Improve Your Performance With Anxiety!

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Anxiety is everywhere and for some people all the time. We get anxious if we have to talk in a social setting, anxious for assignments, anxious sometimes for no reason at all. However, there is a way to use anxiety for our advantage.

A wonderful 2014 research study by Alison Wood Brooks from the Harvard Business School revealed something very interesting. Alison asked participants to either say and feel, ‘I am anxious', ‘I am excited’ and nothing at all, before a task. The results were shocking. Those that were asked to say and believe that they are excited we're able to perform better on various tasks, from singing to a math problem. According to Alison, it is easier to go from one arousal state (anxiety) to another (excited) rather than cooling down and therefore this helps individuals perform better.


Now this research can be critiqued for many reasons, however, the implications can be impressive. When feeling anxious, all we need to do is to say out loud, and believe, that we are ‘excited’. Even such minimal intervention and self-regulation can help us perform better.

Umair Usman is a Rapid Transformational Therapist, a businessperson, and a writer. You can know more about him here


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