Playing With Confidence How To Overcome Sports Performance Anxiety

Do you ever experience performance anxiety, especially before sports or maybe a music or as well as stage presentations and public speaking. But this video is particularly focused on sports and athletics because I got a question from a listener and they were saying I felt, I feel anxious. And basically my performance and practice is up here. My performance in games and other things is down here. If you've ever experienced that or any other sort of performance anxiety, watch this episode because you can be free of that and you can actually perform better and enjoy yourself more. I'm going to share some really powerful tools that can help you turn this around fast. Hey, Dr. Aziz here and welcome to another episode of the Art of Extraordinary Confidence. I'm your host and I'm the best selling author of the Solution to Social Anxiety and the founder of the center for Social Confidence and the author of the new book the Art of Extraordinary Confidence. Same name as this show and today we're going to be looking at sports performance anxiety. And this could, you know, if you have, if you're not like, I'm not an athlete, I don't play any sports in front of others. That's okay. Watch this anyway, because performance anxiety is for public speaking, is for everything. And the tools I'm going to share with you here are going to apply to all sorts of anything that feels like a performance to you. Music, sharing, singing, speaking up, giving a presentation at work, whatever it is. So. Oh by the way, subscribe if you like this. If you're getting benefiting from this, you'll find out about updates and you can also go to SocialConfidenceCenter.com and get my free ebook there 5 Steps to Unleash youh Inner Confidence. As well as updates and access to all kinds of cool training videos, bonus things, all kinds of great stuff. So go there now if you want to go deeper with this in terms of sports performance anxiety. Here's the thing. I relate to this a lot. I used to play soccer a lot when I was young and I loved practices, loved them. They were so fun. They were in the evening, it was like after school and I felt so free and I still remember the smell of the grass and the setting sun and it was so fun and I was good in practice. And then the games would come, man, and they'd be like on a Saturday in the middle of the day. And it just had a different energy feeling in my body. It's like scary hard running around and not performing that well, not being good enough, being yelled at by teammates and coaches. Terrible, right? And I hated It And I used to feel all this anxiety before the games. And if you relate to that, let's dive into that now, help you be free of that. So here's the thing. Performance anxiety is approval anxiety. That's an important thing to know. The reason you're scared you have this anxiety is because you're worried about the judgment of others. Judgment of your teammates, judgment of your coaches, judgment of the fans, judgment of people watching, judgment of someone. And we don't want to be judged. And so we get anxious. We gotta say, I gotta achieve at this level in order to get their approval. Now you might say, wait, wait, wait. Is these. I'm not anxious about that. I'm anxious about not winning. I'm anxious about not being the best I could be. I'm anxious about not being recruited or getting to the next level. Yes. And my sense is underneath that is still an approval fear. Because if you don't win, what would happen? What would be so bad about that? What are you most afraid would happen after? Well, then I'd feel like a failure. Well, then you're judging yourself. That's just not approval from yourself. Right. Or something. Dig into it and see. That's my sense. It says usually that. And that's helpful to know because we want to let go of all of the need for approval from anyone outside of ourselves. As long as we're kind of get that approval by being a certain way, achieving and being good enough, we're lost. So you want to let that go. That's the first thing, is to become more aware of that. The next thing, there's a ton of ways to deal with this. I'm going to share some different tools. You can try them out, see which one works for you. One is. And this has been used for a real long time in peak performance. I learned a lot of this from Tony Robbins, who used to work with a lot of athletes. And it's basically learning how to get into a peak state. And a peak state is when your mind and your body are aligned in an energized, powerful state. And the way that you do that is you energize your body. And this is so valuable that I do it at all. My live weekend intensives, we do it a lot throughout the weekend. And people condition themselves to get into a peak state. So what you would do is before your performance, maybe even leading up to it, once a day or more, you would activate your energy in your body. You jump up and down, you put on a song that pumps you up, and you Go. Yes, yes, yes. You power yourself up, you charge yourself up, you energize yourself. That's your physiology, that's your body. And then you focus on exactly what it is that you want to achieve, what it is that you want to do. And then you reinforce that with things in your mind like, I got this, I'm the man, I'm gonna crush it, I'm gonna dominate. I got this, I'm the man, I got this. Or if you're a woman, you know, I'm the woman, I got this. Right? So you wanna activate that energy intensity that's activating a peak state. And if you wanna know a lot more about how to do that, we spend probably 30 minutes on it or more, maybe even an hour inside one of the modules, inside of Confidence Unleashed because it's so valuable. I can't get into it all here, but that is a life skill that I can't recommend highly enough. That's one you might already know. That and you see that, right? In football players or any sports, but especially football, before they get out on the field, they're getting pumped up. You actually see it in boxers too, right? You know, the way they walk out, they're not just like, alright, here we go, right? No, how do boxers walk out, right? They got their entourage, they got some music playing, it's like, I'm a badass, right? And they strut out there. So that's part of being in a peak state state. That's super valuable. That's especially valuable right before the performance or the game as well. It's amazing to me how I didn't learn this when I was playing soccer. They didn't have us do this. If I was coaching a soccer team, maybe one day I'll coach my kids soccer team, I don't know. But if I were doing that, I would teach all the kids that. I'd be like, here's how. All right, everyone, peak state. And we're having like, yeah, and like the other, you know, the other team's going to be like, what the. All the parents and the other team are like, what the hell? But watch, man, it transforms everything. So that's one powerful suggestion to help you. Another one is like something you can do before leading up to it. And it's something that people have probably taught you, probably know about. It's visualization. But I have a fascinating twist on visualization that I think could just blow the lid off of your