/By Sean

#233 Dr. Ceri Evans – Learning How to Perform Under Pressure

Big Ideas

Dr. Ceri Evans has always been a high performer, gaining first class honors in Experimental Psychology on a Rhodes Scholarship at the University of Oxford while playing professional football in the English Championship. He was awarded the Gaskell Gold Medal by the Royal College of Psychiatrists and then specialized in forensic psychiatry and completed a PhD in traumatic memory. Dr. Ceri works now with individuals, teams, and groups to help them perform under pressure and is the author of Perform Under Pressure.

“It’s taking all those different perspectives whether it’s clinical or developmental, the neuroscience, and starting with people, everyday people, however good they are, in whatever walk of life, so from top to bottom huge diversity whatever sector, and helping them get better”

Much of Ceri’s work is simplifying extremely complex and abstract ideas to get something practical that people can apply to their lives, however, he says the real test is getting people to take the action and apply it.

“It boils down under pressure to some really simple things. The idea of simplicity is that what are the main things that I need to be aware of in this moment and it all comes down to, as we know, attention and focus but all of us get in our own way one way or another”

The Red Blue Mental Model is a methodology that Ceri has developed, focusing on the two sides of our brain that impact our emotions, logic, and action taken in pressure situations.

“Red works in the here and the now and it’s more the emotional, the feeling, and the blue can reflect on the past and scan the future. We have these two systems, and the simplicity of this actually we know now that they interact”

While most people run away from uncomfortable pressure situations, Ceri says that the key is to embrace being uncomfortable. Once people realize that being uncomfortable can positively impact their performance, it becomes energizing and enticing to seek out pressure moments.

“This is the nature of performance, it’s not just about winning and losing it’s about putting yourself in environments where you’re testing yourself.”

2:38 The Importance of Physical Activity

Ceri says that exercise is the primary habit he incorporates in his everyday life.

“The balance between the physical and the mental is a pretty important one for me and I get out of balance pretty quickly without it”

Sean asks Ceri how he has adjusted the physical component of his life throughout the years, adapting and adjusting to the gradual limitations age can have on physical capability.

Ceri says that he has found it’s just a re-focus, you come to realize that you’re not competing in the same sort of way and it’s how hard you want to push yourself.

While Ceri is a forensic psychiatrist, most of his knowledge around the benefits of physical activity are anecdotal.

“I think most people find that when they’re active in a good way then it provides them with a sense of well being and I think once you take that away that activity and that balance then it doesn’t work”

5:55 High Performer History

Ceri gained first class honors in experimental psychology on a Rhodes Scholarship at the University of Oxford while playing professional football in the English championship. He completed a degree in forensic psychiatry and completed a phD in traumatic memory. Clearly a high performer, Ceri says that there are many layers behind what was driving him and he credits his parents for setting examples of being achievers. Ceri’s father was from a coal mining family in South Wales and a professional soccer player and his mother was from New Zealand and a champion table tennis player.

“In my mind, football was a passion from a young age. The academic side was obviously important and it’s the combination for me. I think when I reflect on what you just described I guess it was the combination”

9:24 Ceri’s Drive Today

Ceri says he finds himself still doing two things in balance today, one is working as a clinical psychiatrist with individuals and the other one working on performance with individuals, groups, and teams.

“There’s a healthy tension there I find because the more I push myself in the clinical area, I find it helps the work in the performance area so I try and reconcile those two things”

Ceri says that the driver through his work is about simplifying the mental world to help people perform under pressure.

“It’s taking all those different perspectives whether it’s clinical or developmental, the neuroscience, and starting with people, everyday people, however good they are, in whatever walk of life, so from top to bottom huge diversity whatever sector, and helping them get better”

The first two questions Ceri asks clients are:

Are you under pressure?
How good do you want to be in particular?

“What I’m looking for is whether people want to improve, it’s an easy thing to say but most of us don’t, most of us don’t reach anywhere near our potential”

13:02 Fascinated by Pressure

While being attracted to pressure driven scenarios isn’t what most people are drawn to, Ceri says that he has always been driven towards pressure situations for as long as he can remember.

“If someone says I can’t do something then I guess that’s in my nature to be interested straight away”

Ceri explains a life-defining relationship with martial arts instructor and graphic designer, Rinsey Hammon. Ceri worked with Rinsey over the years on different ideas and different performance approaches and putting it down on paper in a picture.

“Trying to not just present things in words but in pictures because the whole idea here, it sounds so simple but there’s all sorts of ideas around but what do I do in that moment, you can’t stop under pressure and say let me talk to someone or let me consult my book”

Ceri says that simplicity is getting something practical out of all the complexity that can be applied, and the real test comes when getting people to use it.

“It boils down under pressure to some really simple things. The idea of simplicity is that what are the main things that I need to be aware of in this moment and it all comes down to, as we know, attention and focus but all of us get in our own way one way or another”

18:24 Red Brain, Blue Brain

Red Brain Blue Brain Mental Model is a methodology that Ceri has developed.

Ceri says that before talking about performance, the context has to be established so he can understand the pressure involved because all moments are not equal and we need to separate the situation from our reaction to it.

