1.
Be prepared.
If you have a presentation then study your
notes and what you are about to say carefully before stepping up on stage.
Doing this carefully and meticulously can remove a lot of nervousness. It may
not always be fun. But being well prepared can be helpful not only to remove
nervousness but also to ace the presentation or get the job.
2. Ask
yourself: What is the worst that could happen?
What is really the worst that could
happen? How will it affect you in the long run? In many cases you’ll find that
the answer boils down to: not really that much. It’s easy to get too wrapped up
in what is about to happen and magnify the event and possible consequences in
your mind until it seems like it’s a matter of life and death. It seldom is.
Asking a few simple questions can put things into a healthier perspective and
calm you down.
3. Take
30 belly breaths.
.
Here’s how you go about it:
§
Sit
in a relaxing position with your legs apart.
§
Put
your hands on your stomach. Using your stomach breathe in slowly through your
nose. If you are doing it right your stomach will expand and you’ll feel it
with your hands.
§
Breathe
out slowly through your nose and do it with some force so you feel your stomach
pull slightly inwards towards your spine.
§
Breathe
in and out 30 times. Take slow and deep breaths.
§
After
you have taken 30 breaths and focused on counting them you should not only feel
more relaxed and centred. Your body will also be able to continue breathing in
this manner without you focusing on it. And that’s it. Continue with your normal
day.
Taking some deeper breaths with your belly can also be
useful if you start to feel nervous or unfocused during your interview/presentation/meeting.
4.
Visualize in a positive way.
Much of our time is spent habitually
visualizing what may go wrong in a future situation. This can, of course,
create a lot of nervousness. It can also give you the results you imagined – or
feared – through self-fulfilling prophecies. If you think you’ll fail, then you
are making it a whole lot harder for yourself to succeed.
.
5.
Practise, practise, practise.
The more you practise, take action and
put yourself in situations that may make you nervous the more confident you
become. You have been there before, you know pretty much what will happen. So
you feel more and more comfortable and less nervous.
6.
Realize that people don’t care that much
about what you do.
One big source of nervousness is focusing too much on
what people will think of you. And thinking that their criticism is always
about you.
But people don’t think that much about what you do.
You keep much of your attention from day to day on your problems, challenges
and triumphs. And that’s exactly what the next guy/girl is doing too.
.
7. Stay
in the present moment.
This one ties into the one about belly
breathing. When you take those deep, powerful breaths and focus on doing that
your mind seems to silence. Your projections of what may happen at the meeting
or job interview die out. Nervousness comes from these negative projections of
what may happen sometime in the future. Or from what happened in the past,
perhaps from the last time you had a meeting or an interview. When you instead
focus your attention on what’s happening now, now and… now the nervousness dies
out too.