performance and your ease and confidence around it. It's this, I call it reverse Visualization. So here's what reverse visualization is. Typical visualization is like, see, you know, close your eyes, get into a relaxed state and see the thing that you want to happen. So I don't know what sport you're playing, but you know, for me it was soccer. So I might see myself like passing it well, trapping it well, scoring a goal. The things I want to do right, see myself performing in the exact way that I want. That's tried and true, that's valuable, it's powerful. I would suggest that. But here's the tweak. I would suggest it's called reverse visualization because here is a fundamental law of the universe. I think what we fear most, we in some way, you know, can kind of bring about. It's Master Oogway, the Taoist, wise poet of Kung Fu Panda says, a man often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it. And that's the same thing. So if we're like, I better not screw up, I better not screw up, I better not screw up, and we're like really tense about it, really freaked out about it, guess what? We're more likely to screw up. So we have to get to a place of peace about the outcome and the way. So sometimes when we're doing visualization, it's like this fear based thing, like, I got to do this, I got to perform like this, I got to score like this. And even though we maybe feel good as we see it, we're really afraid of, well, what if that shit happens over there? Ah. And so we want to become okay with that. And that's a reverse visualization. So instead of visualizing what you want at first, start with the opposite. So you want to get into it, you know, sit down, get a comfortable place, close your eyes and let yourself say, yeah. What is the worst case scenario? I'm slow, I miss shots, I don't pass it right. People yelling at me, people are judging me in the stands. Close your eyes and just let that be happening. And sometimes you can watch. What helps is watch it like a movie. And instead of seeing it from your own eyes, pull back in the camera as if you're watching it from the outside. Like you're watching a movie and there's all the different characters and there's you, you're a character running around in there. You're just watch watching it from the third person perspective. That can be what's called dissociating. It helps you not be so in it and you just watch it happening and then notice Maybe you feel fear, maybe you feel shame, maybe you feel embarrassed. Maybe part of your mind says, holy cow, we can't have that happen and just notice it all. Breathe. Find the fear in your body and just don't run from it. Sit with it, Send it love. Whoa, yeah, I'm scared of that. Okay, Embrace it, receive it, allow it. And it's gonna flail around in you and freak out and just stay. I mean, who knows? Time is hard to predict on this stuff, but five, 10 minutes of this, even if it feels like just 10 minutes, you just being like, whoa, this is intense. Whoa, oh, God, this is uncomfortable. But you just keep letting go of resistance and just feeling it softening your belly, softening your jaw and allowing it. You do 10 minutes of that, even if you feel like, well, I still feel scared of that. Trust me, you are neutralizing some fears on a deep level. Even if you don't feel much shift yet, because the more relaxed you become about, yeah, that could happen. Here's the state you want to get to. Yeah, that can happen. It's not optimal. I wouldn't want that. I wouldn't be like, choosing that on a menu, like, oh, yeah, failure. Oh, missed shots. Great. Yeah. But you know what? If that happens, okay, I'd be okay. And you really feel. You really feel that. You get some depth of perspective. Like, you know what? At the end of the day, it's okay. My worth is not tied in with this performance. It really isn't. And then when you've done that reverse visualization and you're more at peace, you become way more relaxed about any outcome. And then you can visualize what it is that you want, but it's not coming from a desperate place. And I would encourage you to do this, you know, once a day leading up to your performance and just really become at peace with any way that it goes. Because then here's why this is so powerful. Because then you're in the game and you miss a shot or whatever, and instead of going into like, oh, shit, oh, God, it's all happening poorly. I knew this was going to happen. We're just like, oh, missed a shot. Because you've done all that prep work ahead of time. Does that make sense? So that's how you want to prepare for any sort of performance in athletes. I used a lot of sports examples here because that's what the question was. But this could be true for public speaking. Imagine the worst case scenario, the public speaking, and come to peace with that and then see how you want it to go approaching someone you find attractive. I mean, you could use this in any area where you feel like it's a performance. And the key here, and the reason we do this reverse visualization is to really let go. And as you do this more and more you'll let go of it being a performance at all. What if nothing is a performance? What if nothing's at stake? Even when the outside world and people in your life are telling you this is really important. You got to win this game. And you're telling you this is really important. I got to win this game. Guess what? It's not important. I mean, not in like a significant way to your self worth. Just a thing. And guess what? That's true for the Super Bowl. That's true for the championship game of the highest level of athletics. I know that's blasphemy to some people. Like what do you mean? Super Bowl 54 is the most important thing in the world? Is it really? Who fucking REMEMBERS Super Bowl 28 or 34? Maybe you do. Maybe I got a VHS of that. It was the best. Really. We don't remember the players names. We don't even know what happened. It's important. And then it fades away. And that's what you want to be is like, hey, this stuff comes and it goes away and it's a game. Sports are a game. Playing public presentations at work are a game. Approaching that attractive stranger and having a connection with them is a game. It's fun. It's about life and enjoying your life. And I don't know about you, but I want to enjoy all aspects, even the stuff that's, you know, maybe I put a lot of importance on. I want to step back and say, hey, this is just a game business and your money and your finances are just a game. It's not a performance. That's the one that people really get constricted around. But it's true. It's just a game. How dare you say that? I'm gonna die under a bridge. This is not a game. But the more you can do this stuff, the reverse visualization come to more peace. The more you'll see that it is and the more free you'll become. So thanks for watching. Subscribe if you enjoyed this and want to watch more, share your comments below. What works for you? What are those are just two tools and strategies. There's dozens of share what works for you. Notice how this affects in your life and share comments Ask questions below. Let's all help each other grow until we speak again. May you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. Talk to you soon.