Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success

by Brad Stulberg

Additional research, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, shows that instead of trying to calm yourself down, “reappraising pre-performance anxiety as excitement” is often advantageous. When you try to suppress pre-event nerves, you are inherently telling yourself that something is wrong. Not only does this make the situation worse, but it also takes emotional and physical energy to fight off the feeling of anxiety—energy that could be better spent on the task at hand. Fortunately, according to the authors of this paper, simply telling yourself “I am excited” shifts your demeanor from what they call a threat mindset (stressed out and apprehensive) to an opportunity mindset (revved up and ready to go).

By strengthening our prefrontal cortex, mindfulness allows us to recognize that we are having a stress response rather than automatically being overcome by it. It’s as if we are viewing our thoughts and feelings as a neutral observer and then choosing what to do next. A weak prefrontal cortex gets overpowered by a strong stress response. But a strong prefrontal cortex lets us choose how we want to respond to stress.

Maria Konnikova, put it in her wonderful New Yorker magazine series on sleep,2 “As we sleep, our brains replay, process, learn, and extract meaning. In a sense, they think.”