Strategies to avoid performance anxiety

Strategy #1

You may often experience heavy load of negative thoughts. However, those thoughts may not necessarily be a bad thing, because you can easily transfer them into positive thoughts.

Below are some examples of negative thoughts that are easily changeable to positive thoughts:

Negative thoughts:

1. "I will mess everything up." 
2. "I never do well at this kind of things; therefore it’s  going to go  horrible."
3. "They won’t be impressed with me."

Positive replacement:

1. "I will give my 100%."
2. "Just because it went wrong the first time, does not mean it will go wrong again."
3. "They are giving me an opportunity to demonstrate my knowledge of something that I have worked hard on. My hard work will impress everyone."

Strategy #2

Resolve your anxieties  

At times you may feel a great level of anxiety when having to present in front of a large crowd of people. A helpful technique would be to acknowledge what the problem is in the situation that is allowing you to feel nervous. This will help you to plan out steps that will prevent your most fearful thoughts to turn into reality. What you can do is to imagine the presentation and write down the problems which cause you to feel nervous, and then come up with something you could do in advance to help prevent this from occurring. For example, if you are worried about equipment's not working during your presentation, then a good idea is to practice using it before the presentation.

Reference:

Presentation Skills. (n.d.). Retrieved from Strategies to help you deal with performance anxiety: http://libweb.surrey.ac.uk/library/skills/Presentation%20Skills%20Leicester/page_91.htm

Please feel free to comment on the questions below in the comment box!

1. What are other negative thoughts that can be changed into positive thoughts?
2. How does your body feel when you are nervous?