You might have experienced this right from when you were at school. Be it to perform in front of an audience or present a topic about your project in front of the head of department, you tend to feel a little shaky and sweat profusely.
Sometimes, you might having sweating palm or feel like going to the toilet frequently or feel sick inside. These symptoms of nervousness is created by thinking that you would not do well. It’s the anxiety of the situation that gets you to feel so.
Why am I Nervous all the Time?
Getting nervous is a normal situation for anyone. This situation arises when a person confronts a stressful situation and does not know how to cope with it. It’s the degree of stress that relates to the nervousness.
Biologically, your body’s nervous system releases adrenaline, a hormone released during a sudden response to physical activity, that gets into the blood directing energy to your heart and muscles preparing to react for the threat. That’s why we feel pumping heart and sweating hands.
a. Reasons for getting nervous:
There are plenty of reasons and it varies from person to person. But the most commonly noticed reasons are highlighted.
Anxiety:
It is a protective mechanism warning us to protect from being hurt and prepare for the action related to the issue.
Negative experiences in life:
Our previous experience on that incident pushes to feel that it would repeat again due to negativity. Pessimism is most commonly noticed factor.
Feeling insecure:
For those who are not ready to take up challenges, they tend to avoid getting to the situation.
Strange events:
A person who imagines any situation to happen due to watching horrific incidents through media or reading about it wherein their imagination carries them to that state.
Lack of self-confidence:
The thought of inevitable event to happen or unlikely incident that would cause jeopardy definitely causes nervousness.
Body is fatigued:
If a person lacks sleep or is too exhausted due to heavy work or deprivation of food due to hunger or lack of essential vitamins.
Shyness:
An introvert person definitely would be nervous about speaking to someone or asking details or even to talk to a neighbor.
Those situations or events prepares our body to react to it by releasing energy to deal with it.
b. Symptoms:
Speeding heartbeat:
Due to adrenaline release, the heart pumps more blood to body parts giving energy to be ready to fight or react to situation.
Trembling feel:
The energy released to the body parts, namely the muscles, readying for reacting to a situation.
Excessive sweating:
Due to circulation of blood, the body releases energy in the form of sweat.
All these symptoms arise due to anxiety and insecure feeling.
How to Stop Feeling Nervous?
As we have seen earlier, nervousness is caused by physiological and psychological causes. We need to know ways of controlling it and stop to some extent. Normally using an integrated approach aiming at both the causes, would help to stop nervousness.
Mostly it is caused by internal factors rather than external factors as it is depending on how we respond to it. Every person responds differently to different situation. As you may be aware that stress is part of everyone’s life, it cannot be avoided and no one can escape from it. Hence, we need to rid ourselves of nervousness and feel calm to such stressed situation.
Review some of the facts below and try them out.
1. Try to calm yourself:
It is obvious that being nervous is a protective mechanism. But nervousness arises when you are anxious in response to a situation. It can be observed before attending interview or before performing in front of an audience. By being nervous, you cannot perform well as your mind does not work well. Moreover, your mind cannot concentrate on what to do next interfering with the thinking process. Ultimately, you tend to forget the important matters because your brain freezes.
You need to know how to calm yourself and understand that a calm mind allows thoughts to flow properly. Besides, it must be clear that anxiety only hinders development.
2. Practice self-control:
You might have experienced yourself shaky and feel your wet palms when you are asked to present a topic to large audience. For taking control of your emotions, its best to know how to control.
Try to practice in front of mirror imaging audience and take in charge of your fear. Don’t allow fear to override you. Keep your body calm and talk to yourself to calm down. Just keep practicing and one day you are sure to overtake being nervous.
3. Consider for extended time:
You always associate issues that arise in our life in context with immediate necessity. It is wise to consider them in context with extended period of time. It could be your association with close friend or colleague. Think over it calmly and reassess the significance of your relations. You might realize that it is insignificant after all.
4. Don’t get obsessed:
Most of the time, our mind brings in annoying thoughts over and over again worrying you. These thoughts are always under your hat and sneaks in your mind when you are idle. It’s better to avoid such thoughts and not allow yourself to be obsessed by it. Try to switch to another matter or divert your mind, the moment it enters your thoughts. Keep out those thoughts to avoid stress.
5. Relaxing your body:
Like it is said, a relaxed body equates to relaxed mind. There are many techniques for relaxing your body. Yoga is considered one of the technique. By practicing yoga, you can experience that state of mind when your body eases tension. Due to this, you get more relaxed and your mind too gets relaxed.
6. Practice breathing:
It is said that when a person is nervous, his/her breathing is fast and panicked. At that moment, you would notice your breathing is faster than normal. In order to calm yourself, learn to calm down to bring down your breathing. By breathing slowly your mind gets relaxed and helps you to think what to do next. Hence, practice diaphragmatic breathing to make your mind concentrate on the breathing. This in turn brings attention to your breath and turns your agitated mind to calm state. Additionally counting each breath will not allow for distractions.
