The Way Rituals Can Help with Performance Anxiety

Every time I have to do a presentation I experience some kind of performance anxiety no matter
how much I prepare for it. Looking for a way for combating this issue I encountered myself with
the professional athletes’ habit of performing rituals before competitions and special moments,
and asked myself if it’s possible that this practice helps them with anxiety and if so, could they
also help others than athletes?

So today I want to share with you what I learned about it:

You might have noticed. Tennis player, Serena Williams, bouncing the tennis ball 5 times before
every first serve and twice before every second serve. Or, soccer player, Cristiano Ronaldo,
preparing for a free kick by placing the ball with both hands, taking the same amount of steps
back, spreading his legs and taking a deep breath.

Athletes have been doing these kind of activities for a significant amount of time, as much time
as the public has been considering them just a collection of illogical superstitions. However,
they, as irrational and silly as some may seem, have a more profound impact that you might
imagine and, multiple research experiments show, they are helpful to people outside of sports
as well.

These activities have been labelled Pre-Performance Routines, and are defined as "task
relevant thoughts and actions performed systematically before a performance"
Tasks that end up helping us run faster, jump higher, think more deeply, and solve more quickly.

These routines help improve concentration by encouraging the person to focus their thoughts on
prompts relevant to the task ahead and avoiding the excessive dwelling on the mechanics of
automatic skills and auto-regulated tasks, like breathing, and consequently controlling and
managing their anxiety therefore, minimizing mistakes.

Additionally, through this practices the person replaces any possible negative thoughts that
can be prompted in their head before the performance with positive thoughts, thus relaxing
themselves, and reminding their level of competence in the task that follows.

To conclude, I want to leave you with some options for creating your own Pre-Performance
Routine.

1.- Trigger words. This means tying a word to a specific emotion or outcome. To create a trigger
word start by thinking of the outcome or state of mind you want to activate and constantly think
of that word and emotion to tie them together.
2.- Actions. This is a specific action you will do to help you get into the zone. To form one take
components from the following task and incorporate them into you ritual. For instance, before an
oral presentation you might carry out some articulation exercises.

Remember that the key to a fruitful ritual is repetition, the more you practice your ritual the more
effective it will be.

Thanks.

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