THE CHURCH HALL
When I was about 8 years old I went to a concert in the local church hall – interesting for a nice Jewish boy like me. A family friend made the introductory announcements. He shook from head to foot as he did so, I mean every part of his body shook, including the notes he was holding in his hands. It was monumentally embarrassing for all of the people who were there.
My heart bled for him and in that moment my speaking career was birthed. I vowed that that would never happen to me. At 13 years old when I made my Barmitzvah speech, I made sure that I knew precisely what I was going to say, had no notes and expressed myself with power and confidence. I guess this Self-Esteem work started right then.
In the decades thereafter I had really serious doubts when I heard people say: “You need some anxiety to perform well.” I struggled with this because I had always found anxiety extraordinarily debilitating.
I have asked dozens of clients struggling with performance anxiety the following question:
“When you have performed at your best in your life have you noticed if you’ve had any anxiety there at all?”
And they all say: “None!”
And that’s my experience. If I remember all of the presentations and talks and facilitation processes that I have engaged in – and they have been hundreds – the ones in which I was at my most inspired and magical and powerful and inspiring, have been when I had no anxiety whatsoever. Zero, zilch, nothing!
“IS THE STILLNESS RUNNING THE WORKSHOP?”
There have been occasions when I have been very, very anxious. I remember one particular occasion when I got some really bad feedback about a workshop I had run and then had to facilitate it in various other divisions of the same company. When I arrived at the second division’s facilitation process, which was a couple of days later, my heart was pounding, my mouth was dry and all I could think about was the rotten feedback I had received, whether the people sitting in front of me now, today, had heard about it and whether I would get ‘rubbished’ again.
There is no question that if I had stayed in this state of mind the workshop would have been a disaster. My anxiety was utterly debilitating for me.
So I used this shorthand method, created out of the meditation and Self-Esteem work, where I simply said to myself silently, as I was about to commence the workshop: “Is Mark running the workshop or is the Stillness running the workshop?”
It’s the identity ‘Mark’ that is anxious. The Stillness is my Spirit energy that has no fear. And instantly love and power filled my being. The anxiety dissolved and I moved into that magnificent flow state – the zone – which I’m sure you’ve all experienced where everything just seems to happen spontaneously and unselfconsciously.
I’ve talked previously about how our self-consciousness splits us in half and we watch ourselves with paranoid eyes destroying the magic and joy and genius that we are. This is what anxiety does.
SOME ANXIETY IS GOOD?
Now what most pundits say is that some anxiety is necessary for good performance, not a lot of anxiety.
My comment on this is, while not wishing to get into some serious expletives, that it’s a load of bunkum! (Thanks to my father for this ancient phraseology).
The only time anxiety is useful in terms of promoting good performance is if we are bored, unmotivated or exhausted.
You know the feeling you get when you’ve done something 500 times and all of the passion and inspiration has gone out of it. Your anxiety about performing is going to energise you so that you are more engaged as opposed to lethargic and disinterested. The same applies to being really tired. Anxiety can give us the kind of energetic lift needed to present ourselves with vitality and skill.
Outside of these kinds of examples, anxiety is a killer.
I’ve puzzled about why people across so many arenas, continue to believe that some anxiety is necessary for good performance and the only thing that I can come up with, as to why they are saying this, is because they can’t get rid of their anxiety and so they need to rationalise that it must be a good thing, because there’s nothing they can do about it.
ANXIETY DESTROYS CONFIDENCE!
Have you ever noticed how anxiety tightens and contracts everything in your body/mind. The muscles in your face don’t move properly. When you smile you know it looks false and unreal. Your heart and your passion is completely removed from the arena and you come across as wooden, stilted, disjointed and disconnected and devoid of confidence.
I do want to add that there are other benefits to anxiety, unrelated to performance. Our fear of failure can motivate us to start new projects, find new career paths, leave our jobs and get into something different, push us to sit down at our desk and work harder and longer.
Anxiety is double sided like everything else, but no question, it absolutely destroys performance.
I have read articles by sprinters who describe that while running the hundred metres they need to access instant and extraordinary power and yet paradoxically, they need to remain relaxed at the same time. Any tension limits their capacity to produce that instant burst of power required to be skilled on the track. Tension slows you down!
Anxiety again is a killer.
What many top performers have said to me is that they often feel anxious before performing but that while they are performing at their best the anxiety is utterly and completely absent. So why do you need it beforehand? To sharpen you up, to wake you up? You only need that if you are half asleep!
DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU HEAR.
My final word on the topic, don’t believe everything you hear.
Including what I’m saying!
Test it for yourself. Be a light unto yourself.
In love and power,
Mark.
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