Some Story Time

It's been about a year since I started CP and reached expert pretty fast. However, for some reason or the other couldn't reach CM. I got pretty close multiple times but lost rating as soon as I was one contest away. It felt like I was collecting every 18xx rating lmao.

At least in the beginning, the reason I wasn't CM was, well, I genuinely wasn't at that level yet. However, towards the end of the year, I felt like I was of that strength, but for some reason couldn't convert that into the rating jump I needed. I think some of you would be able to relate to this, you feel stronger than your current rating, but can't reach there, and maybe there's something holding you back psychologically.

Beating Psychological Pressure During a Contest

I tried to do something different in the last 2 contest I wrote to deal with pressure. Firstly, I stopped checking my standings, both common and friends standings. I used to check this very regularly in previous contests. My brain would go like this:

Ughhh can't get any idea about D, let's see the solve count. Oh wow it's pretty high it must be something obvious I'm missing. Let's see which of my friends have solved it. Oh 1 guy solved it, interesting. Let me continue thinking... (15 minutes later) Ok I give up but the solve count is even more now, wait this friend also solved it even though she's rated below me, umm what am I missing :( Ok let's check using Carrot how much rating I'm losing as of now, crap I really need to solve D to save my rating

... Why, just why? Clearly this is not useful.