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Giant Brain Candy: Don’t Calm Down. Get Excited.. Asked how to handle nerves, about nine in ten people pick ‘try to calm down’. Yet nervous singers who said ‘I am excited’ sang with about 81% accuracy, against 53% for ‘I am anxious’. Source: Reappraising nerves as excitement.
Growing evidenceThe research
  1. Brooks, A. W. (2014). Get excited: Reappraising pre-performance anxiety as excitement. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(3), 1144–1158.

Journey 6 · Empowerment

Don’t Calm Down. Get Excited.

Asked how to handle nerves, about nine in ten people pick ‘try to calm down’. Yet nervous singers who said ‘I am excited’ sang with about 81% accuracy, against 53% for ‘I am anxious’.

Source: Reappraising nerves as excitement · Growing evidence

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