How To Deal With Performance Anxiety
It’s completely normal to feel a certain level of performance anxiety throughout your life. Everyone worries about whether or not they’re going to perform well at some point during their career. But if it’s not faced head-on, you could lose your passion, drive, and even stop having a fulfilling work/life balance altogether. So how can one deal with performance anxiety? Here are some ways to help overcome performance anxiety and enjoy a more confident work life.
Determine Your Fears
What is it that makes you nervous? What is it that you fear might happen? Performance anxiety can rest deep within your mind. Anxiety can plague your thoughts and make you feel tense and nervous, which can cause reduced ability to perform the way you can normally. To get past these feelings, you need to discover where the underlying fear is really coming from. Are you worried that your work will isn’t detailed enough? Once you better understand your fears you can learn how to ease your mind to get past your performance anxiety.
Ease Your Mind
Most fear is driven by worry that something will go wrong. To help yourself relax, start asking yourself what could go right. Try to focus on what you’re excited about and remove any expectations about your performance from the equation. Most expectations we put on ourselves are simply unrealistic. Once you take a moment to think of the beneficial things and ease your mind a little, you can focus more on what you’re doing and less on what could happen.
Stop With The Routine
Many people have the assumption that everything they do must happen in a certain sequence. They get into a habit with their work and start to fear that if things don’t go exactly as planned, they will have failed. Trying to achieve the same result every time is a recipe for never-ending performance anxiety. Your career can change, and your work will differ from day to day – it’s actually better if it’s changed up regularly.
Try Counselling
Work isn’t just physical exhausting – it’s also emotionally and mentally taxing. Sometimes it takes changing your mental thought process to get over your performance anxiety. And no one is better at helping you adjust your mental patterns than a counsellor. They can help you change your attitude towards work performance and help your mind focus on having a more pleasant experience.
When you’re ready to deal with performance anxiety once and for all, come see us at Ottawa Counselling to help you get past that roadblock so you can start enjoying your career once again.