7 Quick Tips to Overcome Nervousness
Nerves hit everyone. That's normal. The trouble starts when the nervousness gets big enough to interfere with what you actually need to do, and at that point it's worth learning how to rein it in. People who feel anxious often, not just the occasional jitter crowd, can still walk into a room and give a presentation or sit through an interview without falling apart. What follows are seven ways to quiet those feelings. Use one. Use all of them. Whatever gets you calm enough to show up as yourself.
Preparation does a lot of the work. If you know what's coming and you have a plan, the thing you were dreading tends to lose its grip. A big meeting at the office gets easier when you've sketched out the topics ahead of time and thought through your answers. Before an interview, read up on the company so your questions land and your responses make sense. Even a first date goes smoother if you've got two or three subjects in your back pocket to keep the conversation moving.
Another trick is to name the worst outcome out loud. A lot of nervousness comes from a vague sense that disaster is about to strike. So spell it out. The worst that happens at an interview is you don't get that particular job, which leaves your other prospects and your career untouched. On a bad first date, you discover the two of you have no chemistry and go home. Neither one ruins you. Keep that in view.
Visualization helps more than people expect. Find a quiet minute, relax, and picture yourself at the meeting, the interview, the date. Run the scene in your head going well. Done right, this gets you a little excited instead of dreading it, and it crowds out the worst-case loop that nervousness loves to play on repeat. You arrive already pointed in a good direction.
When the butterflies actually show up, when your heart is pounding and you can feel the adrenaline, breathe. Close your eyes if you can and take slow, deep breaths. A couple of minutes of that is usually enough to settle your body and pull your attention back toward the task instead of the panic.
Walking into a room full of strangers is a reliable way to feel off balance. One way around it: decide, before you go in, that you already get along with these people. Act as if the rapport is there. You'll carry yourself with more ease, and once the talking starts the exchange tends to flow on its own, at which point you realize the dread was never warranted. This works for interviews, dates, parties, most situations where you don't know anyone yet.
Then there's the self-consciousness problem. When you're nervous you assume every eye is on you and every move you make is being graded. It isn't. People notice you, sure, but mostly they're busy worrying about their own impression and how others are reading them. You're one more person in the room, and you have every right to be there.
If none of that fully kills the nervous energy, put it to use. Nervousness and excitement are close cousins physically, so redirect one into the other. Jumpy before an interview? Channel it into genuine curiosity about the company and what you'd learn there. Feed the useful emotion with the uncomfortable one and the nervousness stops running the show.
Nervousness is a normal feeling, but anyone prone to it knows how hard it can be to manage. Now you've got a handful of ways to settle down and feel steadier, so the nerves don't keep pulling you off the things you set out to do.
Rosemary Kitchen
References: Parmenter, J. (2015). Tips for Dealing with Nervousness. Preston, N. (2013). 5 Tips for Reducing Public Speaking Nervousness. Psychology Today.