The Pressure That Builds Us

In middle school, I played on a soccer team that wasn’t very good.

We were scrappy. We had heart. But we weren’t exactly known for winning. Our games were more about grit than glory, more about near misses than perfect plays. But our coach had two favorite sayings that stuck with me far longer than I expected:

Repetition is the mother of skill. Necessity is the mother of invention.

He said them constantly, at practice, at halftime, after losses that felt too big and wins that barely counted. At the time, they felt like filler. Something to say when we were losing. But even then, they gave us a rhythm. A way to keep going.

I remember playing against teams that scored without even trying. They didn’t need sayings. They had talent. But when the game tightened, when they needed that one scrappy goal in the last minutes, sometimes they froze. They weren’t used to pressure. We were. We didn’t always win, but we knew how to keep pushing once the easy plays stopped working.

We weren’t the most talented team. But we showed up. We ran drills. We kept shooting. And eventually, we scored. Not because we had a breakthrough play, but because we knew what it felt like to keep trying, even when nothing was working. The repetition built our competence. The pressure built our creativity.

Repetition Builds Confidence

Repetition gets a bad rap. It doesn’t sound glamorous. It’s not disruptive. It doesn’t trend.

But it’s how most meaningful skills are built. Not through brilliance, but through practice. Through consistency. Through showing up when it would be easier not to.

Most of what I've gotten good at, I got good at by doing it over and over. Not always perfectly. Not always confidently. But consistently.

That’s the unsexy truth behind competence: it’s usually born from repetition, not revelation.

Necessity Fuels Innovation

Then there’s the other half: the pressure that forces you to adapt.

When something has to work, because you’re down by two goals, or because rent is due, or because the grant deadline is tomorrow, you figure things out. You try something new. You move faster than you thought you could. Once, I had a memo due with less than 24 hours left. The draft was a mess, and we were all out of steam. Out of sheer necessity, I scrapped the jargon and rewrote it in plain English. Not only did we submit on time, we got the approval we needed. If I’d had weeks, I might have polished the life out of it. Pressure forced clarity.

Necessity doesn’t always feel good. It’s not the kind of pressure you ask for. But it reveals what you’re capable of when ease isn’t an option.

Some of my most creative solutions have come not when I had endless time and resources, but when I had to make do. When I had to move anyway.

Taken together, repetition and necessity are powerful teachers. They build stamina and spark creativity. But they can also push too far, and that’s where the lesson shifts.

A Fruitful Life Isn’t Flawless

These two kinds of pressure, repetition and necessity, are often how we build the foundations of a fruitful life. But pressure, left unchecked, can also be destructive.

It can lead to overcompeting, overdoing, and burnout, sometimes to the point of physical pain. I've been there. Distinguishing healthy pressure from unhealthy pressure is critical. It’s also worth saying that even having the space to find that line is a kind of privilege. Not everyone gets to choose their pressure. Some people live under unhealthy, unsustainable expectations through no fault of their own.

I won’t pretend I’ve mastered it. But through — yes, you guessed it— repetition and necessity, I’m slowly getting better at recognizing the line.

We build skill through small, repeated efforts. We build creativity through pressure that demands a different path. And in the tension between the two, we find our way.

The middle school soccer team never made the playoffs. But we got better. We learned what it meant to keep going, to try again, to trust that effort meant something.

And years later, I still think about those sayings. Because even off the field, the pressure never really goes away. But sometimes, it builds us. Those high-scoring teams I envied? Most of them faded into memory. But the lessons from losing — from showing up, repeating drills, and inventing under pressure — stuck.

Final Thought

You don’t need to wait for perfect conditions to get better. You just need a reason to try again and enough heart to keep going when it doesn’t work the first time.

Repetition builds the skill. Necessity sharpens the instinct. Together, they make movement possible.