Find Calm in the Chaos

In the face of launching into a moment where you want to be your best, where you want to reach your peak, where you want to really reach your potential, there’s nothing harder than achieving a state of mental and emotional calm. And, in some ways, nothing more critical.

Consider athletes. With the whole world watching them closely, they deal with an immense amount of pressure to perform at their best every time they step up to compete.

We can also consider musicians, about to walk out on stage in front of a crowd. Or a knowledge worker about to walk into the boardroom to do a presentation.

All must perform to their potential in the face of pressure.

Because of this, they must develop strategies to relax and manage their anxiety so that they can perform at the level they want to. One way they do that is to decrease their stress and tension if they’re stressed, which helps improve their performance.

If you are reading this article, you probably are a high performer. To help you, here are some common pre-performance tips. 

Breathe.

Deep breathing exercises work by slowing your heart rate and stimulating the vagus nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system, triggering a relaxing and stress-relieving response. Olympic cyclist Laura Kenny worked with psychologists to implement a breathing-based systematic muscle relaxation technique to optimize her performance and reduce anxiety at the 2016 Rio Games. 

Release tension.

Your physical responses to stress are the easiest to recognize. When stress levels rise, your breathing becomes shallow, and you might clench your jaw or tense your muscles. Notice whether this happens and take a moment to consciously relax your face, shoulders, hands, stomach muscles, back, legs, and feet. Beginning at your head and working down, scan your body and release tension each time you exhale.

Visualize.

As the most decorated Olympian of all time with 28 medals, swimmer Michael Phelps used visualization to deal with the intense pressure by imagining every possible scenario before a race and exactly how he would deal with it. By visualizing both the expected and the unexpected, Phelps prepared himself for anything, so that when he was actually faced with a particular situation, it did not feel foreign and he was better able to manage his stress and nerves. In this way, visualization is an effective strategy to boost both motivation and performance while calming your nerves.

Focus on the process, not the outcome.

Refocusing on the process of the performance rather than the outcome has been the most important element of peak performance that I have been teaching for the last few years. Research backs this approach up. Mastery-oriented individuals are more intrinsically motivated, are more interested in the task at hand, are more likely to complete a task for its own sake and will persist for longer. Because of this, mastery-oriented individuals are also much more likely to experience flow and peak performance. So think less about the outcome and enjoy the process instead.

Adopt a ritual.

Research shows that rituals help us buffer against anxiety and uncertainty to guide goal-directed performance. An excellent example of this is two-time Olympic slopestyle gold medallist Jamie Anderson. Anderson credits her calm, confident, and focused demeanour at the Olympics in 2014 to her pre-race ritual based around calming meditation.

Relax, and calm yourself before the big event, whether that means taking a break from practising (a speech or presentation or musical piece) or taking some pre-performance time to breathe, visualize, and so on. These calming techniques lead to greater adaptation, greater reserves of strength and energy, and better performance—possibly even peak performance.

That’s it for this week! Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Yours for health, wellbeing & peak performance - Dr. Greg