Believe it or not, performance anxiety is your friend.
And it’s really common, even among world-class performers like Adele, Nadal, Emma Stone, Andrea Bocelli, Lorde, Meryl Streep, and Jay Z, who have openly discussed their pre-performance nerves.
Our anxiety gets misunderstood. It actually primes us for performance by sending signals to our body that the starting gun is about to fire. This sharpens our senses, heightens awareness, and indicates that we deeply care about the outcome. In its optimal form, anxiety acts like a seasoned roadie—ensuring all your levels are correct before you hit the stage.
However, there is a ‘red zone’ of anxiety where it becomes counterproductive, impairing performance through mental and physical reactions. Think trouble remembering your lines, a flood of catastrophic worst-case scenario thoughts, chest tightening, sweating, and even panic causing us to freeze. These reactions create feedback loops that exacerbate each other and heighten the anxiety.
Ironically, attempting to ignore or push away the anxiety only amplifies its intensity and moves us closer to entering the red zone. That makes sense; the anxiety is doing what it thinks is in your best interest. It’s trying to protect you. If you ignore it, it gets desperate in its attempt to help you and yells louder.
In those crucial moments before a pressure situation, anxiety is there—it’s real and is not going away. Nor should you want it to. So, let’s borrow the techniques used in the highly effective Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) and work with our anxiety.
Say hello to it, acknowledge and accept its existence, thank it, give it space, and remind it that while you are grateful for its unwavering support, you’ve got this. You’ve done the prep, there is nothing to fear, and you are ready to deliver.
And with that simple but powerful shift in your relationship with your anxiety, you and your trusty roadie will be in the green zone, ready to rock.
Part of Short Tales of Psychology—a series about interesting humans and the psychological lessons we can apply to enhance our mental wellbeing and optimise performance.
