Hey Reader!
I was standing in line at the grocery store the other night, nothing dramatic, just waiting my turn. The guy in front of me kept shifting his weight, checking his phone, rubbing his forehead like he was trying to remember something important. No sighs. No complaints. Just a tension you could feel if you were paying attention. When he got to the register, he smiled, cracked a joke with the cashier, paid, and walked out looking completely fine.
But he wasn’t fine. Not really.
And it got me thinking...
Most pressure does not announce itself. It does not yell. It does not come with a whistle or a deadline. It shows up quietly. It settles in through expectations that were never spoken, standards we created ourselves, and the fear of disappointing people who may not even realize we are carrying that fear in the first place.
This is the pressure nobody sees.
We tend to look for pressure in obvious places. Big games. Tryouts. Rankings. Decisions that feel final. But the heaviest pressure often comes from caring deeply. From wanting to belong. From wanting to matter. From wanting to prove that the trust placed in you was not misplaced.
And that kind of pressure often gets praised.
We call it being driven. Being mature. Being accountable. We say someone has high standards. We admire how hard they are on themselves. What we do not always notice is when that internal pressure starts to squeeze the joy, creativity, and freedom out of the experience.
Patrick Lencioni has spent much of his work circling one core idea, trust. Not surface level trust, but the kind that allows people to be imperfect without fear. He has said that people do not need to feel special or talented to be engaged. They need to feel safe.
That word matters more than we think.
When people feel safe, they take risks. They speak up. They try things that might not work. When they do not feel safe, they protect themselves. They carry more internally and show less externally. They stop playing freely and start playing carefully.
Careful looks like effort. Careful looks like responsibility. Careful often gets rewarded. But careful is usually driven by fear, not confidence.
And the tricky part is that fear does not need to be created intentionally. Most of the time it is not. It grows in silence. In assumptions. In unspoken standards. In environments where expectations are felt but not clarified. When clarity is missing, pressure fills the space.
That pressure becomes internal. It turns into self imposed standards that never turn off. It sounds like, “I can’t mess this up,” or “I have to be better,” or “I can’t be the reason this goes wrong.” From the outside, it looks like toughness. On the inside, it feels heavy.
A lot of athletes are not afraid of losing. They are afraid of disappointing. They are afraid that one bad moment will change how they are seen. They are afraid that belonging is conditional.
So they carry more. They push harder. They take responsibility for things that were never fully theirs to hold. And because they care, they rarely say anything about it.
That is what makes this kind of pressure so exhausting. There is no off switch. No finish line. No clear signal that you have done enough. It lives in the background, constantly asking, “Was that good enough?” and almost never answering yes.
I was talking with an athlete recently who was heading into a big stretch of competition. When I asked how they were feeling, there was a long pause. Then they said, “I’m fine. I just don’t want to let anyone down.”
It sounded responsible. Even admirable.
But what I heard was pressure with nowhere to go. Pressure born from caring, not from demands. Pressure that had been picked up quietly and carried alone.
So here is something worth sitting with this week.
Ask yourself what pressure you are carrying that nobody can see. Then ask where it came from. Was it clearly asked of you, or did you assume it was expected because you care? And finally, ask what would change if you felt safe enough to put some of it down.
Not because you are weak.
Because you are human.
Sometimes the most powerful mental shift is not adding confidence, toughness, or motivation. Sometimes it is recognizing that not all pressure is proof of commitment. Sometimes it is just weight that never needed to be carried in the first place.
And realizing that might be the strongest move you make all week.
