Turn Nerves Into Excitement: The Power of Preparation

Are you feeling nervous about an upcoming speech, meeting or pitch?

Good. That’s your body telling you that you’re working on something important.

Nervousness is the flip side of excitement. Excitement is high stakes plus confidence. Nervousness is high stakes minus confidence.

Confidence comes with preparation. So to put it differently: nervousness is excitement minus preparation:

Nerves = Excitement – Preparation

∴ Nerves + Preparation = Excitement

The good news is that you can turn your nerves into excitement if you just practise and rehearse. Rehearse until you feel bored. If you do that, something magical will happen: the butterflies will fly out of your stomach and into your heart. You’ll be hyped, not hyper.

But what do most people do when they are nervous about an upcoming event? They avoid thinking about it, they procrastinate – which is the opposite of preparation, and only ends up making them more nervous.

Steve Jobs understood this better than anyone. Considered the outstanding talent of his generation when it came to product launch presentations – what did he do?

He cleared his diary one week ahead and rehearsed, rehearsed, rehearsed.