If you feel like running away from a doing something in front of other people, you are experiencing performance anxiety.
- If you want to learn techniques to overcome performance anxiety, come to our next IMPACT Goal setting workshop.
Performance anxiety can affect you before or during any performance in the public eye.
This might be public speaking, going on stage, job interview or being in a sports competition for example.
It can leave you tongue-tied or paralysed.
It can be overwhelming, as adrenaline surges and a “fight or flight” response takes over.
Reframing reduces fear
Franklin D. Roosevelt said:
“the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyses needed efforts”.
Most of us will have experienced such terror at some point in our lives.
It may be enough to reframe the fear as excitement.
In other cases where excellent performance is required, you may want to harness the fear by reframing it into a positive emotion, rather than eliminating it, because heightened emotions are a key ingredient to performing well.
As an example, you want to go to a job interview with some nerves rather than being totally relaxed, so that you convey desire.
Habitual fear
The way you think stems from habit, so the way you fear stems from habit.
This means that to overcome fear, we need to change our habits.
To do this, we need to determine whether the fear is useful, as in the fear of snakes, or restrictive, as in the fear of public speaking.
Immediate fears loom large
Fear of public speaking frequently tops the list of fear, being more feared than dying.
US comedian, Jerry Seinfeld said:
“Speaking in front of a crowd is considered the number one fear of the average person. Number two was death. Death is number two? This means to the average person, if you have to be at a funeral, you’d rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy.”
This is relevant to goal setting, because it highlights that people are most concerned about things that are immediately in front of them and that they can vividly imagine.
It is easy to imagine standing up in front of a large group of people to make a speech… and the associated anxiety and fear.
It is much more difficult to imagine dying.
If you set goals far into the future, you are likely to have less fear about pursing them, no matter how challenging they are.
However, you are also likely to be less inspired to pursue them because they are not immediate.
You can counter this with your next step being in the immediate future, whilst not being scary enough to put you off.
Small, achievable steps enable you to reach challenging, scary goals.
Come to the next IMPACT Goal training if you would like to set steps to overcome your fears and reach your goals.