How to Find Freedom Under Pressure

After leaving my company in 2018, I ran a small retreat for exited founders who were exploring their next move. To a person, we were all sitting with the same basic question:

Am I really going to do that again?

Starting a company is hard. By choosing to do it, we invite stress and uncertainty into our lives—and the pressure and responsibility only increases as a company grows.

However, one’s experience as a founder isn’t only dependent on external circumstances. While the pressure doesn’t go away, there are more and less skillful ways of dealing with it. And if you don’t learn to perform and live well under stress, your life becomes driven by it.

I learned this the hard way in my first company, which became all-consuming. It was a travel company—an operationally intense business with low margins—and we were always six months away from running out of cash. Most of the time, it felt like some aspect of the business was on fire.

I reacted to this stress by focusing on the short term. I spent my days responding to momentary crises and immediate threats, rarely thinking more than 3-6 months in the future. While this kept the company afloat, it also meant that I lost touch with a long-term vision for our work. I didn’t exercise or date for several years—it was hard to focus on life amid the stress of work.

In the language of behaviorism, we’d say that my life fell under “aversive control.” In other words, I was making decisions driven by fear of bad outcomes, not inspired by the call of something greater. And fear is a lousy foundation for making good choices.

But there are ways to maintain our focus on what matters and the future we hope to create, no matter how stressful our environment. Through a few core practices, we can cultivate a mental and emotional freedom, such that stress doesn’t drive our decision-making. 

And that’s liberation: the ability to perform well, think long-term, and craft a life of meaning—regardless of the stressors that surround you. In this piece, we’ll cover the skills you need to access that kind of freedom.

A behavioral look at liberation

B.F. Skinner, the father of modern behaviorism, taught that we act either to move toward pleasure or away from pain. Everything we do in life comes down to one of these two motivations.

Even what you’re doing right now—reading this article—falls into one of these two categories. Perhaps you love learning, and reading this essay is a way to connect with your core values. Or maybe you’re experiencing stress at work, and you’re hoping that this article might provide some relief. Or it could be that you’re simply bored and looking for distraction. Either way, it all boils down to one of two drives: pleasure or pain.

In behaviorism, when someone is acting to avoid pain, we call it “aversive control.” We use the word “control,” because their behavior is being shaped by the unpleasant elements in their environment. This was what happened to me in my first startup—the fear of running out of cash was so salient that it became the underlying motivation for everything I did.

On the other hand, when someone is acting to seek pleasure, we call it “appetitive control.” In this case, their actions are being shaped by the enjoyable and meaningful aspects in their surroundings. This is often the initial mindset founders have as they embark on a new project, energized by the creative process and the project’s potential impact.

“Liberation,” viewed through a behavioral lens, is the ability to orient toward what’s appetitive (i.e., pleasant or meaningful), even in an environment full of aversive stimuli. For me, this has meant learning to stay connected to a larger vision and the joy of creativity, even during difficult times.  

Yet, this is hard to do. When we perceive a threat in our environment, our evolutionary instinct is to run, fight, or hide. This worked for our ancestors, who were dealing with predators like lions and tigers.  However, as founders, we primarily deal with psychological threats, like fear, uncertainty, and self-doubt. Unlike with physical threats—which you can escape from—we carry these around with us wherever we go, so can get perpetually stuck in aversive control.

So how can we learn to focus on what matters even in the face of what’s hard? The behavioral tradition offers a few core skills to help make the shift.

Notice when you’re running

The first step toward freedom is to notice when you’re falling into aversive control. In other words, you can’t stop running until you realize that you’re doing it.

For example, as you’re joining a meeting or beginning work on a task, you could ask yourself, “At this moment, am I oriented toward what matters or away from pain?” Sometimes, this question alone is enough to shift from aversive to appetitive control.