Performance Anxiety

                                                                                    Picture Credit: https://yourmusiclessons.com/blog/performance-anxiety/

I first came across this word in conjunction with teaching special education students.  Several studies have mentioned that once a student loses pace with their peers, they can never catch up.

A “Cognitive Behaviour” site stated that performance anxiety occurs within students once pace with peers is lost and all data points compared to their peers report this loss, they experience performance anxiety.  They further state as part of their intervention strategies to engage students where they are and do not compare.

When you do a search of this phrase there seems to be a lot of posts concerning “men's” bedroom performance anxiety. This post is nowhere near taking on that specific area.  Instead, would like to walk through the mental game of how we have established low level performance criteria that were created by others and has created a vicious cycle.

Like any word/phrase, once you hear it read it, you begin to see it all over the place.  If you are familiar with the word then maybe i am drawing together some thoughts you recognise.  But did want to try and assimilate a clear thought of how performance anxiety affects us on a daily basis.

Oddly this thought process was drawn from a post by Cyndi wilkins, https://www.bebee.com/producer/@cyndi-wilkins/the-power-to-choose and her thoughts sourrounding a change in social consiousness. 

A great piece that elevates the issues we face and i wanted to expand into the areas whereby we could think about our individual actions and how they contribute to the whole.

Performance anxiety is the process where we see something as more than we can accomplish, either in task, intellectual or sense of fair play has been lost.  This definition is a bit airy without considering where the established criteria came from that actaully set the points of measurement.  Also this evaluative journey is about "before we communicate" within the envelope of our lives.  Those auto-thoughts of performance anxiety that we may not have labeled yet, that guide our communications.

Our first measurement usually is recognised as given throughout our lives and labeled our personal narrative. Ian Weinberg covers this much better than i can, https://www.bebee.com/producer/@ian-weinberg/embrace-the-zeitgeist-and-transcend

Briefly it is all the things that you were given to be true during your childhood along with your own personal experiences up to this point.  How you define, fair, good behaviour, success and wealth are all in there.

Within this narrative there is a second layer to the narrative that is more a recent phenomena, within this balancing act. Materialism.  Not defined as a disease but rather the thoughts we carry of comparison of who has/owns what and where we stack up.  This is the area that media exploits.

When we combine these two perspectives we now have a complete scale in which to balance our life.  So we think.  The mere existence of the scale is the reason for performance anxiety.  A scale only needs to be used when we need to weigh “two” different items. Automatically, by placing an opposing weight on the other end, we have now empowered the object.

Media has recognised this for a long time.  They establish a performance criteria then show you how you can’t meet the criteria without their product or service.  We are constantly bombarded with various standards of performance.  TV, online commercials and social media.  They create the secondary criteria in which we must pull out the scale for comparison.  Our own paradigm is the first piece.

Now we can say we are above the child's play of marketing, but i would think again.  With such consistency we become acclimated to the process of performance anxiety.  The performance anxiety envelope is one that is built over time.  If it's in your face we instantly reject it.  But like the frog in the slowly raised water temperature, we are in the hot tub believing this is life.

If VISA had a commercial that stated you could save lives by using their card to become a brain surgeon we would laugh.  But somehow we can be a better family through VISA.
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Performance anxiety has another name stress.  Stress is being studied as causing some of our more devastating, life threatening conditions.  But stress is nebulous when we sit down to actually attempt to become self aware of the stress itself.  This is why i prefer the phrase performance anxiety.

Within performance anxiety we must have a scale and two opposing counter weights.  Myself on one side and something else on the other that is equal, better or worse, establishing my view of how i fit/balance within a paradigm.  This establishes also a way for us to become intraspective of our viewpoint.  Describe the counter weight.  Why does it have the power to change the balance of the scale in your perspective?  Can i remove that power?  What happens when i have sorted through all the powers that unbalance my scale of view?

When we work through all of the scale issues of balance, we find we no longer need the scale at all.  We live within a world where balance is not needed. Only purpose.
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One of the key components of approaching performance anxiety as we walk the journey is declared “purpose”.  Earlier we spoke to the narrative that we have gathered along our life journey.  Believe it or not that narrative is your purpose. Success in dealing with performance anxiety (Stress) happens only when we truly take the time and identify a purpose for ourselves, using the narrative as a starting point or finding another source in helping us define our purpose.  Just keep in mind that you are writing "your" purpose and not looking for someone to give you one.

We should reject any purpose that is given to us until we have had the opportunity to be introspective about changing our declared purpose.
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@Ali Anani started a great dialogue in comparison to nature the performance anxiety we have been discussing here. https://www.bebee.com/producer/@ali-anani/sandy-societies#c17

Some parting thoughts. 

Writing your purpose is not easy.  It is a journey of six months or more.  It's difficult because it will, over time, replace the performance anxiety with purpose and reduce the auto-speech we have become accustomed.  It will feel very mechanical at first.  But you are rescripting your narrative.  It's worth the time.

Consider taking the challenge of watching marketing and how it shows you performance criteria.  VISA will show you a family on vacation that was funded by them, with eeeeasy payments of course, this family is portrayed as criteria of performance when we look at our own.

Maybe you see the commercials that create a thought of symptoms that we can relate too and then offer you a solution. Two seconds before that commercial you were doing just fine.  Now you are thinking about the symptoms they presented.

Branding and money is a powerful force behind creating performance anxiety.
Author in Source Title

Take a moment to better understand the narrative, teaching and the piano is replaceable with your specific situation.  Great video explanation.

A rephrasing of her final thoughts.  No one wants to change their purpose as it goes against the status quo.  But if we decide to do so, we can combine our passion within our purpose that enlightens others with a new narrative.

Now that you know that performance anxiety is the working cause of your stress and that defining your fundamental purpose can…...I have left a blank line for you to write the purpose you will use to throw away the scales that are holding you back from success.

You can “Soar”

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May your days be full of purpose, (That you defined.)