the.com/high stakes
When losing isn't a lesson, it's a funeral.
means Describes a situation where the potential losses or consequences are severe, dramatic, and hard to reverse — so the pressure to get it right is intense.
from From poker and gambling, where 'stakes' are the money or chips risked on a single hand — the word traces back to the literal stake or post that bets were once piled against or pinned to. 'High stakes' simply means the pile is dangerously large: win big or lose big. By the 1900s the phrase had leapt the card table, landing in boardrooms, courtrooms, and battlefields, anywhere the cost of failure stopped being measured in chips and started being measured in something you can't win back.
- origin
- gambling term, chips literally staked on outcomes
- psychology
- raises performance until it suddenly tanks it
- paradox
- the fear of failure often causes it
- low stakes cousin
- same decision, zero sweat, better choices