Category Archives: Performing

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10 Tips to Confidence Without Anxiety in Any Social Situation

Do social situations sometimes create anxiety and self-doubt, making it challenging for you to project confidence when feeling stressed?

If so, by implementing specific strategies and adopting a positive mindset, you can start the journey to overcome fear and project confidence in any social setting.

Here are ten practical tips to help you project self-confidence when feeling anxious in a social situation.

  • Challenge Negative Thoughts: As I have shared previously, anxiety most often arises from negative self-talk and distorted ways of thinking. Start by recognizing and challenging these negative thoughts. Replace them with positive affirmations and realistic perspectives. Remind yourself of your strengths and capabilities, boosting your confidence from within.
  • Practice Deep Breathing: Deep breathing is a powerful technique to manage anxiety in social situations. Take slow, deep breaths in through your nose and exhale through your mouth. This simple practice helps calm your nervous system, reducing anxiety and allowing you to project confidence.
  • Visualize Success: Visualization is a technique used by athletes and performers to enhance performance and confidence. Before a social event, take a few moments to visualize yourself confidently engaging in conversations, speaking with ease, and enjoying yourself. This mental rehearsal prepares your mind for success, reducing anxiety and boosting confidence.
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Unmasking Imposter Syndrome: How Overcoming Self-Doubt Enhances Performance (and Life)

Have you ever had that nagging feeling that you don’t deserve the success and recognition you’ve earned? Maybe you constantly worry that you’ll be exposed as a fraud, despite evidence of your competence?

If you can relate to these thoughts, then you may be battling a little something called imposter syndrome.

In my coaching work, this is often the foundational obstacle to not achieving one’s absolute best in any performance, or life, situation.

As I have been working on a new Master Class regarding overcoming imposter syndrome, I thought I would share a few thoughts about what imposter syndrome is all about, how it affects your performance, and most importantly, how you can conquer self-doubt to take your performance to new heights.

So, what exactly is imposter syndrome?

Well, picture this: You achieve something amazing—an impressive promotion, an award, create a new piece of art or maybe even begin to launch your own successful business. But deep down, you can’t help but question if you truly deserve it.

You might brush off your achievements as mere luck or convince yourself that others are just overestimating your abilities. That, my friend, is imposter syndrome in a nutshell. It’s like wearing a mask, pretending to be someone you’re not, all while fearing that you’ll be unmasked as a fraud!

Imposter syndrome can also mess with your performance. Picture a talented musician who refuses to perform in public because they believe their skills are subpar. Or imagine a brilliant student who downplays their achievements, thinking they got into that top-tier university by sheer chance. When you doubt yourself and attribute your success to external factors, it’s like slamming on the brakes of your potential. You become stuck in a cycle of self-sabotage, afraid to take risks, try new things, or even acknowledge your worth.

It’s like having a front-row seat to your own performance downfall.

Thankfully, there’s hope! You can break free from the clutches of imposter syndrome and unleash your full potential.

Here are some tried-and-true strategies to help you overcome self-doubt and enhance your performance:

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Step Out of Fear and Into Joy!

Fear

Your mind is amazing! It is in the full time business of keeping you safe. It reminds you to be careful. It warns you of not acting too foolish. It points out everything that could possibly go wrong if you take too much of a risk.

It absolutely LOVES to hold you back from anything and everything that might hurt you physically, emotionally or in your relationships.

It’s on the job 24/7, running like clockwork.

As great as that may sound, there is a problem with this – there is rarely a good reason for living a life of safety. In fact, as a newborn you came into the world absolutely fearless! Research tells us that the only 2 universal fears that everyone on the planet arrives with is the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. This means that every fear you possess as adults, and that your mind carefully guards against, is LEARNED.

Negative experiences, painful relationships and distorted teaching all led to the creation of your own unique set of fears, fears that were actually non-existent at birth.

As a child, you accumulated fear after fear which, with each new fear quietly growing within you, led to the disappearance of that outgoing, joyful, fearless part of you that made life so exciting and fun.

Before learning to be afraid and anxious, however, every day and moment was a possibility of experiencing something new and wonderful. If it went well, we loved it! If it went poorly, who cared, because the next thing in our life might be even more wonderful!

Yet, I wonder what happened to that bright-eyed, risk-taking explorer. Where is that creator and adventurer that lived each moment to the fullest? Did the fears that you learned permanently bury, under layers of cautiousness and anxiety, your potential for an exciting life?

Well, I have great news,

You never, EVER lose that part of yourself.

In spite of the anxiety you feel, the things you anticipate, and the worries you obsess over, somewhere, sometimes way, way down, is that original, loving, caring ‘wild and crazy’ child inside of you who really knows how to play and live.

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The Power of Mindfulness and Presence in Enhancing Performance

The art of performance is not just about mastering the technical aspects of a particular skill or craft. It is also about your connecting with the audience, creating a bond that goes beyond the mere exchange of information or entertainment.

I have discovered that one of the most important elements of this kind of a successful performance is the power of presence. Being present in the moment, fully engaged with the task at hand, can make all the difference between a mediocre performance and a truly unforgettable one.

Presence has been described as a state of mind where an individual is fully engaged with the present moment. It is a state of being where you are not preoccupied with past events or future concerns, but rather are completely focused on the present.

For performers, being present means being fully engaged with your craft, whether it be singing, dancing, acting, speaking to an audience or any other form of artistic expression. The power of presence in a performance can help you connect with your audience on a deeper level, create a more memorable experience for everyone involved, and even help you overcome anxiety and stage fright.

