Fantasies of Future – fears that undermine performance.

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Further, I was thinking to write down this article based upon my past experiences and my disposition which is always eager to know people and help them to overcome form their problems. ?During my early days I have seen many friends and coworkers who faces anxiety when put in spotlight. Here I mean below as spotlight, categorized in age bracket for an example:

1. Early childhood: (a.)?Asked to perform in stage at early childhood, (b.) Teachers suddenly asks to standup in the class and answer the question. (c.)?Examination stress and many more similar type of situations
2. Teenage: Some problem from early childhood persists but with different magnitude:a.???? Again exam / competitive feverb.???? Career related.
3. Professional life:a.???? Interview anxiety.b.???? Meeting anxiety.c.???? Presentation anxiety.d.???? Project anxiety.

There is few anxieties which is across age boundaries like rejection anxiety, which in childhood is about what others think if he or she fails in exam or do not perform well in school theater role etc., which grows further when he or she becomes teenage and have fears of failing in competitive exams or failing to secure a good, reputed college of his choice etc. We need to further understand the root cause of these anxiety.

As we learned in my last article about SCARF (Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness) and if any of these elements of SCARF is challenged, our primitive brain take over our body control form thinking brain as a result we lose control over rational thinking. Let’s take few examples form every age bracket and discuss further:

Childhood: If a child given chance to perform over the stage for the first time, he has a performance fear like what will happen if he does not perform well (some may have language barriers etc.). This challenges the Status element of SCARF. Means if he or she fails to perform, classmates, relatives, teachers or parents may not think good about him or her and in term change his/ her existing status with them. This change simulates the primitive brain into action and impact the performance of the child. Later if the same child performs well if given chance to act again and again.

Teenage: Competitive exam fear is common across most of the teenage students in India. Most of the student want to take admission into good and prestigious colleges, and for this they need to appear in the entrance examination. I have observed that even some of the students are very good in studies, however does not scores well in competitive exams because of anxiety. Reason for this is common, as here one or more elements of SCARF gets impacted and primitive brain takes control.

Professional Life: Transition to the professional life from colleges or institutes many face difficulties in either interviews or when in work giving presentations over projects or work progress to the key stakeholders. This happens when person is not confident over the subject and have a presume fear that if asked questions he or she may not be in position to respond.? In below paragraphs will learn more about how to identify the root cause of these element change in SCARF and what to do to minimize the stress cycle.

Know the root cause: here in the caselets above we learnt anxiety and element impact over SCARF. All we need to understand the root which triggers the SCARF element to initiate the primitive brain to take control of our body. What I have observed, I find most common is reason of a failure is over fantasies of future which leads to failure guilt impacts the performance.

Let’s take a look of a child asked to perform over stage, he or she need (or parent/ teacher who knows the child can help) to understand what the possible bottle neck for the performance can be and do need to rehearse well. Also, it is well said by our peers and superiors that practice makes the men perfect. So identify the element and keep practicing. For the last moment anxiety take some remedial help which sooths the inner confidence like have a walk few steps, or take few deep breath and release it slowly or have a glass of water, or have a casual talk with loved ones etc., but keep a watch over these remedy to understand what suits you better. Child will perform excellent.

Same is the case when in a teenage who is in love and was hesitant to convey his feeling. All his confidence goes off, because of his fantasies of the future initiates the rejection guilt. What if he or she reject his love. All his dream which keep his emotions high will go and the person comes under rejection emotion pressure, which initiates his or her stress cycle.

When it comes to your dream job interview, a brilliant candidate can fail in an interview as he or she may go blank even knowing the answer of the asked questions. This happens as their thinking brain goes offline. The reason behind is the excessive thinking about the job opportunity by the candidates and fantasies of Future about the job role. This leads to over expectation from self over performance. I always believe that one should focus over the performance rather than result. potential questions for the job role instead of thinking of self to be in the role. Take some steps like re-brush your knowledge aligned to the opportunity and prepare for the interview instead of thinking much about the opportunity. Take some deep breath before the interview have a glass of water or do some barefoot walk etc. which suits you to remove the future fantasies thought about the job and it’s related your future. This will help you to perform well in your interview.

Lastly, let’s talk about my favorite topic - a situation where you need to present Infront of important stakeholder of your project status. The 3 key element which will help you to mitigate your anxiety (which may ignite stress cycle) are below:

1. Understanding of your project/ product well (in and out) also customer insight. As until and unless you are not confident over the subject, it will always be difficult to present it. And once you know your project/ product/ customer well, definitely you can plan for it well.
2. Remember one truth, “One cannot plan or mitigate the unknowns.”. Yes, one can learn from history and assume the situation to plan mitigation, however unknown devils are unknown and one cannot plan the mitigation of this, so better to accept and adapt, and have some contingency allocated for unknowns.
3. Try using LUCK factor (here what I mean from LUCK factor is Listening to Understand and Communicate your Knowledge as a LUCK factor).

So, finally I can say that:

1. Understand your Situation, where you need to perform well.
2. Understand what make you anxious for the situation and instigate the stress cycle.
3. Plan & Perform.
4. Take some action which sooths your anxiety.

Definitely the above will help you in the situation better and bring success to your goal. Thanks for reading till end. God bless you with all success.