How to Never feel Nervous Again

Be like the bird that, passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings.
— Victor Hugo

In my last blog, I spoke about my 2024 Success Plan Workshop and how I felt slightly apprehensive beforehand, as it was outside my comfort zone.

To get over this, I adopted one of my favourite ever mind tricks in order to counteract the nerves. This mind-hack has been so helpful to me over the past few years, I thought I’d share it.

In his book “The Chimp Paradox”, Professor Steve Peters (resident psychiatrist for the Team Sky cycling team and Liverpool FC and all-round nice chap – I met him at an event a couple of years ago) talks about how you never need to worry about a challenging event ever again.

I wish I’d known this 20 years ago, as it would have saved me a lot of wasted effort in worrying in my legal career! Hence, why I’m sharing it with you.

Professor Peters explains that, when deciding if they should feel confident, most people follow these steps:

  1. What is it that I want to do?

  2. How able am I to achieve this?

  3. My confidence is now measured on how I rate my ability to achieve my goal.

This results in varying levels of confidence… we may not be amazing at everything we want to do, after all.

What if it all goes wrong and I don’t achieve my desired outcome? Eek!

So, Professor Peters suggests an ingenious alternative, which allows your confidence levels to remain at 100% at all times, no matter what you do.

He suggests that you base your confidence on doing your best to reach a certain level that you would like to achieve, and bear in mind that, as an adult, you can always deal with any consequences of not reaching it.

So, instead of basing your confidence on your belief in your ability, simply base it on your belief that you will do your best.

Can you tell how much better that feels in your body? My shoulders dropped just by typing it out!

You can never guarantee what will happen, or what you will achieve in a particular situation. If you tether your confidence on a particular outcome, you will always feel uneasy as you’ll forever be worrying about the threat of failure.

You can however guarantee to make your best effort. Therefore, if you choose the basis of best effort, you will have full control. You will see life as full of opportunities and you can feel confident knowing that you can deal with the consequences. Just like that…poofff! The fear is gone!

Professor Peters gives the example of someone giving a talk in front of 100 of her work colleagues. A not uncommon scenario for us lawyers. She could approach this with a huge amount of apprehension as she’s thinking of everything that could go wrong – she wants everyone to see her doing a good job and so she gets really stressed about it.

The alternative approach is for her to base her confidence on doing her best. Her objective in approaching the talk therefore is simply to do her best. She cannot control how well received it is by other people, or how they respond, but she can deal with these outcomes as she is an adult human. Even if, at the time, it doesn’t go as well as it could have done, it will still be the best she can do at the time of giving the talk! She cannot do better than her best. Therefore, she will definitely achieve her objective of doing her best and anything else is a bonus.

With this approach, she can relax and see the talk as an opportunity. Her confidence in doing her best is 100%.

Thank you, Steve Peters.

It goes without saying that I recommend that you read his book. A colleague recommended it to me a few years ago and I’ve been grateful to them ever since.

In the FLC Membership app this week, I’ve listed my top 10 non-fiction books of all time. This book is number 3!

To join our community, click on the link below.

~Rachel

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