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Are You Living in the Future or the Past?

As a performance and anxiety coach, I have found that the majority of my clients, when we begin working together, mentally live in 1 of 2 places.

The most common place is in the future, in the land of ‘What If ?’ – a place where they say things such as,

”What if my business presentation goes bad”

“What if I ask her on a date and she says “No”?

“What if no one wants to purchase my art”

“What if my audition (or interview) doesn’t go well and I’m rejected.

There is, however, another land that I find my clients living in, and that is in the past, the land of ‘If only…’

“If only I had started my business earlier”

“If only I had more self-confidence”

“If only my family wasn’t so dysfunctional”

“If only I wasn’t rejected.”

“If only … If only”

The land of ‘What if’ is based in Anxious Anticipation while the land of ‘If only’ is based in Regret.

Unfortunately, Anticipation and Regret keep us stuck in fear, sadness and victimhood while draining the precious energy necessary to experiencing an amazing life.

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This is Your Brain on Fear (Part 2)

As I shared in my last post, the process of understanding what the foundations of anxiety are is a critical first step to overcoming our fears. The more that we are aware of the ‘unknowns’ the more we can stop filling in the “What ifs” with false, fear inducing information and then apply practical steps to think and do things differently.

We looked at some of the mental effects of public speaking anxiety last week, about getting caught up in negative thinking and outside of the ‘quiet zone’. We will now turn our attention to the physical effects of public speaking, the physical skills that you can learn to help make a shift in order to be able to speak and present yourself with less and less anxiety and stress.

As soon as the mind sends a signal to the brain that there is ‘danger’ ahead (“What if I mess up, “What if I begin to feel overwhelmed with anxiety, “What if …What if?…) the physical side of anxiety takes over.

Adrenaline kicks in and your muscles tighten up leading to even more physical stress. Your breathing changes, going from your regular slow breathing to shallow and fast breaths.

Your heart rate goes up, your eyes kind of scan, looking in a fearful way around the room. It is as if you are looking for danger. You’re worried about how you are doing. Things begin to feel different. As you present yourself, you begin to feel alone with your feelings, like no one else in the world at that moment feels as anxious as you do.

You then begin to feel more pressure, more stress and more anxiety, maybe even doing the things that you were afraid might happen: You forget what you were saying. You start to worry and feel overwhelmed about things you do not need to worry about. You focus on someone in the audience that has a puzzled look and think “Oh my gosh, they really are not interested in what I’m talking about,” or “I’m really blowing it here.”

Under the pressure of the moment, you begin to change your thinking into negative self-talk and your body simply follows that change by creating all of the physical effects that have such a negative effect on your speaking.

Understanding this Body-Mind connection will begin the process of making the unknowns ‘known’ and puts us in the drivers seat to learning and applying new skills to overcome anxiety.

To learn to master this escalation of anxiety, one must learn and apply 3 major skills that are crucial to helping you overcome your performance anxiety:

1. Focused Breathing

2. Progressive Muscle Relaxation

3. Centering (Focused Presence)

By applying these physical skills together with the cognitive (or Mindset) skills of Positive Self-Talk, Re-writing your Internal Dialogue and Positive Mental Rehearsal, you will have built a solid foundation and ‘Tool Box’ of Skills to help you overcome performance anxiety forever.

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This is Your Brain on Fear (Part 1)

Fear and anxiety can feel like they come out of nowhere. In fact, it is hard to even understand what is going on. This ‘unknown’ aspect of fear makes us feel even more anxious!

Understanding what the foundations of anxiety are is a critical first step to overcoming our fears. The more that we are aware of the ‘unknowns’ the more we can stop filling in the “What ifs” with false, fear inducing information and then apply practical steps to think and do things differently.

I have found that the best way to understand how anxiety develops and how it interferes with effective performing is what is called the Stress Model of Public Speaking Anxiety.

Under stress, whether real or imagined, several things can affect your performance. I say real or imagined because either way your body reacts the same as if the reasons for the stress are real. Preparing and actually presenting or performing can create real pressure and physiological stress.

However, the imagined pressure, the imagined stress of worrying how you are going to do, what people are going to think of you, whether you might ‘blow’ the presentation or forget what to say, can affect your performance in an even more negative way.

The Stress Model is comprised of the effects of both how you think, the cognitive effect, as well as your body’s physical response to the stressful situation. This week, let’s take a quick look at the Cognitive Effects of Anxiety.

The cognitive, or mental, side of anxiety includes the self-doubts that you begin to have, the self-criticism and the negative self-talk where you talk to yourself in a judgmental and critical way.

You might begin to have a loss of focus because you’re getting stressed out or are feeling so anxious. You question if you are prepared enough and wonder if you are going to look and do okay. “What if they see that I am nervous?” “What if I cannot concentrate and stay on track with what I am performing or presenting?”

This kind of self-questioning and negative thoughts are a part of the cognitive side of public speaking anxiety.

The first step to slow down our brain and its focus on feeling afraid is to become aware of the many “What If’s…” that flood our thinking.

Without such an awareness, we cannot replace these thoughts with more focused and positive ones that are NOT based upon imaginary fears (See my past post on not believing everything you think).

As a result of this awareness and replacing negative thinking with thoughts based on what is actually true, then we can turn our attention to getting our physical self under control. We will look at the physical part of our ‘brain on fear’ in my next Post.