How to calm down nervous excitement?

If you have pre-performance anxiety for something coming up, maybe you’re nervous for a presentation or something, you can trick yourself into thinking you’re excited rather than nervous by just saying out loud to yourself: I am excited. That’s it. That’s all it takes. Physiologically, what’s happening to you between the two of them is pretty similar, so it’s easy to get your brain to reinterpret those signals as excitement rather than nervousness, as compared to telling yourself to calm down, because calmness is a low-arousal state. In both emotions, the heart beats faster, cortisol surges, and the body prepares for action, with the only difference being excitement is a positive emotion. The method works by putting people in an opportunity mindset, which focuses on the good that can happen rather than all the possible negative outcomes. I used to do this all the time for public speaking and I’m a lecturer now, I used to say This is so exciting over and over beforehand.

Be prepared. You're less likely to freeze up if you're well prepared. Rehearse as much as you can and practice — alone or in front of others — at every opportunity. Practice until you feel relaxed and ready. Nothing calms nerves like the confidence that comes from knowing you're prepared. Learn ways to chill. Some people take along inspirational photos, put together a playlist to help them relax, or learn yoga and breathing techniques to help them feel calm. Smiling Breath This breathing exercise can help you lift stress or switch from a difficult mood to a more positive one. Belly Breathing When we’re relaxed, air naturally flows deeper into our lungs. Practicing belly breathing can help you create these feelings of relaxation and calm.

It's hard to imagine that excitement would be a problem that alone, an obstacle, and yet within the context of cultivating a calm, clear mind, of course, it can be very much of an obstacle. It can be experienced as a sense of restlessness, as a sense of kind of almost intensity in the body, and in the mind, of course. So the way we approach the feeling of excitement is actually not that different to the way we approach a feeling of anxiety. We tend to chase after those thoughts and being involved in that conversation in our own mind whereas with anxiety, of course, we tend not to like the feeling so much. So as much as possible, once we've seen that tendency to kind of, even if it's excited about sitting down and doing Headspace for the very first time or because you haven't done it for a long time, still just recognizing that getting caught up in that conversation, and excitement has to be driven by a conversation, at some, in the mind, you know. So at some stage there has been a thought or a chain of thoughts which has created or stimulated that feeling of excitement and it's only sustained kind of by giving it more attention. So as soon as we've seen that and we've let go of it and we've come back, of course, absolutely fine just to sit there and to experience the feeling of excitement, to be present with it, to enjoy it, but not to encourage it. And I think when we do that, when we approach excitement in that way, then not only does the mind start to calm down a little bit, but it calms down with a sense of sort of happiness and joy.