can’t just “think” our way to it. It has to be both. We’ll get into what a true mind-body approach looks like, but first we have to draw attention to some of the absolutely key mindsets Joe Mazzulla expresses in his impromptu masterclass.
When you listen to his full interview - which you can find here, it is important to notice just how resolute he is. If there’s one thing we need in the face of pressure and expectations it is internal resolve - courage. He speaks with the resoluteness of a man who possesses courage. I would submit that the two mindsets we’re going to explore here are held together by courage.
Courage holds it all together in high performance. When the stakes are high and there’s pressure both internal and external.
If you’re going to start the process of training your mind, wrap the process in training courage.
There are two central mindsets I want to bring your attention to. If you’re feeling the pressure you must weave these two mindsets into your daily rhythm. They are 1. Perspective, 2. Release
1.) Perspective
“We’re not surgeons.. We’re not in the military.. We coach basketball…”
This mindset is challenging for many high performers to tap into because of the constricting nature of pressure and stress. Pressure in the midst of high performance communicates a radically different perspective and often for good reason. We feel pressure, because the thing is important to us. We’re putting in the hours, often sacrificing normality and other enjoyment to pursue the thing. And in all of that process our focus and perspective narrows as we get intoxicated with the idea that THIS is the most important thing in the world. We begin to fall for the narrow perspective that we and everyone else “have a lot riding on this.” We get high on the lie that “everything will change for the better if I achieve this.”
What we see Joe Mazzulla do here, with conviction by the way, is the process of zooming out our focus to put our pursuits back in their proper place. Even if just for a moment, it is a reminder to our mind and thoughts that we’re not as under threat as we think we are. The ability to let something really matter while simultaneously allowing it to exist in a larger worldview and perspective is incredibly difficult and Joe Mazzulla makes it look easy.
What I’ve often noticed in my own life and the life of many high performers I’ve worked with over the last decade is this process is best done internally. It takes a high, high degree of trust for an external source (friend, parent, teammate, mentor) to try to help someone with zooming out their perspective. In fact, if not done well - it will only piss a high performer off.
“Hey man you should put this in perspective, it’s not like you are in the military or something.” is NOT a great thing to say to a high performer the day before the season starts.
Even if the perspective is true - it’s best if the individual can get to the perspective on their own. When our focus is narrow, and we’re in a heightened state due to pressure and elevated importance of the event we have to be gentle in how we deliver perspective. Heavy handed is rarely the way.
2.) Release
“There’s nothing any of you can do to hurt me or threaten my identity as a coach or as a person..”
Another mindset Joe Mazzulla speaks out loud is the truth he’s rehearsed in private - his identity is secure.
He’s expressing a sense of groundedness to his existence that makes him look like an alien in a world where everyone lives with inch deep roots. In a way this is what is so off-putting to the reporter asking follow up questions. It’s what bothered the coaching client I shared the video with. It’s what leads to cynicism and eye rolls.
In a way Joe Mazzulla is not really playing by the rules. We’re all watching it and thinking,
“You can’t do this. You have to feel pressure. You MUST bow and acknowledge your worth is wrapped up in this, you must behave like your worth is wrapped up in our pressure-filled pursuits.”
Joe Mazzulla is opting out. He’s displaying a groundedness that allows him to release the outcome. It’s the hardest strategic advantage a high performer can get to. To fully surrender the outcome knowing they are going to be okay either way.
We like to think because something “means more” we’re going to perform better. Joe Mazzulla knows the opposite is true. The more you can surrender the outcome, “we’re either going to win or we’re going to lose” the more free you actually are to let it loose.
This is the power of a trained mind. And if you’re going to pursue high performance like this - the only way it’s made possible is by truly flourishing. This type of training will require a mind-body approach.
4 in 6 Out
2 years before Joe Mazzulla stood in front of all these media members and delivered his masterclass he was not the resolute high performer denouncing the reality of pressure. In fact, he felt a lot of pressure.
After being thrusted into an interim head coaching role for the Boston Celtics the pressure was rising. Any coach or person who has served as an “interim” anything, knows the title alone comes with the pressure to prove you’re the person for the real job.
In response to the high stress levels associated with his new role, Joe Mazzula began working with Dr. Leah Lagos, a renowned Sport and Performance Psychologist who specializes in heart rate variability (HRV) and Biofeedback.
When you think of a Sport Psychologist you likely think “the mind.” While that makes up a large portion of what Dr. Lagos does, what she is most known for is training world class high performers in breathwork.
While Joe Mazzulla expressed powerful mindsets around pressure, the other piece of the mind-body approach to flourishing has to concentrate on the body, not just the mind.
One way to do that is through breathwork and HRV training which tracks the range of heart rate beats a person has with their breath in and out.
What likely allowed Joe Mazzulla to express such powerful mindsets and resoluteness was his multi-year training in the dark on the practice of breathwork. Here’s what he expressed in an interview with Dr. Lagos and Shane Parrish, back in 2023.
“I got into breathwork for a peak performance, how can it make me a better coach, a better performer.” Mazzulla says. “It ended up making me a better person along the way. I wasn’t expecting how it changed my heart. How it changed my emotions. And how I experience love.”
What Joe Mazzulla realizes is a reality that all high performers must confront. It’s that pressure just doesn’t exist in the mind. It exists in the body. During stressful moments our sympathetic nervous system kicks in, putting us in a “fight, flight or freeze” state which can lead to higher heart rates, tension in the body, and ultimately negative outcomes or “choking.”
We can sit and rehearse thoughts all we want, but if we neglect the reality of our physiology, our body, we will continue to spiral when it matters most. But if we don’t neglect the reality of our body, we can “train the heart” as Dr. Lagos says. We begin to shift our physiology on command. We can train our body to communicate to our mind that we’re safe, activating our parasympathetic nervous system - the opposite of fight, flight, freeze. We can get into flow states.
Mazzulla has spent the last few years training breathing routines with Dr. Lagos.
“When do you feel at your best? When do you feel most in your flow state? As we would go through breathing routines”, Mazzulla said, “it forces you to sit, feel, embrace, release, bring it back. It forces you to sit in the moment.”
Like a skilled high performer, Mazzulla engages in deliberate practice in HRV training and breathwork. He does a 15 minute breathing routine before games. And a 15 minute breathing routine after games to “wind down.” Before timeouts he uses something called resonant breathing. A slow, rhythmic breathing of 4 second inhales and 6 second exhales. A breath rate that activates the “stand down” part of our brain to calm things down. According to Mazzulla it looks something like this.
4 sec inhale - connect with good feelings - FEEL not think.
6 sec exhale - let go of the rest of the world - train the heart.
Imagine the compounding effect of two sessions a day engaging in this process. It would produce a calmness, security, resiliency, and courage that would allow mindsets like he shared with the reporters to flourish. It would allow a high performing leader to be open and receptive instead of frantically stressed and worried.
It would provide the necessary conditions to challenge the traditional attitude toward success and achievement. It would allow someone to even believe that pressure isn’t real. That’s the power of a mind-body approach.
Open and receptive.
You can let go.
There’s nothing to fear.