“Red works in the here and the now and it’s more the emotional, the feeling, and the blue can reflect on the past and scan the future. We have these two systems, and the simplicity of this actually we know now that they interact”

Ceri says that the Red Blue Mind Model would say whether a situation is in balance or out of balance. Too much red puts us in fight, flight, or freeze mode and too much blue can cause overthinking and paralysis by analysis.

“The idea here is that red is not bad and blue is not good, we actually need a combination and balance”

To get his clients to start using the Red Blue Mental Model, Ceri has them think first of the best 10 minutes of their best performance and then think of the worst ten minutes of their worst performance to get their brains comparing the situations.

Ceri runs Sean through the Red Blue Mental model to give listeners an example of how he runs through with his clients.

“Instead of losing your nerve, just hold your nerve. Just stepping back and getting some distance and seeing whether you’re too red or too blue just gives you that instant moment of getting to grip emotionally”

31:52 Step Back, Step Up, Step In

What attracted Ceri to the mental world is that it’s intangible and uncovering how to get it.

Ceri describes the ‘double standard’ of working out physically and working out mentally. You can physically go to a gym and push yourself to the limit and feel great, but mentally there isn’t a gym or simple exercises to do and pushing yourself to the limit leaves us disillusioned.

“It’s not enough just to step back, take a breath, and step back in, because you’re back in at the same level. I call that a one dimensional technique, we need performance here.”

Ceri says that the moment that you have a sense of where you sit mentality, then you step up to your next level of performance.

36:06 Embrace the Uncomfortable

The mental gym idea is what Ceri is really searching for the idea of pressure

“What we’re talking about there is that there are high stakes, there’s some uncertainty, small margins with fast changes and it all leads to judgement and of course socially that’s the trigger”

Ceri says what he is most interested in is that there are tough moments when you are uncomfortable and how we behave in those moments. While it can be difficult to stay in uncomfortable moments, that uncomfortability is what will define how you act under pressure.

“That’s the idea here, that actually we want to stay in the moment, that’s the opportunity and it’s a simple language but if we see that everyday, all day we’re making simple choices to opt out and default where we are kidding ourselves about our level of performance we can step up here”

Ceri says that once we have choice we have control and then we have courage to take the choice. Rather than moving away from these uncomfortable moments, we’ve got to keep it in balance and gradually they become enticing.

39:57 Distilling Down Uncomfortable Moments

Ceri says to start in the moment and work backwards. It’s not just about the situation but also what you did and how you were reacting inside.

“You can’t change what you can’t see, and that’s the powerful thing here. So I’m trying to help people see what was going on inside that leads to the external behavior to understand that a bit more”

What Ceri has experienced in his work is that the more uncomfortable moments that you put yourself in, the more energized you become towards them, even going so far as to seek out uncomfortability.

“This is the nature of performance, it’s not just about winning and losing it’s about putting yourself in environments where you’re testing yourself.”

44:32 Before, During, and After Pressure Moments

Ceri says that he imagines the time with his clients leading up to their pressure moment in pressure waves. He describes how we are all accustomed to thinking of high stake occupations as military or surgeons and we don’t think of sports or corporate settings in those terms but those occupations need to prepare just as much for pressure moments.

One of the rookie mistakes Ceri says is when there is no translation from one training moment to the performance moment.

“Understanding what you can control, what you can’t control, and then in the middle, this is the bit that’s missing for many, what you can influence”

After a pressure moment, it’s important to debrief mentally.

“Find out emotionally what was your performance like, decision making, what was that like, and then the actions you took and be able to do that succinctly and move so that you go back into a loop”

Ceri says there are five areas for most people to look at:

What do you do to plan at the start?
What do you do to perform in that moment?
What do you do to rehearse?
How do you recover quickly?
How do you review?

51:28 Visualization

Ceri says that it’s important to work backwards from the pressure moment when visualizing and to be thinking of the amount of time that the pressure moment will be.

The first thing that Ceri suggests is to look at the shape and format to create a structure and then fill in the blanks, instead of looking at what specifically you are going to do in that moment.

Ceri describes the effects of the red and blue system and how you can fill in the structure according to what you need more of.

“The red is the body system, and so trying to adapt and place attention on that relatively briefly. Then moving quickly into an overview and this is really a blue activation.”

Ceri says to visualize yourself in a moment at the start of your performance in a decision making moment and seeing yourself with the options and making that good decision.

Bringing the red and blue together creates the action, and the important part of this is the timing.

“The simple structure that I landed on was working through the red system, again one thing just repeating it, then the blue system, one thing one moment, and then the action”

Simply put, Ceri says that the first thing is controlling your intensity, then controlling your clarity, and then controlling your execution.

59:33 Distilling His Thinking

Ceri says that spending time working with such abstract ideas as he does, he can’t avoid the complexity. He says that the language and color coding of his ideas were key for simplicity with his clients and students he works with.

“The narrative starts to change, it’s not one where I’m feeling anxiety, I’m feeling discomfort and that’s a bad thing so it’s now a disorder or disability or something that’s not good. I’m feeling discomfort which means I’m not feeling comfort, that’s it.”

1:02:03 Unlocking the Unconscious

Ceri says he has always been drawn to the invisible and the unconscious mind and figuring out how to work with it.

“Those that can work briefly with people and unlock that potential, unlock that unconscious mind, are the ones that have had the most profound impact

“People can be helped quite quickly with brief interventions if you know what you’re looking for”