How to overcome nervousness

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.

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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.

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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.