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Let’s break the rules here. The first 5 of these Podcasts get right into practical help. Only after that I get around the long boring, but important stuff on what Anxiety is and does to your body. If you are suffering from anxiety-YOU DAMN WELL KNOW WHAT IT IS!
Let’s fix it!
I created this series as a reaction to all the pop-psychology and pseudo-science advice on the Internet. Patients mentioning these posts make me tired and grouchy.
I am a noted and accomplished clinical psychologist, a scientist and a clinician. These podcasts cut through those weeds of bad advice and give you very usable, practical approaches to calm your ANXIETY. If you want to quickly calm your stress and anxiety, listen in.
The techniques and approaches here are solidly based on the best practices and research in mental health and on the analysis of 6200 successful cases of coping with anxiety. Each episode gives doable techniques to help you NOW! These easy-to-listen podcasts are reassuringly life changing!
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;28;15
Dr. John Mayer
Anxiety is a bitch. Episode eight. Performance anxiety. Hello again. Well, here we are. What I'm going to discuss today is, without a doubt, the number one situation that creates the most anxiety in everyone. Everyone. We've all had it at some time in our life. Performance anxiety. It's always at the top of those lists and the magazines you deviously grab for a free peek while in line at the grocery store.
00;00;28;18 - 00;00;56;22
Dr. John Mayer
If the Midnight Star magazine says this is life's number one anxiety. My gosh, that's gospel. What more scientific proof do you need? Seriously? Performance anxiety presents itself when we get draped in fear over an upcoming event, such as those listed on the chart here.
00;00;56;25 - 00;01;26;08
Dr. John Mayer
I'm sure I'm missing a few. The point is, performance anxiety is everywhere in our daily lives. As I've been emphasizing in all these podcast, anxiety is unavoidable. And this form of anxiety, performance anxiety is 100%. By the way, there are not a lot of good resources available on this topic. If you do an internet search and performance anxiety, the posts that most frequently come up are on sexual performance anxiety.
00;01;26;10 - 00;01;49;08
Dr. John Mayer
It's as if no other form of performance anxiety exists. Maybe I'll have a few words to say about this performance anxiety later. But first, before I get too deep into it, here's this episode's bonus tip. How about making a log of tips and techniques that I've provided in this podcast? Put it in your phone notes or a handy place.
00;01;49;10 - 00;02;22;00
Dr. John Mayer
This way you can refer to them immediately when needed. And don't forget these techniques aren't magic. If one isn't working today, go down the list. Now, specifically, performance anxiety. If you've been following these podcasts, you know that I like to establish fundamental concepts to calm anxiety. Because these mind shifts lay the foundation of the techniques to come. So before I give out the tips and techniques, let me emphasize two fundamental principles about performance anxiety that work good.
00;02;22;00 - 00;02;48;01
Dr. John Mayer
Create a beneficial shift in your thinking about a performance. First, when you have anxiety about starting something new, such as getting a new job or starting a new school. Keep in mind that someone or someone's is that a word way above? Your pay grade has a very lot at stake and made a careful decision that you are right for that job.
00;02;48;03 - 00;03;13;26
Dr. John Mayer
You belong in that school. Those people have their jobs on the line, so they know more about you, about your capabilities than you do. So calm your fears about being able to perform by the facts that these people have decided that you can do this. It's in their hands. Remember, as I said in earlier episodes, facts help us come our anxiety.
00;03;13;29 - 00;03;40;19
Dr. John Mayer
Think carefully about what I'm saying here and own it. Second, here are my five truths about facing performance anxiety. First, I don't care how old you are or what your life has been like so far, but I will maintain to you that you have enough life experience, life history that gives you the skills to overcome any performance anxiety.
00;03;40;21 - 00;04;13;10
Dr. John Mayer
Think of all you have accomplished so far in your life. Second, you have the intelligence, the brainpower to overcome any new situation. Third, you have experienced this anxiety before in some way, even some tangential way. So most situations you will face that cause you anxiety you have faced before, even in some unrelated way. You will face this performance anxiety before and overcame it.
