ANXIETY AND THE PRESSURE TO PERFORM

IF YOU EXPERIENCE ANXIETY OVER YOUR PERFORMANCE AT WORK, YOU ARE NOT ALONE!

Many workplaces are stressful with different personalities, demands, conflicts, and tight deadlines. The expectations and demands of workplaces are increasing worldwide with global changes, economic uncertainty, and rapid changes in technology; all leading to major increases in stress and anxiety.

Peak performers often put pressure on themselves to perform and also tend to judge themselves harshly if their performance doesn't meet those standards. This triggers a great deal of stress and anxiety, especially where success is not guaranteed.

If you want to perform at a high level and do so consistently; learning strategies to manage and overcome anxiety over your performance at work needs to become a priority. Here, I want to give you some strategies for setting intentions to relieve anxiety and stress over your work performance while reducing your overall stress and anxiety.

Work is a key area where we establish our sense of identity as well as our sense of esteem and worth. This is also a reason we can become concerned about our performance: to fail means a reduction to our worth to society. The expectations we put upon ourselves have more then a little to do with the level of stress and anxiety we experience. The anxiety we tend to experience over performance tends to come from two primary sources:

1) Past performance failures/negative events and experiences.

2) Projections of future performance failures/negative events and experiences.

Since anxiety commonly occurs in performance situations, many people believe it is necessary to experience anxiety for high performance. But this just isn't a true statement according to the research done on performance anxiety. Anxiety often accompanies high performance situations, but it doesn't have to be there, and you certainly don't need anxiety to perform at your peak.

What you do need is focus, energy, intention, attention, enthusiasm, even excitement, but you don't need anxiety.

Although anxiety often arises when you seek to perform at a higher level, you don't need it to perform. You may need to go through it to reach a new, higher level of performance. Some anxiety comes from stepping outside your comfort zone and the unknowns of a new level. The key is not to stay stuck in that anxiety or retreat to your old comfort zone. Your success will come from moving through the anxiety, transforming it, and ultimately expanding your comfort zone and enriching your life.

Focus on the now to enhance performance. Focus your attention intensely on what you're doing right now and what you need to do next. Use the power of intention to release emotional blocks and restore energy flow resulting in a state of inner balance and clarity. You can also use it to manifest new futures, access peak states and achieve peak results.

When we have negative and painful experiences, our nervous system connects those situations as being a threat. When we approach similar situations in the future, our nervous system reacts by reminding us of the pain of those previous experiences as a way of protecting us from having to experience it again.

So, we want to set an intention for how you want to perform, imagine (feel) yourself doing well and connect with the feelings of success. Hold the intention until you can actually feel how it will feel when you are successful with your performance.

A thought is harmless, unless we believe it. It is not our thoughts, but the attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Addressing problems by targeting the emotional attached thoughts behind the problem and create specific intentions which acts as a command to our subconscious mind. Release your emotional attachment to negative thoughts. Restore your energy to flow, bringing emotional balance and clarity. Reset your intentions and energy to create new positive futures, make new behavioral choices, and take empowered action.

Tara Genusa

Stress Coach/COR.E Wellbeing Dynamics Specialist

Stressreliefsolutions.net

tara@stressreliefsolutions.net

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Tara Genusa - Certified Life Coach