How to Calm Your Nerves With “mental Rehearsal” and Get Through Everything
They say anxiety isn’t good for you, but productive anxiety can actually help you get through everything – be it asking for a raise or taking part in a big race. Mind Rehearsal is a technique that athletes, musicians, doctors, soldiers, and even astronauts use to prepare for the worst – and show their best. Here’s how to use it.
How mental rehearsal works
The athlete can use mental rehearsal to visualize running games, thinking about how best to respond to a defender. The soldier can work out his plan of attack and develop a contingency plan. You may not be an athlete or a soldier, but the same process can be applied to just about everything you do in your daily life.
We worry about things because we feel that we are not fully prepared for them (even if we really are). In its simplest form, mental rehearsal is a way to convince yourself that you are ready. It is the process of identifying the source of your anxiety, determining how you can adapt if things go wrong, and working out all your contingency plans in your mind until you feel so prepared that your worries disappear.
However, keep in mind that mental rehearsal is not just self-affirmation or “positive thinking.” In fact, some parts of it may be exactly the opposite. The mental rehearsal is more like what Wellesley College psychology professor Julie Norem calls “defensive pessimism”:
When people are defensively pessimistic, they set low expectations, but then they take the next step, which is to think concretely and vividly about what might go wrong. Through our research, we have seen that if they do it in a special and flamboyant way, it helps them plan for disaster prevention. In the end, they perform better than if they hadn’t used this strategy. This helps them channel their anxiety towards productive activities.
It may seem counterintuitive to attack negative thoughts with more negative thoughts , but it can be effective to fight fire with fire. Positive thinking certainly has its place in any type of preparation, but just focusing on the fact that things are going well can spell disaster when things go wrong.
Admit How You Feel
The worst thing you can do when you are really worried is to ignore what you are feeling. It’s okay to worry about something. So you care about it. Make sure you reach out to him and determine if it’s worth worrying about at all. You may not even be able to change what you are worried about. However, there are many stress-causing things that you can change for the better:
- Presentation or speech at work
- Big meeting with a potential client
- Asking your manager for a raise
- Visiting the family
- As you approach the end of a stressful project, every day feels like an ordeal.
- Upcoming test or exam
- Traveling for work or pleasure
- Your own wedding
Therefore, if you find that what is bothering you you can control, indicate your concern . Are you feeling anxious? Are you feeling depressed? Are you feeling under-prepared? By pinpointing exactly what you are feeling, you acknowledge that it is, and you can be more prepared to deal with the problem through mental rehearsal.
Visualize Anything That Could Go Wrong
Now it’s time for some defensive negative thinking. Find a place where no one will disturb you, as if you were going to meditate . Take a scrap of paper and writing materials, and keep your phone or other distractions away. You want to focus completely on this exercise.
Take a few deep breaths to relax and close your eyes if that helps. Now start going through what is bothering you from the very beginning. When you get to the point where something can go wrong, try to imagine all the possible options. From the slightest mistake to the worst-case scenario, imagine what it would be like (obviously, stay within the ordinary boundaries of reality). For example, if you want to better prepare for tomorrow’s presentation, start with an introduction:
Introduction:
- Words right off the bat
- The wrong slide pops up
- Microphone is not working
- Draw a blank and freeze …
Continue throughout the day, activity, or whatever, and do the same for every moment something might go wrong. It helps in taking quick notes and writing it all down, but if that’s not an option, you can also make a mental list. This exercise does two useful things:
- You identify and transform all the little things that worry you into a more accessible form.
- You put them out of your head and make a to-do list that you can mentally rehearse later.
You may be worried about your presentation in a general sense, but now you know really narrowed down sources explaining why you are worried. Dealing with these little things is the key to making you feel more prepared, which will allow you to worry less.
Develop your contingency plan and rehearse it
Now that you have all the possible problems, it’s time to figure out how to fix them. For each item that you listed under each item, think about how best to deal with it. If you can think of multiple solutions, use them. The more options you have, the more flexible you become. Write them down as you go so you have a game plan. If we were to continue with an example presentation, it might look something like this:
Introduction:
- Incomprehensible words right away: admit it ( damn it, I can’t speak today), do a vocal warm-up beforehand.
- The wrong slide pops up: double check the slides beforehand, joke about it while fixing it (you haven’t seen it yet!), Sum up the other slides up to this point as it should have happened.
- Microphone not working: Sorry for technical problems and fix the situation, speak louder until someone makes it work.
- Draw a blank and stop: excuse yourself, take a sip of water, take a deep breath, and admit that you’ve had a fart.
With contingency plans, imagine doing each one. Rehearse this in your mind over and over until you no longer need the notes. By now, you’ll probably start to worry less about this. You have the answer to all the unknowns you could think of, and you mentally put them into practice so that your mind knows where to go if one of them arises.
Add other important elements to your rehearsal
Once your contingency plan is rehearsed and ready for prime time, it’s time to take it to the next level. To prepare for the next step, start adding other elements that will be present. After all, you probably won’t be sitting alone in a quiet room when the time comes for real business. Clinical researcher Angie Levan of the University of Pennsylvania invites you to try to paint the most accurate mental picture you can:
Imagine the scene in as much detail as possible. Include as many of the five senses as possible in your visualization. Who are you with? What emotions are you experiencing right now? What are you wearing? Is there a smell in the air? What do you hear? What is your environment?
Emotions in particular are hard to imagine, but as former Navy Seal and author Eric Greitens explains in his book Resilience: The Difficult Wisdom for Better Life , it’s important to bring realistic emotion into rehearsals:
When you mentally rehearse, do not imagine how success falls on your knees. Imagine everything: tingling in the back of your head, fear in the lower abdomen … The purpose of mental rehearsal is not to fill your head with happy thoughts about the future, but to prepare yourself for success in the real world. …
When you visualize everything with detail and feeling, you can better understand what it will actually be like. If you think you will be wearing a suit and tie, imagine what it would be like (or actually wear one). If you think you will be nervous, try turning that on as well.
Think also about your physical environment. Are you sitting or are you standing? If you get moving, adding movement to your rehearsal can help a lot. Athlete and writer Christopher Bergland believes exercise can help you strengthen your daily routine:
During mental rehearsal, you want to bend both hemispheres of the brain using your imagination, while simultaneously engaging the left and right hemispheres of the cerebellum using “muscle memory.” Adding movement to mental imagery engages all four hemispheres, giving anyone the opportunity to bring their “smooth” performance to the point of superfluidity.
The more real you can make your mental rehearsals, the more you will realize how ready you are. By the time you have to stand in front of people, talk to your boss, walk down the aisle, or even throw your child’s birthday party, it’s second nature to you.
Visualize everything going perfect
You just spent a lot of time and energy expecting the worst, but by taking control of that, you can begin to visualize things going on a different path. Just before prime time, do your mental rehearsal again, but pretend everything is going well. You have all the contingencies, so now you want to pump yourself up and have fun.
The video above shows a gymnast mentally rehearsing an exercise before trying it. She imagines how it happens over and over again, so she knows exactly how it will look and feel. You do not hope and do not forget about what you have already prepared. You are just looking at what the future might be. Consider this your dress rehearsal for the premiere. Visualize it with your eyes and trust that you are now ready, no matter what happens. You are in control, your anxiety is gone, and you may even have a little newfound courage .
However, keep in mind that some level of failure is still possible, so keep your expectations in check. Mental rehearsal is not a magic solution to keep everything perfect, but the level of preparedness it brings can make it so that when these setbacks come, damage control is already built in. You have eliminated the unknown for the most part, and only this will help save you from worries.