When we fear something, it triggers a natural reaction towards it, which comes as a feeling of nervousness. Whether it is a job interview, an important presentation, a board meeting, or a promotion test with the higher-ups of your company, you feel a little nervous.
Although nervousness is a natural process, it may hinder your performance. Therefore, you need ways to adopt some simple, practical quick ways to calm yourself at work.
Let’s take a look at which triggers nervousness and how to deal with them.
Causes of Nervousness
Nervousness refers to a physical and mental state that your body causes in response to stress. This same response process triggers when you feel anxious and stressed. But nervousness is only caused by some specific situations. These include attending a very important meeting that affects your reputation and status or studying for an exam.
Nervousness is generally caused due to the excess release of stress hormones which include cortisol and adrenaline.
Ways You Can Calm Nerves
Nervousness does seem like an uncontrollable feeling. But you can easily overcome your nervousness with some simple and effective activities. Moreover, these tasks also help you improve your overall performance. Here we have some 14 nerve-calming activities.
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Deep Breathing
Breathing techniques are the most common and simplest way to calm yourself. It minimizes the symptoms of stress and nervousness. It significantly improves oxygen in your blood, slows down your heart rate, and reduces the freeze response.
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Transfer Your Energy
Use your energy from being nervous into something positive. This looks quite a challenging process, but it is not. There is a strong link between nervousness and fear, and eagerness and motivation. These states are known as distress and eustress. Both represent the two different aspects of stress.
In both situations, you feel the same feeling like an increased heartbeat. Hence, if you think about your upcoming activity in a positive way, the nervous energy efficiently boosts your performance. If you ever find yourself in a difficult situation, rather than being worried about it, try to think about what you can actually learn from the situation.
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Practice
Practice the activity that is making you nervous. Use your time to practice it again and again. With constant revision and practice, you can easily find weak areas of the activity. This helps you overcome those mistakes and perform better when it actually happens.
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Listen to Music
Listening to soft music or something that induces happy moments and reminiscing old memories is beneficial to overcome your stress. Music has the ability to positively calm your brain and body. Even if you just have a few minutes, music significantly calms your nerves and allows you to perform better.
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Talk Your Feelings
Speaking up about your feelings in a workspace is not often encouraged. But it actually helps you and others to understand the environment better. You can feel more open, free, and encouraged. When you share your problems with someone trustworthy, you’ll surely feel better and find an encouraging solution.
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Understand Yourself
You have to understand that feeling nervousness is totally okay. It shows that you have feelings, and you care about your career, role, and job. It also shows your enthusiasm for doing better and becoming a good person.
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Take Fresh Air
If you are feeling suffocated in a certain environment, do not force yourself to stay there. Get out, take some air. Taking a stroll outside the building or in the open air calms your heartbeat, helps you to gather your thoughts, and comes back to a normal state.
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Come Early
If you have an interview, meeting, or exam that is making you nervous, then coming early would help you familiarize yourself with the space. Stroll around, sit at your place, and think about the moment in your mind.
This helps you imagine the whole process beforehand to come, sit at yourself, attend your meeting, and get it done with it early.
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Take Break
Give yourself a break. Go out for water or tea. Doing something very casual and keeping your mouth hydrated helps you calm down your nerves at work significantly.
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Learn To Manage Your Feelings
If you often feel nervous about every little thing, then learn about the things that trigger those feelings. Find out their solution and ways to manage those effects.
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Practice Mindfulness
The mindfulness technique is an effective way to calm yourself at work. There are various types of mindfulness practices available like penning down your thoughts, meditating, or deep breathing. Whatever you choose, ensure to do it regularly and consistently. Many big companies actively promote mindfulness practices among their staff members to increase productivity.
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People With the Same Feelings
Understand the fact that you do not feel this way alone. There are millions of people who face similar situations almost daily. You would be stunned to find that even some of your coworkers are also nervous. Therefore, acknowledge your feelings.
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Take Off From Social Media
Avoid social media particularly when you feel nervous. Various studies show that social media negatively impacts your self-esteem and lowers your self-confidence. Therefore, if you feel that the use of social media is only increasing your symptoms, leave it for a while. Try to use that time for something happier and more productive.
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Stress Management Classes
Generally, various companies offer stress management classes to their staff to calm their nerves during work. But if your company does not offer such plans, you can also get help from online classes. Stress management workouts help you understand the triggers of your stress and how to effectively overcome them with effective techniques.
Conclusion
Nervousness is a natural process and multiple people feel that way. But this feeling may cause disruptions in your work and progress. Therefore, it is important to overcome this as soon as possible to work calmly.
The above-mentioned techniques are simple yet effective ways to ease your mind, calm your nerves, reduce your heartbeat, and improve your overall performance throughout the work.