Family, friends and even strangers tend to put pressure on us. Most of it is for our best and for potential improvement. However allowing others to apply pressure isn’t neccesarily good for you.
Pressure to perform is never a good thing. It means that there is something significant at stake. For example if your employer mentions that your next task will be the last one if you don’t perform correctly on it. This doesn’t motivate you to do better. You will panic and it will more than likely immobilise you. A small amount of pressure can only be good if preferably you put it on yourself and the negative effect that can come from it isn’t so bad that you have to avoid it at all costs. For example some people will always perform badly on exams because they are forced by family to pass on their first try. However if you are allowed to try it a second time you can put pressure on yourself for your first try, but the potential negative effect of failure wont harm you too bad.
Mistakes and pressure are inevitable; the secret to getting past them is to stay calm. – Travis Bradberry
Some pressure can’t be avoided, a bit of it can keep you on your toes. How it influences you depends on how you react to it. If you cave by even the smallest amount it will avoid good performance under pressure. Conversely some of it could motivate you. For example having learned for your exam and only having 3 hours left to learn you could move really quickly through the pages. You know you want to pass the exam tomorrow so you put some extra hard work into it.
If the pressure is too high you will sleep really bad after last hours of learning, will pull an all nighter or even not rest at all during the day and night before your exam. It could be detrimental for your performance, especially if it was your first exam in the 5 exams you are having. The pressure on the first one will greatly decrease the performance on the other ones because of the sleep deficit that you have. Putting yourself under stress is fine, but when others are doing it for you avoid accepting it from them. Tell them how important the result is for yourself and that the extra push will not help you improve your result.