Pressure is no longer confined to stadiums, exam halls, or boardrooms. From students facing academic expectations to professionals navigating deadlines and setbacks, the ability to stay composed under pressure has become an everyday survival skill.

A new book, 'The Glyder Advantage: Beat the Pressure. Perform at Your Best', launched by badminton legend Pullela Gopichand, argues that some of the most useful lessons in handling pressure can be borrowed from elite sport.

Co-authored by sport psychologist Dr Sandy Gordon, known for working with three ICC World Cup finalist teams, along with behavioural science experts Gopinathan CP and Ritu Vinayak, the book adapts 12 mental skills used by elite athletes for everyday life.

Its chapters combine Indian stories, practical takeaways, and QR-based self-tests, aiming to make mental training more accessible beyond the sporting arena.

For Dr Gordon, one of the biggest misunderstandings about performance under pressure is the casual use of the word 'choking'.

'The biggest misconception is how casually we use the word choking. I don't like the way it's often used because it suggests something unusual happened to the player. Often, they simply made a mistake. Pressure affects everybody,' he says.

According to Gordon, elite athletes are not immune to the physical and psychological effects of pressure.

'Your heart rate goes up, your breathing changes, your muscles tighten. Elite athletes aren't immune to any of that.' The difference, he suggests, lies in where attention goes next.

'The best performers come back to the task: what do I need to do right now?' Gordon says. 'High performance isn't about avoiding pressure. It's about thinking clearly when it arrives.'

That idea extends beyond sport. Gopinathan CP believes modern culture may be producing people who are highly trained to achieve but less prepared to cope with the mental demands that accompany achievement.

'We spend years schooling children to write exams, and very little time preparing their minds for it. We prepare them for the subjects but rarely for the pressure,' he says.

The same gap, he argues, exists in workplaces, where technical expertise and experience often receive far more attention than mental skills.

'So we're producing generations that are exceptionally well prepared only in one dimension,' he says, pointing to sport's long-standing emphasis on both physical and mental preparation.

Crucially, Gopinathan says mental resilience should not be treated as an innate quality that some people simply possess.

'Mental skills are not personality traits that a person either has or doesn’t have. These can be learnt and mastered with practice.'

For Ritu Vinayak, sport offers a useful laboratory because pressure and performance are inseparable.

'Sport is a known field in which pressure and performance go hand-in-hand,' she says.

The book, she explains, draws on applied research in sport psychology and translates relevant mental skills into a simplified format for everyday readers.

The authors also focus on the often-discussed gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it.

Gopinathan describes this as the 'knowing-doing gap', arguing that awareness alone is not enough. 'A really strong reason to act.

It makes it easier to convert awareness into action.' He also highlights 'a really strong belief that you can do it', linking self-belief with the ability to act under pressure.

Ultimately, ‘The Glyder Advantage’ aims to make mental performance skills less exclusive to elite sport. Gopinathan says its core lesson is 'having the mental strength to handle the pressures of everyday life and perform to our best potential'.

For readers, he distils the book's promise into three takeaways: 'know that I'm not alone going through these pressures', 'believe that I can learn to beat the pressures' and 'I know where to start, right away.'

The larger message is simple: pressure may be universal, but the ability to respond to it can be trained. And that may be the most relevant sporting lesson for modern life: pressure is inevitable, preparation is a choice.