Turn anxiety into a strength

Remember the last time you sat a high profile exam? Weeks upon weeks of preparation culminated in a two — or if you’re lucky — three-hour test of your wits. You walked into the room, sat, all the while your stomach doing backflips, and when you looked at the exam paper, you went completely blank for one long minute.

Any high-octane situation such as speaking before a large (or sometimes not so large) audience, a job interview or an artistic performance, is likely to elicit the same reaction.

What do you do in these situations? For most of us it is to keep calm and carry on, right? Apparently, wrong.

Research now shows that while calm may seem like the antidote for anxiety, these two emotions are on the opposite scales and are, therefore, harder to traverse successfully.

The downside of anxiety

No one does his or her best work when anxious. Anxiety is the apprehension over future uncertainties. It depletes our working memory (as is evidenced by going blank when faced with an exam situation) and narrows our information processing capacity.

Research shows that such a situation is likely to make you lose on most fronts; from accepting low counter offers to exiting early.

Because those butterflies you feel are harder to get rid of than by just willing yourself to calm down, the answer lies in tricking your mind into a state that is closer to anxiety.

Excitement and anticipation are both likely to lend you a performance advantage. As opposed to dreading both the task and the outcome, anticipation gives you the kick to look forward to the situation, and reframes what may have seemed a threat as an opportunity.

A series of studies was carried out on different groups performing tasks such as taking a math test, performing in front of an audience, and giving a speech.

Those who reframed their anxiety as excitement by saying out loud ‘I am excited’ looked forward to the task, and performed better than those who said they were calm or those who did neither.

The next time you face a challenging task, trick your mind into turning those nerves into assets.

Take a breath, smile and say out loud ‘I am excited’ and see what a difference it makes.

Tips

• Increase your chances of success in any negotiating situation by tricking your mind into perceiving the anxiety as excitement and anticipation.

•It is easier to traverse from anxiety to excitement than it is to calm.

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