The parent of a high school baseball player recently asked us for tips to help his son manage nerves before critical at-bats. We’ve been asked a version of this question countless times: by lawyers arguing at the Supreme Court, musicians about to take the stage, surgeons before operating, and students before exams.
Everyone faces performance anxiety. It’s part and parcel of being human. The goal in these situations is to self-regulate, to get your nervous system into a state where it can perform optimally.
Working with Nerves
The most common advice revolves around calming techniques, i.e., mindfulness, box breathing, the Andrew Huberman popularized “physiological sigh,” visualization, and positive self-talk. No doubt, there is a time and place for these tools—and with practice and in the right circumstances, they can be quite beneficial. But there is another approach that may be more powerful: Accept the sensations you are feeling, and instead of labeling them as something bad that you need to get rid of, label them as a sign that you care, as your mind-body system gets ready to perform.
We know from decades of research that the worst way to make anxiety go away is by trying really hard to make anxiety go away. What you resist tends to persist. Trying to get rid of pre-performance nerves is a big gamble. If your breathing, visualization, or other calming technique doesn’t work, then you’re going to spiral—not only have you labeled what you’re feeling as bad, but now, you can’t even get rid of it! This is not a state you want to be in as you step into the batter’s box, be it an actual or metaphorical one. Not to mention, if you care deeply enough, you’re always going to have some nerves. There is no way around it.
A study of swimmers found that both elite and non-elite competitors experience the same physiological sensations before a big race. The only difference is that the non-elite swimmers labeled them as anxiety and tried to make them go away, whereas the elite swimmers labeled them as a part of the sport, as a sign of caring, and the body getting ready to perform.
Other research on public speaking found the same thing. Those who tried to get rid of anxiety before presentations fared worse than those who sat with the feelings and reframed them as “excitement.”
In our experience coaching and counseling high performers, one of the biggest unlocks is helping people realize that pre-performance anxiety is normal and that acceptance and reframing are often the best paths forward. But there is nuance, and it’s important.
When to Calm Down and When to Accept
Let’s use the Olympic sport of Biathlon as an example. In Biathlon, athletes ski as fast as they can until they reach specific junctures where they must fire a rifle at a target 50 meters away.
If a biathlete is feeling nervous on the start line before a race, the best advice would not be to try and get rid of those nerves, for all the reasons above. Instead, we’d counsel that athlete to accept the nerves, to remind herself that it’s completely normal—it means you care! It would be more of a problem if you weren’t feeling any nerves! Sit with the feelings, reframe them as your nervous system preparing for the task at hand, and wait for the race to start. Once it does, you’ll be fine.
But now let’s say that same biathlete gets to a target mid-race, her heart rate redlining from skiing, and she misses the first shot. In this instance, a technique like positive self-talk—I’ve got this: breath, sight, shoot—or perhaps a specific breathing protocol (assuming she’s practiced and trained it) would be helpful.
If you’re nervous before public speaking, a big meeting, or an exam, accept the nerves; tell yourself they are a sign you care (because that’s precisely what they are); and remind yourself that once the actual event starts, you’ll settle in.
If you stutter, lose your spot, your pencil breaks, or someone interrupts you when you least expect it, that’s a great time for self-talk, a quick visualization, or a breathing technique to help you regulate and reset.
There is No Substitute for Experience and Guts
All of the podcasts and influencers who spend hours upon hours trying to help you make pre-performance anxiety go away (or any anxiety, for that matter) have a severe misunderstanding of how anxiety works and what it means to be a human (versus a machine).
The way to make strong sensations dull is by getting reps under your belt, by facing the nerves and taking them along for the ride, over and over again. It’s why the first at bat of your career is always more stressful than the 3654th one. It’s why the gold-standard treatment for clinical and generalized anxiety is “Acceptance and Commitment,” which, in its simplest form, means accepting the nerves and committing to showing up and living out your values anyways. Do that, and after a while, the nerves usually fade. It’s simple, but that doesn’t make it easy. It takes guts.
A long time ago, before we fully understood the psychology and science behind any of this, Steve and I were in the back of a taxi crossing the Bay Bridge on the way from San Francisco to Oakland for our inaugural major book talk. It was right after Peak Performance was released, and the first time either of us would be in front of an audience of thousands. I remember the ride being silent.
Steve turned to me and said, “Dude, are you nervous?”
I said, “Very.”
Steve said, “Me too. My palms are sweaty.”
I said, “I think that’s fine, we know our material like the back of our hands.”
Steve said, “It’s just like before a big race. You can be nervous on the way to the race, and even while standing on the start line. You just have to wait for the gun to go off, and then you’re fine.”
And guess what, he was right. We were nervous until the ‘gun went off’, until we got to that first slide, and could talk freely about the book we knew so well. Since then, we’ve given hundreds of talks, and while we still get nervous, we know that if we’ve done the preparation and don’t fight the nerves, eventually they will fade.
So the next time you are facing nerves or performance anxiety, instead of trying to fight it or make it go away, normalize what you are feeling. Reframe the sensations as a sign of caring and readiness. Get to the starting line. Wait for the gun to go off. Let your training take over. And give yourself some grace for being a human and experiencing human feelings.
Anxiety isn’t always the enemy. Sometimes, it simply means that what you are attempting is hard, and that you care. Nothing is wrong with that. Caring is fuel. Learning to ride the waves is an important skill, and like any other skill, you get better with practice.
– Brad and Steve