7. Think positive:
You might be put up to speak at conference or have to perform at stage, whatever be it, don’t imagine the worst. You need to be positively focused to get the job done well.
Don’t allow negativity to creep in. Have the bigger picture in mind or visualize yourself to be applauded for performing well. Try to get yourself to focus of positive aspects so that you don’t fall prey to nervousness.
8. Smile often:
Your facial gestures play important role in defining your positivity. Facial gestures are connected to body creating positive vibes.
Having quite posture and gesture indicates you are serene inside. It would help you to handle any situation with calm posture. If you are not so, then learn to smile often and see the difference yourself.
9. Watch yourself:
It’s better to watch over your body and its movements as you become aware of the various aspects that triggers nervousness.
It helps you to be alert and note what goes inside you. Many scenarios affect our body to react first causing stress leading to nervousness.
10. Away from emotions:
You would have noticed that once you are confronted with a bad situation, it first affects your thoughts about the way you were perceived.
It immediately triggers a thought process based on emotions. Keep your mind away from emotions to avoid unnecessary stress. It is often linked with your ego as well.
By keeping mind at bay from emotions, you would allow your mind to concentrate.
11. Never be haste:
If you are a person who is haste in working, then you are surely in trouble of getting yourself to be nervous. Being haste provokes nervousness and distracts attention.
You need to realize that when you are haste you don’t tend to complete quickly, you push yourself to switch from one task to another. Learn to perform your task in its normal pace.
12. Engage in physical activity:
Refresh yourself doing physical activity and practice yoga. Allow yourself to distress by participating in any sports that you like and enjoy to play. It relieves the stress and removes anxiety.
How to Stop being Nervous when Presenting:
Practice:
Its better to rehearse your talk in front of your family or friend who can suggest steps for improvement. If you could record your talks, then listen to them to know where you need improvement.
Bring enthusiasm:
You could convert your nervousness to enthusiasm by listening to your favorite song or talking it out with your close friend. You turn off the anxiety and bring in positivity to your talk.
Be early:
Come to the venue early so that you get to know the scope of audience and know the area. Moreover, you won’t be late as it would cause anxiety.
Talk with audience:
By chatting with people before presentation makes you ease out and relieve the stress of speech. The chat would inspire you to know type of people to modify your speech accordingly.
Visualize positivity:
Try to visualize that your speech went off well and everyone enjoyed your presentation. By doing so you enhance your self-confidence.
Eat well and drink water:
For you to perform well, you need to have good diet and drink water. Nutrition is important for keeping you on track.
Stand while presenting:
Always follow rule of standing while presenting topics. Sitting is not a good idea. You must stand erect or walk around the stage to get attention of the audience.
Slow down:
When presenting, don’t try to finish off the matter by rushing through. In your speech, try to pause in between to emphasize your points and allow time of others to grasp what you intend to convey.
Smile:
Like said earlier, smiling often tends to release your tension and exhibits your confidence.
Take deep breaths – Before coming to venue take a few minutes to yourself. Allow your mind to calm by taking deep breaths closing your eyes.
How to Avoid Nervousness while Speaking:
Drink water:
Due to nervousness, your tongue gets dried and lips turn pale. Its sign of anxiety. So take water bottle with you and drink lots of water and stay hydrated. The more you are nervous, the more water you need.
Do exercise:
It is said that exercising alleviates anxiety by releasing endorphins making you feel better. It helps you to relieve stress.
Smile:
Socially interacting with others with a smile will help to reduce anxiety.
Visualize:
Visualize yourself as having spoken well. Having such thought in your mind before being on venue will bring smile to your face and create self-confidence.
How To Stop being Nervous when Driving:
1. Completely know your car inside and out. Open the bonnet and know the basic of how an engine works.
2. Select the right instructor.
3. Keep in mind, everyone will make mistakes. It’s a very common thing that happens some or the other time.
4. Practice some visualisation and breathing techniques.
How to Stop being Nervous before a Game:
Calming Your Nerves:
Step 1:
From the practice session itself, try to train your brain to handle tough situations. This can be mastered only by indulging competition into your practice routines. Player will get real motivation from winning and effect of losing.
Step 2:
Spend every night thinking that the best results are going to come in the upcoming event. Assume your thoughts and feelings at the great moments and image yourself doing well under stress.
Step 3:
Before the competition, You have to develop and get familiar with a routine. By sticking to something which is well versed will help you to calm your nerves and also to be in a right mindset before competition.
Step 4:
Take a breath deeply at the time of your pre-game routine. Just by recalling simple physiological sign will help you to calm down as well as lower your heart rate.
Step 5:
Mainly focus on ‘present’ rather than ‘past’ or ‘future’. Focusing on what you can control plays a major role in sports instead of dwelling on the past or future. It will help your mind to get rid of all the worries and just focus on physical abilities, which you have worked on in practice.
Review all the aspects given above and if you are able to practice at least few of them, you are definite to overcome nervousness.
