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How well do I perform under pressure? How can I identify people who perform well under pressure? How can I improve my ability to perform under pressure? Does this have anything to do with stress handling techniques?

The thing is that some people seem to perform well under pressure, for instance, people who do well in exams. However, their natural smarts made sure that they did not feel that much pressure during exams after all. These same people, when put under a non-academic, stressful (at least stressful in their perspective) situation, might react in an unpredictable way.

When I watching the anime, Akagi (on mahjong), one thing that I learnt that under highly stressful situations , some people go into an automated mode. Meaning, that they will keep on repeating certain habits that they have when they are highly stressed. In the anime, the main character, Akagi, exerts a lot of stress onto his opponents. Following this, he mentally records their 'stress habits'. For instance, one player will go into hyper defensive mode when he is highly stressed. This makes the player highly predictable, enabling Akagi to bring about his opponent's downfall.

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