 No one is immune to the effects of pressure. It's simply not possible. Those who succeed in high stress situations, like musicians and athletes, have just trained themselves to be less affected by it. In pressure situations, they are better than others at performing as they normally would. Elite athletes like Serena Williams, LeBron James, and Tom Brady feel pressured just as we all do, but they have learned how to manage the feeling of pressure in their response to it. Michael Jordan had 25 game winners in his career, 24 of which came with less than 10 seconds on the clock. The only other player in the conversation as the GOAT, LeBron James, leads in a similar statistic. LeBron also leads all NBA players in game time or go-ahead shots in the final possession. These players' almost supernatural ability to sink difficult shots, with all eyes on them, comes from the way they have adapted to the pressure. Watch videos of Jordan's and LeBron's game winners, and you can see it in their approach coming out of the timeout. In their face as they catch the ball, in their movements as they release, they are assured, as much as they can, they're gonna treat it like just another shot. That's why it goes in. As a teenager, Steph Curry had always been a good shooter, but his father, NBA player Del Curry, knew that as his son got older, his unorthodox form would be a problem. Steph shot from a very low release point, and his father knew it would be too easy for a better or taller player to block his shot. So Steph spent the whole summer before his junior year in high school, reteaching himself how to shoot, and changing his release point. It was a process that required him to fail over and over again, at the one thing he'd been phenomenal at. Picture it. After years of being the best at something, a 15-year-old Steph Curry willingly changed how he did it because his future ceiling demanded it. This is one of the greatest leaving your comfort zone examples I can think of. Steph would not be who he is had he not done this difficult and emotionally painful thing. He could have stayed with his low release point, which had been working so far and still been the best shooter in his school, but he saw a bigger world and did the work in order to one day succeed there. Free solo climber Alex Honnold has accomplished some of the most amazing feats of climbing ever done on Earth, including ascending the 3,000-foot El Capitan and Yosemite National Park without a harness or rope of any kind. That's taller than two Empire State buildings stacked on top of each other. In order to achieve something so incredibly dangerous where a single mistake is instant death, Honnold stakes his life on preparation. He does numerous run-throughs with ropes so he knows exactly where every single step will be, which gives him the confidence on climb day. He's always insisted that he feels fear. He just prepares to the point that he knows who'll be able to accomplish his goal by mentally rehearsing everything that could happen. The preparation is what keeps him at ease. Fear never totally disappears, but each practice run is like a rock hammer chipping away at stone. There is no adrenaline rush, he once told 60 Minutes About His Climbs. If I get a rush, it means something has gone horribly wrong. When Diane Van Derren was in her 20s, the epilepsy that she experienced as a child came back with a vengeance. Though she tried various treatments and interventions, she found only one thing stopped the seizures, running. Whenever she felt the sense that a seizure was coming on, she'd lace up her shoes and take off for a long distance run through the national park near her house. At 37, Diane had brain surgery to remove a golf ball-sized portion of her brain, which left her entirely seizure-free. However, it came with a strange side effect. She no longer has any short-term memory. It causes struggles in her daily life and it makes it difficult for her to follow trails, but there's an upside. In distance running, where obstacles are both physiological and psychological, having no short-term memory is a gift. It's better than big lungs or strong calves. Because she is always focused on the present moment, Diane is never dragged down by the thoughts about where she is, how far she's come or where she's going. She can run farther and longer than anyone else because she has a superpower that very few have. She's always focused on the present moment. Be where your feet are. It's so simple, yet increasingly difficult in our modern world, and it is the first step to reducing stress in your life. This is becoming increasingly more challenging, giving the constant bombardment of distractions we face nearly every moment of every day. If I had to pick one fundamental strategy to help manage stress, it's to live in the present moment. Even if the present moment is stressful, A, you'll be able to handle it better when you focus on it, and B, there's only so much stress one present moment can offer. Stop getting upset over events from your past and getting anxious about a future that hasn't happened yet and may not happen at all. That's time travel, and it actually increases stress. Stay where you can have an impact. Right here, right now. Back in 1998, former Duke star and newbie broadcaster Jay Bellis got a call that would change his career forever. Having done mostly local mid-major level games, Jay was asked by ESPN to be the sideline reporter for the biggest rivalry in all of basketball. His alma mater against UNC, ranked number one and number two respectively at the time. The game was gonna be called by Mr. College basketball himself, Dick Vitale, and Jay was thrilled for this opportunity. A week before tip-off, the ESPN producers held a meeting to game plan. Vitale was out of town for his speaking engagement, and while Jay was not required to attend, he decided to go anyway. He figured he might as well show up to demonstrate how seriously he was taking the job. The producers announced that Vitale recommended that the broadcast heavily feature UNC guard, Shaman Williams, who Dicky V had been adamant was the game's player to watch. The lead producer asked Jay if he agreed. I think 99 out of 100 people in this situation would just nod and agree. I mean, why contradict the most recognizable face in college basketball on your first day of the job? But Jay did just that. Respectfully, I see things differently, Jay said. I believe UNC forward, Antoine Jamison, is the player we should focus on. He is the most efficient