How to Deal With Performance Anxiety

Name: How to Deal With Performance Anxiety
Uploaded: 2026-06-11T11:47:00+00:00
Duration: 44 s
Channel: Jake Burhans
Description: In this short instructional video, Jake Burhans explains a simple psychological strategy for reducing performance anxiety before presentations, calls, or…

11 Jun 2026 · 1 min

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In this short instructional video, Jake Burhans explains a simple psychological strategy for reducing performance anxiety before presentations, calls, or meetings. He describes how anxiety manifests physically and mentally, leading to self‑critical thoughts such as “I’m not prepared” or “I’m not good enough.” Rather than engaging with these thoughts, he advises viewers to observe and label them—e.g., “I’m noticing the thought that I’m anxious.” By putting the thoughts into the light as mere words, their emotional grip lessens, allowing the individual to move forward with less distress.

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Psychology tells us that the best way to deal with your anxious thoughts is to diffuse from them, and I'm going to show you how. When you get anxious about something, what happens? You feel anxiety in your stomach, you feel it in your chest, and what does your mind do? It starts to make up thoughts about why you're anxious. Oh, because I'm not prepared, because I'm not good at this, because I'm not ready, because I'm not good enough. Instead of listening to those thoughts and putting energy and attention toward them, I want you to simply observe them. Oh, there's that thought of being anxious. Oh, there's that pattern of overthinking. Instead of I am anxious, I am overthinking. What it does is it puts these thoughts in the light for what they really are, just words. They're nothing more than that. So next time you feel any sort of performance anxiety before a presentation or a call or a meeting and you catch yourself thinking those thoughts, just say to yourself, "Oh yeah, I'm noticing the thought that I'm anxious."