00;04;13;13 - 00;04;41;21
Dr. John Mayer
Trust me. Fourth, you have the resources to tap into including these podcasts to help you through any situation. Have the courage to reach out to your resources, especially people in fifth. If you make a mistake or say the wrong thing or make a fool of yourself, you can undo anything in this life and you learn from these mistakes.
00;04;41;23 - 00;04;52;13
Dr. John Mayer
By the way, so will your audiences now. Nervous about an upcoming event on our chart?
00;04;52;15 - 00;05;19;10
Dr. John Mayer
Here are ten practical tips to calm your anxiety before a performance. One. Focus on an aspect of this event that you're looking forward to. Some examples. Seeing friends. Getting a new office. Getting new equipment. Some treats you give yourself after the event. The cool metal you get for finishing a new lunch place, or that donut you're going to enjoy.
00;05;19;16 - 00;05;52;07
Dr. John Mayer
Dungeon. Second, prepare like hell if you know your material or your performance inside out. You are ready for anything. Going to a new client? Look at the company website. Do an internet search or ask colleagues about it. Athletic. Musical or acting performance. Practice. Practice. Practice. By preparation, you're making the unknown known. Have to talk to an authority figure or dispute a bill.
00;05;52;10 - 00;06;15;21
Dr. John Mayer
Write down a script of what you're going to say. And check out number ten coming up. By the way, third, get comfortable with the surroundings. Visit the place. If you can't get in. Visit the grounds. The community. Google earth. See what it looks like in regard to attending a new school. Even if it's empty, visit the empty halls.
00;06;15;26 - 00;06;39;24
Dr. John Mayer
Your next classroom, the campus. Do this for a new job as well. Giving a speech. Visit the place where your speech or audition will be. This is a side effect of knowing what equipment is in the room. Put yourself up at the podium. If you're running a race, walk the course the day before. Fourth, you control the situation.
00;06;39;27 - 00;07;06;12
Dr. John Mayer
Control all the parameters you can giving a speech. Make sure you have all the tools you need. Whiteboard. Audio. Visual. Hookups. Handouts. What you are wearing everything. The day you start a new job. You set the pace. Take your allotted lunch break. Morning and afternoon breaks in an athletic performance. Make sure your gear is working. It's clean. Your back ups.
00;07;06;15 - 00;07;47;24
Dr. John Mayer
Everything that gives you an advantage. You prepare beforehand. Five. Now, here's my most powerful tool. Visualize the upcoming experience in tiny, minor detail. Step yourself through your performance in your mind. We do this with athletes. It's called building a muscle memory. We teach athletes to repeatedly picture themselves performing their sport perfectly. The science here is that this creates a genuine mind body program that is clicked in when it's time to do the actual performance, and the result is that the athletes performance is improved tremendously.
00;07;47;26 - 00;08;17;29
Dr. John Mayer
We can apply this same technique to any of the performance anxiety situations on our list. I call this building a brain memory. So do the brain memory exercise in preparation for an event. Visualize yourself actually doing the performance spectacularly and in great detail. I suggest doing the brain memory exercise several times in the week or days before the event, and then on the morning of the event.
00;08;18;02 - 00;08;46;08
Dr. John Mayer
Number six presentations and speeches. Practice in a mirror. Give your presentation out loud. Give it to a friend. Look at the endpoint that is. Hey, this will be over in 15 minutes. Know your material well. Have a fallback joke or a quip ready if you make a mistake. My favorite is to laugh at myself when I stumble. Seven.
00;08;46;11 - 00;09;14;03
Dr. John Mayer
We all get nervous going back to work or school after some time off. So do a bit of preparation the day before. So the first day back is not a shock to your system. Eight. Prior to and in addition to all the above techniques, don't do stupid stuff. This is increases your anxiety. The stupid stuff is often not getting enough sleep before an event.
