A recent Harvard study
found that people who experience performance anxiety actually cope
better if they tell themselves to get excited, rather than telling
themselves to be calm.
Whether
you are into music, acting, sport, or simply have to speak in front of a
group of people, performance anxiety is shared by many people. Before a
performance, you might experience racing heart, sweating, and blushing,
but usually the number one experience will be digestive complaints.
Things like butterflies, nausea or feeling sick. The funny thing is that
the physiological sensations of excitement are often quite similar to
the feelings of anxiety.
When
you feel anxious, you are usually thinking about all the bad things
that could happen. In contrast, when you are excited, you are focusing
on all the positive things that might happen. Some nerves before a
performance is actually a good thing – it keeps you focused, motivated
and helps you to stay alert. For some people, telling yourself to calm
down or relax before a performance actually might not work very well.
In
the first part of the Harvard study, participants were told to prepare
to engage in a public speaking event in which they would be filmed and
judged by a committee. Before delivering their speech, participants were
asked to practice saying “I’m excited” or “I’m calm”. The people who
psyched themselves into being excited tended to perform much better.
In a further experiment, people were
invited to participate in karaoke while their heart rate was monitored.
They were randomly asked to tell themselves that they were anxious,
excited, calm, angry or sad. The people who were instructed to focus on
being excited about singing scored approximately 80 percent higher than
other participants, based on their pitch, rhythm and volume.
So, at a physiological level, anxiety and excitement are pretty indistinguishable.
In both instances, heart rate increases, stomach butterflies emerge,
and people tend to sweat. Teaching yourself to cope with these feelings
may come down to what it is you are saying to yourself before a
performance. Since anxiety and excitement feel so similar, it might be
easier to turn anxious feelings into excitement than it is to try to
dissolve them into feeling relaxed. Even if you’re not immediately
convinced, keep trying because the way that you talk to yourself has a
powerful influence on your physiology. Rather than telling yourself to
“keep calm” or “just relax” in a performance situation, try identifying
the positive, exciting things about the performance. Of course, it’s
important to acknowledge and accept that you are nervous and that this
is normal. This technique is certainly not about denying the nerves, but
it’s about gently suggesting an alternative way of thinking that might
be more achievable.
What you can do to help performance anxiety
- Write or draw about the upcoming performance. Put an emphasis on including all the good, exciting things you’d like to happen (e.g., “here I am kicking a goal and feeling great!”, or “the audience will like my joke and smile at me”). A recent study published in Science found that people who wrote about their anxieties before an upcoming test tended to perform better.
- Challenge yourself, your friends and your family to be regularly trying new activities that you think you might not be instantly good at. Too often, our self-esteem becomes tied with achievement because we are so afraid of failure.
- Spend time in activities that have no clear success or failure point. Things like meditation, yoga, and laughter groups are great because they help focus on continually developing life-long skills rather than achievement.
- Remember that learning requires ups and downs, and practice makes progress.
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