When you look at the future does it feel exciting, boring, or terrifying?
The excitement of a great opportunity can lead to terrifying feelings of anxiety. Almost like they’re paired together. The better the opportunity, the bigger the stage, the more the pressure, the stronger the fear.
This is commonly called performance anxiety and is felt by rookies and veterans alike.
Performance anxiety shows up for one primary reason: imagining an uncertain future outcome that depends mostly or entirely on your action. The outcome goes well as long as you perform well. It goes poorly if you don’t perform well.
This thought process is why you feel pressure that leads to performance anxiety. Here’s my favorite method to beat it.
- Treat it like a puzzle: “How fun is this to figure out?”
- Enjoy your effort: “I love doing this whether I’m successful or not.”
- See the upside of the downside: “I want to win, but even if I do lose, there’s a lot of value for me in what I learn from the experience.”
Lowering performance anxiety starts with how you see the future and how you see your action in the moment affecting the future. Treating it like a puzzle, enjoying your effort, and seeing the upside of the downside will set you on a path to quiet feelings of anxiety and perform at your best regardless of the moment.
Everything is training for something. Do the work.
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