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I think you are just too used to running away from situations and not having any sort of structure or discipline. There is no amount of confidence exuding from what you wrote so thats probably where it stems from, but the thing about handling pressure is that you can learn it by putting yourself through those situations, so you can build that trust within yourself and in turn having real confidence to deal with even more pressure. Its a bar you need to keep raising little by little.

jack off

being deadass though everyone is inherently different in their stress response, just play to your strengths and take little baby steps every day on loading up more things on your plate, growth is always slow and painful

I don't think I can give a good answer to this question without knowing you much more personally, but I'll take a shot in the dark with where you might be coming from. Life is not about happiness. Living a fulfilling, meaningful life is not about happiness. It's important to have happiness sometimes. Happiness is fun and enjoyable and pleasant and usually pretty comfortable, and can certainly bring a lot of meaning and fulfillment to life. But it can't be your only source of fulfillment. You have to be able to find fulfillment in very uncomfortable things, like stress, like sadness, because these feelings are inevitable sometimes.

Fake it till you make it

The road to better is going to be a long one, stay the course. You will make it someday.

realistically in corpa world you can never be fully away from the pressure but one of the things that helped me a lot is to split my outside life away from corporate life. this is sometimes unavoidable in my role (maybe ill get called outside of work) but what im trying to say is that my thoughts and feelings in a corporate environment shouldnt carry over once all the work is done

if there is a stressful scenario, i deal with that while im working, and after work, im fully out of that work mindset and only thinking about my normal life if that makes sense

if you are more performance oriented, i think what helps a lot is to be transparent with where youre at and your progress, bring up any concerns of struggles or delays ahead of time, delays can happen but i think leadership (although wont be satisfied due to being late) will give you less shit that you have been clear with this in advance

not sure if this is the answer youre looking for bc at the end of the day there is no cope for me, im just trying to get my money up and then live my life but if you wanted to talk about this more, feel free to add me bc i check tftv like once every few months

I'm not like uber successful but I have a good career I guess.

I also struggled with impostor syndrome a lot "do I actually know how to code" or "god i had to google that im so shit" but one thing that helped me was reminding myself if my employer didn't think I could do the job they wouldn't have hired me originally or would have fired me in the last 3 years.

I also think having a good work life balance helps alleviate the stress. Especially as competitive players you can't just have high stress job and then go home to high stress scrims and then sleep. Its just not sustainable. For me i've taken up long walks as an additional hobby and its helped a lot, maybe give it a try?

Oh and don't hang out with work people outside of work.

As a Business owner I would say my life is objectively stressful. But one thing I just had to accept was that the vast majority of things in life aren't free and will require sacrifice to achieve, but it's on you to decide whether it's worth it to make the sacrifice. Expecting the sacrifice creates an alternative scenario where instead of looking for ideal situations you are looking for "good deals". You can reasonably just accept that usually you will have to spend potential fun to get what you want.

Then it's just up to you to motivate yourself using whatever tactic necessary. Sometimes I motivate myself because I know I'll have to sacrifice somewhere but I'm looking to make the smallest sacrifice possible for the largest outcome. Ultimately asking myself "am I fine with the aftermath or should I exert energy now" and thinking about it logically makes me choose the correct outcome. (Allot of the time I just straight up fear the other outcome and so the fear gets me to act)

Also similar to Geknaiir, I have limits. If something bad happens I just tell myself to do what I can today, the rest tomorrow me can worry about. It's not worth worrying about things I can't control in the moment. The vast majority of the time I don't work past 5pm unless absolutely required. Ultimately you should just try to do your best in the moment. For example if someone said "Niko you have to do this or something bad is gonna happen" rather than taking on stress about what could happen you could think instead "ok I'll do my best now and if something bad happens that's for future me to deal with, and just do what you can and be satisfied that you did your best. (Again you actually have to do your best though)

take a deep breath and accept that sometimes you will do your best and still fail. stressing out about it isnt going to make the outcome you desire any more likely. staying calm and collected is not the same thing as not being emotionally invested.