Performance expert đ Sport / Entertainment / Business New book PRESSURE POINT (Penguin Random House) How to be good when it counts. Order now đ
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Joined March 2009
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I'm Paddy.
I was drafted 30 years ago and spent almost a decade as a pro athlete - now I work with elite performers across NBA, NFL, FIFA, Finance and more.
Here's who I am and what I do:
- Grew up in middle-class suburban Melbourne
- Played my first pro game at 17 at the MCG, a stadium my dad helped build
- Spent six years clinging to a comeback that was never coming (but letting go felt like quitting)
- Picked physio over psychology because it fit being an athlete, got injured anyway and struggled on mental side
- Went around the world for the best psychology training I could find
- Ran it with the players in my first coaching job, and a fair chunk had career years
- Found realists were the most consistent, optimists had the highest ceiling, and the best had both
- Went to Penn, then spent 10 years in the US across the NFL, NBA, MLB, two World Cups and the US Army
- Burned out at the top, still trying to be a big deal to people who didnât matter anymore
- Came out of it surer of the stuff I use and share, and more focused on helping people than ever before
- Now 47, writing my first book, with about half my clients in finance and executive roles
I have lived it as a performer, studied it thru research and applied it to help high performers navigate high-performance environments.
Iâm like the "Gordon Ramsey" of pressure (complete with the swearing, but without the abuse)
And here's what I'll be posting about:
- How pressure hijacks your brain, and difference between stress and pressure
- What went wrong along the way, and what writing my first book is teaching me
- Routines elite performers lean on, and how you can borrow them
- How to handle pressure at home, from the commute to the dinner table
- Life as an Aussie in New York (with a husky who doesnât do what heâs told)
If any of that resonates, stick around
I worked with a private equity group managing $1.5 billion that:
- Wanted to compete with New York firms managing $100 billion
- Thought their problem was being too nice
- Had founders asking âwhy hasnât this been done yet?â
- Had executives waiting for permission nobody had asked them to get
Five years later, theyâd tripled their assets under management.
Hereâs how it happened:
The result
Over five years, they tripled their assets under management. Over the same stretch, their Midwest competitors grew around 1 to 1.5x.
How to fix your bad days:
- Pick a stop sign early. Two things go wrong, you stop
- Write down what you canât forget, like school pickup or the deadline
- Rest before you try again. Sleep, eat, walk, call a friend
Catch it early and it stays one bad day.
An NFL player I was working with once asked me, "Where did your obsession with studying pressure come from?"
Honestly, there isnât a specific incident.
It kinda started in school as I watched my mates get really nervous before exams, and I never did. I still did well, because I didnât care that much. I figured if I knew the work, Iâd get the mark I deserved.
My identity just wasn't tied up in it.
Football is where people expect the dramatic part, the big choke that sent me looking for answers. But I didnât really have those moments.
It still pulls me in. I barely watch sport unless it's the finals or playoffs. Thatâs where you see two people with the same talent facing the same moment and handling it completely differently.
Iâve spent my career studying that difference, and the answer usually takes me back to those school exams.
The less you tie yourself to the result, the more room youâve got to perform.
First dates even as a grown as* adult SUCKS
- It feels like your only shot, social version of do or die
- Mind starts racing, or goes completely blank
- You say things youâd never normally say
The real fear: what if they donât like me?
How to feel like yourself again:
Best thing psychology has taught me about dates is something called active constructive responding:
- Start on a topic you care about, so youâre not performing
- When they say something, reflect it back and ask for more
- If they're talking about something good, ask how it makes them feel
- Put all your focus on helping them feel good about what they're saying, because that's the job on the night
When they feel good around you, youâll probably get the second date.
Your kid walks off after a tough game and looks straight at you. The next thing you say can help them settle or pile your stress onto theirs.
What to hold back and what to say when theyâre upset:
Skip the âsettle down, itâs going to be okay, just breathe, youâre fine, itâs not a big deal.â It sounds calm and changes nothing when the pressureâs at its peak
⢠Youâre saying it that fast because their face set off your own panic before they even reached the car
⢠Their attention is stuck on whatâs happening inside their body and head, so none of it gets in
⢠Itâs your stress, passed down in a soothing voice and you call it support
Do this instead:
⢠Give them two things to focus on for the next game, because ten things is just more noise
⢠Run âthe car ride routineâ, and say two specific things âI see this is hard.â and âI know you can handle it.â (works better than therapy and is backed by research)
⢠Sort out your own spiral first, so the car holds one calm person instead of two spiraling ones
When things get tense with your kid, what do you usually say first?
That's basically the first step to flow - your brain only has a limited amount of attention, and when you fill it up with one thing its basically a shortcut to being in the zone (in the moment, and in life!)
im 99.99% sure stress gets cut in half when you stop answering emails at the gym, stop sneaking in workouts during work, and stop watching tiktoks at dinner. shit goes haywire when you try to force time thats for one thing to be time for something else. but when you make work time work time and gym time gym time, the soup of competing priorities swirling around in your head just goes radio silent. its like the little atoms ping ponging around your skull just stop.
This is Skippy and he broke out of jail!
He chewed thru his cone, ripped the bandage off (no evidence left behind), only to earn himself "extra security solitary confinement." đ¤Ł
If announcing your goal feels like a commitment, itâs often because you start managing what people think instead of chasing the result.
Hereâs why and the solution:
- First you hedge, start telling people you'll probably do worse than you expect, which lowers the bar you'll be judged against (researchers call it sandbagging)
- Then you dodge, skipping the thing that would test you or lining up an excuse, so a bad result can't count against you
- Finally you fudge, because the applause for announcing the goal starts to feel like the achievement, and the most committed people get hit hardest
- Underneath all three sits one shift: the crowd has become the judge of your goal
Each tell has a counter-move, and you can run all three on yourself:
- Hedge: Write down what's most likely to stop you and what you'll do when it shows up (researchers have found up to 60% more effort from people who do this)
- Dodge: Spend ten minutes on something unrelated that you're good at, which cuts the excuse-making around the task
- Fudge: Hand your number to someone you respect and ask them to score it on the date
- Pick that person carefully, since their approval has to hinge on the result you actually hit
Which of the three do you catch yourself doing first?
Every elite performer in sports and business I work with has this Four-step plan for high-pressure moments, and you can copy it:
1. Pick two or three keys that sit completely in your control, with nothing riding on the ref, the coach or the boss (a hitter might be looking for the pitch, weight back, attack)
2. Run those same keys every single time, because if you don't want to think in the moment, you need to do your thinking before the moment
3. Review each rep with one question: did you hit your keys or didn't you, and ask it with curiosity and zero judgment
4. Remove whatever got in the way, then go again, because iterating over and over is how you drop into the zone
Which step do you tend to skip when the pressure is on: the keys, the review, or the going again?