WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU CHOKE UNDER PRESSURE?

Early January 2002 President George W. Bush while watching a football game on television in his living quarters in the White House choked on pretzel and tumbled momentarily. But he never choked for a moment when he ordered the invasion of Iraq a year later. Nor did President Harry Truman choke when he ordered the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, pooh-poohing J. Robert Oppenheimer as a “crybaby scientist.” In Chris Nolan’s movie, Truman gives Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) his handkerchief to wipe it off when Oppenheimer says that he has blood on his hands. But in our daily lives we see some of the most talented people, experts in their fields, in academics, sports, entertainment, business, choke under pressure when the moment for performance comes for which they have prepared for days and days. Why do the brightest students sometime do poorly on standardized tests? Why do we flunk that interview or miss that golf putt when we should have had it in the bag? Why do we mess up when it matters the most, when the stakes are high? This is how Dr. Sian Beilock, a famed cognitive scientist and a polymath, Dartmouth College’s president begins her book, Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting it Right When You Have To. Based on multidisciplinary research, lab work, anecdotal evidence drawn from media and personal narratives, the book is intimate, intellectually engaging and insightful, and most importantly it is a kind of how to do manual. However, I wonder whether there could be some positive effects of the natural phenomenon from which no human being is immune. Just consider: What if President George W. Bush had visualized the invasion of Iraq and choked under the psychological pressure and held back. A most unnecessary and tragic war could have been avoided. Or, if President Harry Truman had visualized the horrific human suffering and choked for a moment and instead ordered the dropping of atom bombs away from human habitation, which as well could have ended the war. How is it that people like Donald Trump never choke under pressure? Perhaps in her next book Dr. Beilock would tell us how the minds of politicians work, why they don’t choke under pressure as most of us, the best of us, do sometime.