Christo: Hi there! In this video tip, I want to answer a question around performance anxiety. If you‘re in your business and you have to do certain things that make you nervous and make you uncomfortable and you have a fear of getting it wrong or messing it up or fear of philia, whatever we want to call it or performance anxiety. A few things I‘ve learned throughout, these are things which I pulled from professional surfing, back in competing on the surfing tour back in the day, when every single event was a really big opportunity to move up the rankings, to make a bunch of money, to impress the sponsors, to get exposure, every event was critical.

So there were these big moments, like a big sale, and now having worked with thousands of different business owners and seeing all these moments of anxiety and little performance anxiety or the little voice inside our head going nuts and putting doubt in our minds. What I suggest you to do to help yourself have the best opportunity with everything we do and to help us overcome this kind of performance anxiety is, the number one thing is you got to give it your best shot, obviously. The times when I would feel the worst professional surfing and I kind of hated myself after the event, if I lost, was if I didn‘t prepare as best as I possibly knew how. So if I wasn‘t totally prepared and then I didn‘t do well, sometimes I‘d do well and I wasn‘t prepared, and I was like, oh, maybe I can just do that next time and kind of wing it. Then I might not do well and then I‘d really be kicking myself about it.

So what I suggest you do is if you have these moments in business, it could be sales opportunities, or these times where you need to present in front of people and you get anxious or nervous or something, create a routine that you do before that moment. So, say for example before the surfing contest, before the hit, I knew I had to wander on my own for around about 20 minutes. I‘d like to go for a walk, I‘d like to listen to music, I‘d like to do some stretching, I‘d like to watch the hit before to see exactly where the waves are moving and so on.

Nowadays, it‘s different. So I might present at one of our Blast-Off marketing workshops in the morning. I wander off and I get all set up nice and early so I know the logistics are done. Then I wander off and do my own little routine. I do a bunch of stretches and I put on some music. So I have this routine to know that I‘ll deliver the best workshop on the day versus running a workshop and just winging it. If something goes wrong, I know, well, you know what? I was prepared as best as possible. I gave it my best shot.

So what you could start to do is keep a little diary of the process that you follow before you have these moments of performance. By having that process documented, you can then start to adjust it and rework it and re-script it and change it. So you have a process that you follow that you can always be tweaking and improving.

If you don‘t have a document and you just kind of winging it every time, so there‘s a good little tip that I can draw from professional surfing and then obviously, through business for you as well to help you with those kind of moments of performance or sales opportunities or those times that you get nervous.

So here‘s to creating more ripple effects of awesomeness everywhere we go. Obviously, if you enjoy this video and you know anyone who would benefit, feel free to share. Or any comments or thoughts, post them through to us anywhere on social media. Jump on the podcast, too. Search the Pick of the Bunch by Basic Bananas. We‘ve got a lot of great interviews there, too. A lot around mindset coming up as well. So, see you on the next video.