Are You Too Stressed to Succeed?

Welcome to Mission Elite’s Official Newsletter

^{Mission Elite is an organization that has impacted World Champions and National Championship-producing teams to leading executives and groundbreaking companies. The author of this newsletter and CEO of Mission Elite, Raheel Manji, specialized in Executive Leadership at Harvard and High Performing Teams through Stanford, where he finished in the top 3 of his class. He is trained in Psychology of Performance and is a former 4X professional title holder, ITA National Summer Champion, and NCAA Sweet 16 coach.}

Why Clarity and Creativity Require Time and Space

We need time, space, and peace in order to optimize for clarity and creativity. People tend to have their biggest performance and developmental breakthroughs in these moments. Rarely does it happen when they are in stress, overflowing, and busy.

The Science of Stress: What Happens to Your Brain Under Pressure

Why? Because in those moments, they are in survival mode, and in survival mode is where short-term and more straightforward thinking happens.

Cognitive Narrowing: The Neuroscience Behind Short-Term Thinking

The research backs these claims and is deeply rooted in neuroscience. In high-stress situations, the brain's amygdala, which processes fear and threats, becomes highly active, while the prefrontal cortex—responsible for higher-order functions like critical thinking and long-term planning—diminishes in activity. This phenomenon is known as "cognitive narrowing."

Studies published in Psychoneuroendocrinology show that stress hormones like cortisol influence decision-making by biasing individuals toward habitual or automatic responses. Similarly, behavioral experiments reveal that under pressure, people often default to simpler strategies, aligning with Daniel Kahneman’s distinction between "fast" (intuitive) and "slow" (deliberative) thinking.

Why Routines Save Lives (and Boost Performance)

It’s important to understand that stress forces your brain into auto-pilot. You may have heard the quote, "We do not rise to the level of our expectations; we fall to the level of our training." Well, technically speaking, that is true.

This is why in combat training, soldiers rely on straightforward routines to react effectively under pressure, bypassing complex deliberation. It is also why, at Mission Elite, we train our members to follow a pre-planned system specifically for high-stress moments that encourages them to do what they have trained most to do. Following a system and leaning on your training is proven to be what is best to reduce nerves and stress in such moments, while panic and anxiety tend to be most prevalent in those who are untrained or without a plan, forced to improvise and follow their instinct.

This becomes obvious when you analyze boxers. An untrained fighter’s instinct when a punch is about to be thrown is to flinch, protect themselves, or close their eyes. A trained fighter knows to maintain their stance, keep their guard up, or counter with a strategic move.

Building a system and plan before stressful or high-stakes moments becomes a requirement once you understand behavioral psychological responses in relation to performance under stress and pressure. Those who get into these moments and “wing it” have a significant decrease in the likelihood of success.

If you would like our help with your own performance or your team’s, contact our team at [email protected]

The Danger of Living in Survival Mode

However, to live in this state of stress or pressure constantly is not ideal when it comes to producing the best results over the long term, which is how most games within life are played. Those who do tend to never optimize their life or fields due to lack of time for questioning and reflection.

Breaking Free: How to Question Your Path

I am sure you have seen many people who lived their same unhappy way their whole lives despite there being better paths to take. You might scratch your head and ask how this is so? I can tell you how. They simply live their whole lives never taking the time to question it.

The Comfort Trap: Why People Stay Stuck in Unfulfilling Lives

I have seen countless people who have worked the same miserable job for years, when there were better career paths out there that they never failed to realize.

There are countless people who stayed in the same miserable relationships for years, when there were better people or ways to approach their relationships out there that they never failed to realize.

There are countless people who stayed in the same unpleasant health for years, when there were better ways to live out there, but they never failed to realize.

Why did they never realize these possibilities? Most of the time, it was because they just never took the time to evaluate or reflect. Life was just too busy, and making their lives less busy so that they did have the time to evaluate or reflect on better ways of life was not a priority.

Sometimes it wasn’t a priority because they did not understand the importance and the greater benefits of getting out of busy or survival mode. So here I am telling the importance of it today.

The Cost of Unnecessary Busyness

The crazy thing about this all is that not everyone, but a lot of people inject unnecessary busyness in their lives. They actually put things into their schedules so that they are busy. This is a very unconsciously common thing to do and again, will take time, reflection, and evaluation to break the habit of.

But many could have a life where they have lots of time for reflection, evaluation, and creativity, but they maybe feel guilty for a life where they have this. They fail to understand having this time in their life is not only the best thing for them but the people they may want to positively impact as well.

The Greatest Ideas Come From Reflection

All of the greatest and most groundbreaking ideas in my own life came outside of go-go-go mode and through periods of space, peace, and reflection. As I mentioned earlier, this makes sense psychologically speaking in the ways that our brains are set up.

I repeatedly notice this through the people in my life and who we help at Mission Elite. If we would like to tie this to performance, the number of athletes I have seen have to take time off for injury and come back better is shocking.

What Athletes Can Teach Us About Using Time Wisely

The ones who get injured and use that time away from training and competing to think about how they can approach their sport better are so much better off from getting injured. Of course, there are also the ones that get injured and then just party or play video games during that time who don’t gain this benefit.

But I am never as disappointed when an athlete gets injured because I understand that maybe for the first time in their careers they will reflect and evaluate how to approach their sport better instead of what they have been doing their whole life which has just been brainlessly doing what they believe they should be doing instead of thinking of new and better ways to do it.

The Bill Gates Strategy: How “Think Weeks” Lead to Breakthroughs

This is why Bill Gates took his famous “Think Weeks.” In these Think Weeks, he would step out of his day-to-day operations and isolate himself, typically at a secluded cabin of his. He needed to do this because, as the leader at Microsoft, he was surrounded by operational demands, meetings, and decision-making responsibilities that prioritized short-term thinking and execution.

The uninterrupted time allowed him to think long-term and have transformative ideas. He would do this roughly twice a year, and many of the ideas from his “Think Weeks" influenced some of the most major Microsoft projects and decisions.

Your Action Plan for a Better Life

If you want to create and come up with better paths forward in all aspects of your life, you have to create the time to do that.

And you also need to see where, not just in your year but in your day-to-day, you can simplify and minimize so that you have more time, peace, and space to think of bigger and better ways forward. This is something you need to work hard at and fight for if you want to perform and produce your best life possible.

Final Thoughts

For more on high performance, mindset, and success:

• Follow us on Instagram: @MissionElitePerformance and @MissionEliteMentality.

• Check out my book: 17 Principles of a Mission Elite, available on Amazon or through our website.

• If you’d like support for your team or leadership, visit www.missioneliteperformance.com or contact us at [email protected].

Sincerely,
Raheel Manji
CEO, Mission Elite