00;09;14;11 - 00;09;51;02
Dr. John Mayer
Drinking too much caffeine. Not eating a light meal or snack well before the event, and, doing drugs or alcohol. Number nine use the scheduling and calendaring techniques I mentioned in episode three. This. This takes away our boogeyman, the unknown. Organization reduces stress and eliminates the unknowns. And finally, number ten, a great technique here is to use our friend visualization and create what if scenarios in our mind to problem solve each negative situation.
00;09;51;04 - 00;10;23;20
Dr. John Mayer
And you can think of occurring in your performance. This is what I call emotional inoculation. Like the brain memory exercise, emotional inoculation gives you the experience, the feeling and resultant comfortability that when something bad may happen in your performance, you've already lived through the worst that can happen and you've been okay. Now here's my most powerful technique during a performance during any of the performances on our list.
00;10;24;14 - 00;10;50;10
Dr. John Mayer
Put your mind in what I called the tunnel. When you're in the tunnel, nothing else exists but you. And that activity. If you're at a musical audition, for example, put your attention, your focus, your whole consciousness on just you and your instrument. Nothing else exists in the room or even in your mind giving a presentation. It's just you and your material taking a test.
00;10;50;11 - 00;11;11;29
Dr. John Mayer
It's just you, your pencil and that paper with the questions on it. All else is blocked out. Sure, this takes practice, but you can do it. By the way, I've heard many public speakers and actors spew all kinds of tips on how to calm stage fright. Most are ineffective. The silliest I've heard is to picture the audience naked.
00;11;12;02 - 00;11;36;09
Dr. John Mayer
Now, I don't know about you, but I don't want to picture most of my audience as naked. It wouldn't help me to calm down, to perform better. Instead, I'd be laughing so much I couldn't possibly go on. Now, let me talk separately about testing society because it is so common and we are so affected by it at the most vulnerable times in our lives when we are students.
00;11;36;12 - 00;12;04;04
Dr. John Mayer
And by students I mean anyone at any age taking a test. Students in a study published in the journal science, performed 50% better on tests taken one week later after they've read the assigned materials, and then immediately spent 20 minutes writing down what they recalled from the reading. Writing down on old fashioned flashcards would work nicely here. So the process becomes read.
00;12;04;04 - 00;12;34;23
Dr. John Mayer
The assignment. Write down what you remember from the reading, possibly on a flashcard. Check over your flashcards for accuracy in auditions. And finally, days before the test. Use your flashcards for test preparation in that same issue of science. Another study showed that writing down your fears and worries ten minutes before taking a test also significantly improved test results for students that suffered testing 80.
00;12;34;25 - 00;13;05;03
Dr. John Mayer
Give it a try. Finally, it is critical to mention that some performance anxiety is actually good and okay to experience before any of those later life events on their list. Having a manageable amount of anxiety can help us focus. Take the performance seriously. Prepare harder and actually do the tips that I mentioned in this episode. A little bit of performance anxiety can make us be at our best.
00;13;05;05 - 00;13;26;18
Dr. John Mayer
So if you study this podcast and you still experience some performance anxiety before an event, don't curse me out. It could be good for you. Well, there you have it. Oh wait, I said I would have a few words on sex and sexual performance anxiety. You might want to send the kiddies away for these last few minutes. By the way.
00;13;26;21 - 00;13;49;21
Dr. John Mayer
Let me tell you, I'm no sex therapist. But in treating young people all these years, this topic comes up quite, quite often. As I said at the beginning of this podcast, Good God, there are all kinds of advice floating around, even pills and foods to eat to cure sexual performance anxiety. Most of these don't work and are temporary placebos at best.
00;13;49;23 - 00;14;18;05
Dr. John Mayer
But I've been very successful helping with this problem by teaching my patients one simple technique. Here it is. Making love is not about you. It's about what you give to your partner. If you totally concentrate on pleasing your partner, showing them how much physical affection you have for them, and achieving their existing with you, you won't have any problem with your own performance.
00;14;18;07 - 00;14;41;05
Dr. John Mayer
Guaranteed. My many patients have proven this to me. Well, that's all for this episode. I hope you join me for the next episode, because I plan to debunk many conditions and feelings that get a bad rap in our world. Hope to see you then.