and effective player in college basketball. As the rookie in the room, on the first question he was asked, Jay decided to offer insight that directly contradicted his Hall of Fame colleagues perspective. He also made a bold claim. Taken a bit by surprise, the producer asked for a deeper clarification. Jay explained that Jamison puts up incredible stats, despite actually having the ball in his hands for very little time. I bet you Jamison doesn't have the ball in his hands for a full minute the entire game, Jay said. If true, this would be incredibly rare. A college basketball game is 40 minutes long. What player who is worth watching would only touch the ball for less than a minute. However, the producers were impressed with Jay's confidence and decided to go with it. They even assigned an intern to take a stopwatch and chart how long Jamison actually had the ball in his hands. In the game, UNC decimated Duke 97 to 73. Jamison ended up with a career high 35 points on 14 of 20 shooting and pulling down 11 rebounds. He was indeed the player to watch. And how long was the ball in his hands? 53 seconds. Jamison was the most efficient and effective player in college basketball, but he wasn't the only one who made the most of that game. Jay Billis did too. Jay seized his opportunity and cemented an important lesson he's carried ever since. Never be afraid to show up and never be afraid to speak up. In the early 1980s, Judd Apatow was a funny kid with a love for comedy. He'd grown up studying the greats, even interviewing a few as a high school kid in Long Island. Young Apatow was witty enough to write some killer jokes for professional comics. But when he got up on stage himself, it was crickets. But they could save the crowd because I'm gonna get the laugh so they're gonna, come on man, laugh your little bozo. His love for comedy did not make him a great stand-up comedian. I'm sure it was a brutal realization for him as a young man. He had dreamed, done all the work, met the masters and yet it still wasn't gonna happen. But instead of giving up, Apatow reinvented himself. After years of hustling through television writers' rooms, he got the chance to create his own television show, Freaks and Geeks. It was an immediate cult classic boasting a murderer's row of young talent like James Franco, Jason Siegel and Seth Rogen. But the show was canceled after one season. Then he made another one, undeclared, that was canceled after two. Again, Apatow didn't get dejected. He adapted to yet another form and tried something new. Movies. That's where he found his flow with a string of hugely successful films. He either directed or produced. The 40-year-old virgin, knocked up, super bad and bridesmaids. Now among the most influential people in all of Hollywood, Apatow has helmed some of the era's biggest comedies, has discovered a new class of stars and almost single-handedly popularized the bromance. By changing his own story, he has altered the course of comedy. Had Apatow begun his career by planning on making groundbreaking comedy films that changed the course of movies, it's unlikely he would have succeeded. He had to get there organically by following his passion, studying the greats, doing the work and learning from his failures. It happened for Apatow because of his talent, of course, but also because he was open to the power of reinvention. In the early 1980s, no rock band put on a show like Van Halen. Before anyone in music was doing complex stunts, they would rig lead singer David Lee Roth up to contraptions that would allow him to fly over the stage while also setting off various pyrotechnics. Traveling from city to city, Roth and the rest of the band needed to trust that wherever they played, those in charge of the stage show had rigged everything properly. The problem? There just wasn't the time for them to check everything. The band's contract had explicit instructions on how everything needed to be set up, but how could the band know if the venue crew had carefully read it? Their performance and sometimes Roth's life depended on it. Their solution was genius and has become a legend, though for the wrong reasons. Roth invented a way to check if the contract had been carefully read. He included in the instructions somewhere deep in the document the demand that a bowl of M&M's be put in the band's dressing room, but that all of the brown M&M's had to be removed. Failure to comply meant the band would not play but still be paid in full. When Roth arrived for a show, if he saw a bowl of M&M's without brown ones, he knew the crew had read everything carefully. If he saw a bowl of M&M's with the brown ones not removed, he knew they had just scanned the contract so he couldn't trust them and the band wouldn't play. Ironically for decades, this story was used as a knock on how spoiled Van Halen could be, but that's because people didn't understand the purpose of the clause. Roth needed to perform his best and devised a way to make sure everything was prepared for him to do so. It makes sense to trust others, but never blindly. If your preparation can be undone by someone else's lack of preparation, find a way to check it before the big moment so you don't go crashing to the legendary boxing trainer, Kustia Mato, who coached both Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson, famously said that no boxer can be knocked down by a punch he sees coming. Think about that. No matter how powerfully he has struck, his body will be able to absorb it as long as he is not surprised by it. At the pro level, power alone can not knock you down, only being thrown off balance can. If you look at the most famous knockouts of all time, you'll notice the knockout punches were rarely the ones that looked the hardest, but rather they were the most unexpected. This concept applies far beyond boxing. You can't get knocked down by anything you see coming. Know what's coming. Expect what's coming. Arm yourself and design your environment for what's coming. On a similar note, a reporter once asked Muhammad Ali how many sit-ups he typically does in a workout. Ali's answer, 50. The reporter was taken aback, surprised that it wasn't much more. A champion heavyweight boxer surely can do more than 50, right? Ali explained it was 50 because he only started counting after they started hurting. The ones before the pain didn't even register him. Muhammad Ali understood the power of stress, but Ali was right. The reps you do after the burning starts are the only ones that matter.