Taking the Anxiety Out of Your Performance
By Molly Burmeister
When someone says ‘performing,’ what do you think of? If you are like me, you will immediately think about bright lights, music, and some sort of choreographed routine. However, performing happens everywhere and all the time. Every day, we perform tasks that get us through the day. These tasks can be something as simple as eating breakfast or brushing our teeth, to something more difficult like taking a test or giving a presentation at work. With performing comes performance anxiety. Some people buckle under the pressures of performing in front of others. The anxiety that is felt by people performing daunting tasks can severely impair their ability to complete the task successfully. However, there are ways to help people deal with their performance anxiety.
The first thing you can do for yourself is something that I have found helpful in my own life’s performances. Watching others complete the same task you are about to attempt yourself is an easy way to help ease you of your anxiety. If I can watch someone else successfully complete a task that scares me, I am less likely to be scared and more willing to try the task myself. I was a competitive figure skater for many years, so performance is not a new topic for me. I would be performing every time I was on the ice, regardless of whether I was the only person in the rink or if I was skating in front of a sold-out crowd at the Xcel Energy Center. There were times where I would be trying something new in a performance and I would begin to get anxiety from thinking about all the things that could go wrong. To help myself deal with these thoughts, I would watch YouTube videos from people who were amazing performers to help me gain the inspiration and motivation I needed to follow through with my performance.
The second thing that you can do to help ease performance anxiety is trying to identify the threat that you feel and change your perception of it. Everyone will have to sit through an interview at some point in their lives. Interviews are terrifying, especially if it is for something that is really important to you. In the days leading up to your interview, you might feel butterflies in your stomach or lose your appetite. These things tend to make your anxiety even worse during the interview as well so it is important to turn the threat of the interview into something less scary, and breathe deeply to reduce any tension you may feel (1). Coming to interviews prepared is the first step in quelling your anxiety. If you are well prepared, there are less chances for you to become flustered with anything that is asked. Another thing you can do during the interview is to try interviewing the person interviewing you — but not out loud! Ask yourself questions regarding their behavior, tone, and overall personality, then ask yourself if you could see yourself being happy in a career with them. Changing the role that you are in can significantly reduce the anxiety you feel about the situation.
Lastly, focus on entertaining your audience. If you are completely monotone during a performance, your audience will become bored. Your biggest enemy on stage is boredom (1). It is extremely important to remember that you have an audience and you are performing for them. While you may want to make sure that everything is perfect with your performance, the audience wants to be entertained. If they aren’t entertained, then your stress levels could increase along with their declining engagement in the performance.
Overall, performing can be a scary thing. But once you realize how to deal with the anxiety that accompanies it, you are able to relax a little more. There is no such thing as a perfect performer; they are just people who have successfully figured out a way to mask the nerves that come along with performance anxiety.
References
Brown, P.C., McDaniel, M.A., & Roediger, H.L. (2014). Make it stick: The science of successful learning. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press.
Embo, M.P.C., Driessen, E., Valcke, M., & Van, D.V. (2014). Scaffolding reflective learning in clinical practice: A comparison of two types of reflective activities. Medical Teacher, 36(7), 602-607.
Lyle, K.B., & Crawford, N.A. (2011). Retrieving Essential Material at the End of Lectures Improves Performance on Statistics Exams. Teaching of Psychology, 38(2), 94-97. doi:10.1177/0098628311401587.