Personal Pressure

Personal pressure is the hardest to deal with because it doesn’t come from another person, who you can walk away from at any time, it comes from within you. (Or rather it comes from that miniature devil on your shoulder, and lets be honest most of the time the angel has more important things to do) Personal pressure can range from pushing yourself to get the best grade in class, to performing well at work, to any other scenario that has to do with you. Which if you think about it is every scenario. Everyone puts a certain amount of pressure on themselves, which if it is the right amount can help you, but too much pressure will hurt you in the long run. Too much pressure is unhealthy. If you’re stressed to the max you might not eat enough, or you might eat too much. Everything requires a certain amount of balance. Balanced personal pressure will help you accomplish a lot of things, but too much pressure can actually hinder your abilities. For example my younger brother wants to be the best in class, and if he gets a B+ he thinks the world is going to end. It’s good that he wants to be good at his school work, but he puts more pressure on himself than any teacher would. While most of the time he meets his personal standards it comes with a price. He stresses himself out, which makes him nervous, and when he’s nervous he chews the tip of his finger. (Weird right. You would think he would chew his nail, but he doesn’t) When he does that enough he makes his fingers raw, which hinders his ability to write. So it’s a double edged sword. Good and bad. I know there’s a lot more people who do the same thing. (To clarify I don’t mean the chewing on your finger part, just the stress part) I know I did when I was younger, but as I got older I lessened the pressure a little bit, because I realized that it was actually making me worse, because I would get sick, and put more pressure on myself to catch up, which would just start the cycle all over again. The moral of the story is most people do better with less pressure, which includes personal pressure, because their not all bogged down. There’s no trick to lightening up. It’s a choice and the better one if you ask me. If you’re not sure put it to the test do it for a month and see what happens. Then go from there.