Reinterpret it as excitement!
Anxiety is a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome.
Pre-performance anxiety can be paralyzing. At work is very common to feel anxious, especially prior to important tasks like giving a presentation or meeting with the boss. When we are anxious during an activity, our self-confidence decreases, our memory fails us and our performance is not as good as it could have been
Having experienced the negative consequences of feeling anxious, we often attempt to reduce anxiety by trying to calm down. But decreasing anxious feelings is difficult and often ineffective.
Alison Wood Brooks, Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School presented a more powerful strategy in her paper Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement, describes several experiments were individuals were asked to reinterpret anxiety as excitement before performing a stressful task.
Excitement is a feeling of great enthusiasm and eagerness.
If we think about it, the feeling of excitement is similar to the feeling of anxiety. They both have similar symptoms: feeling nervous, tense, or fearful; restlessness; a rapid heart rate; fast breathing, and sweating. The difference is that anxiety is a negative emotion and excitement is positive.
In her experiments, Brook asked the test subjects to give a 2-min public speech on camera, a task that caused the individuals to feel very anxious. Then she randomly asked some of them to reappraise their anxiety as calmness by stating “I am calm”, and the others to reappraise anxiety as excitement by stating “I am excited”. The results showed that the individuals that reappraised anxiety as excitement were more enthusiastic during the speech, they spoke longer, and were perceived as more persuasive, competent, confident, and persistent.
This approach may be very helpful for leaders to motivate their employees. For example, suggesting to employees to say “I am excited” before important tasks or simply encouraging them to “get excited” may increase their confidence, improve performance, and enhance their self-confidence.
Give it a try. Next time you feel anxious, instead of trying to calm down, tell yourself “I am excited about this opportunity”.
