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Taking Charge of Your Mind
Most of us are pretty good at knowing how to feel bad when it comes to public speaking or performing. We can quickly and easily create all sorts of intense negative feelings - anxiety, worry, self-doubt, dread, fear, panic, terror, frustration, anger, disappointment, regret, and any other bad feeling you can think of.
It has been said that you can only feel really anxious, stressed, and upset if your mind is focused on things that you don't want to happen and are afraid will happen. We worry about the scary things that may happen (particularly related to an inner loss of control and an outer display of our anxiety) and are afraid we will not be able to stop a negative experience from happening. It seems we feel compelled to focus our attention on the scary things that may happen to keep ourselves "on guard" in case these things happen.
We can see how this applies to the public speaking and performing fear, where our minds automatically gravitate toward the things that we are afraid might happen and strongly want to avoid. For instance, we may be afraid that our voices may quiver, we may find it hard to catch our breath, our hands may shake, we may sweat profusely, and our minds may go blank. And perhaps our biggest fear - people may notice our intense fear and anxiety and think there is something very wrong with us.
The more we focus our attention on the things we fear, the more we scare ourselves and the more our symptoms grow (an example of the self-fulfilling prophesy).
One of the keys to becoming more resourceful in managing your inner state is to learn to shift your focus off of the things that you fear - the things you don't want to happen - and begin to put conscious, deliberate focus on the things you want to create. This is called positive visualization and involves both thinking about what you want to happen and creating internal images of what you want.
So, for instance, instead of focusing on thoughts and images of your symptoms taking hold and other people seeing how anxious you are, it is far more adaptive to think about and image a calm, relaxed presence where you are openly and effectively connecting with people in your audience, enjoying the experience of sharing helpful information with others. When you focus your attention on what you want to create, you begin to move yourself more and more in the direction you want to go in.
This does not guarantee that your symptoms will disappear, but it does tend to ease the symptoms, and your distress, as you continue to keep your focus positive and powerful. And this definitely helps to manage anticipatory anxiety prior to a speaking or performing event by thinking about and imaging a positive experience rather than a terrifying experience.
In order to shift our focus, we have to switch off auto pilot, where our minds are conditioned to pay lots of attention to the things we are afraid of in an effort to protect ourselves (by keeping us "on guard" so we are not caught "off guard" if things go badly). Focusing on what we are afraid of, and do not want to happen, does not really protect us. If anything, it makes it more likely that we may experience the very things we are thinking about and imagining, while also frightening us more ahead of time. The only way it would protect us to think about these worrisome things is if we problem solve and come up with an effective plan to address our concerns.
We need to train our minds to be more adaptive by consciously and deliberately shifting our attention to a more positive and empowering focus anytime we find ourselves feeling really scared and thinking about or imaging negative outcomes. Our minds will tend to gravitate back to what they are used to, so it will take patience and persistence to recondition your mind. While this may seem challenging, it is well worth a consistent effort to create a more positive and powerful mindset.
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