Simple Strategies to Control Performance Nerves and Anxiety

Sweaty palms, anxious jitters, a racing heartbeat – we’ve all been there. Pre-performance nerves are seemingly universal to the human species. If you dread the thought of presenting in front of a large group of people or fear failure in any performance-related activity, you’re not alone. Although the physiological responses of our bodies may be difficult to completely control, there are undoubtedly some practical ways you can start to improve how you respond to and cope with performance stressors, nerves, and anxiety. Let’s take a look at just a few of these helpful tips.

Be well-prepared

Confronting a stressful situation head-on is already hard enough but doing so while underprepared is much worse. Think about a time when you’ve begun something challenging without putting in the prep-work it required beforehand. There’s a high chance your performance wasn’t as successful as it could have been because you were ill-equipped for the task. The expression “practice makes perfect” is so overused for a reason – it really works. Human beings are less likely to feel mass amounts of nerves and anxiety if they are prepped, rehearsed, and organized.

Just consider how people with potentially adrenaline-inducing jobs handle their performances. Professional rock climbers and poker players both agree that working through the fear is possible by practicing over and over again, and that level of preparation is directly linked to the level of emotional energy necessary in order to perform well. Listen to the experts if you are skeptical: being prepared will not fail you. One of the most helpful strategies for calming performance-related stress is to acquire confidence in your ability to succeed. This self-assurance is best attained from knowing deep down that you have prepared as best you can.

Control Performance Nerves and Anxiety

Concerts, sporting events, university presentations, and adrenaline-inducing activities are all examples of situations that often produce nerves in their participants

Find ways to relax daily

Most people say that reacting calmly in the exact moment of an anxious experience is extremely difficult. While preparation helps dramatically, sometimes the body cannot help but feel the physical weight of stress. However, training the mind through daily practices of relaxation can provide you with the necessary tools to tackle these situations differently when in the thick of them.

Whether it’s through meditation or yoga, practice taking control of your breath at least once a day. Concentrate on every sensation in your body and let wandering thoughts enter freely, but without giving them the power to distract you from the moment. Find the right meditation technique for you and commit to practicing it consistently over a long-term period of time. While it may seem futile at first, you will begin to notice how your first reactions in moments of stress are more contained and calmer than in the beginning.

Studies show that daily meditation practices often see positive results in as short a time as three weeks

Be kind to yourself

When it comes to anxiety, our biggest enemy is often ourselves. Negative self-talk leading up to or during an important event can be cause for an emotional breakdown. Rather than focusing on the negative, the words we speak to ourselves should be kind, encouraging, loving, and true. Even if performance does not produce the result you were hoping for, it doesn’t mean you are the embodiment of failure. Speak to yourself the way you would like to be spoken to, however silly that may sound. Adopting a few positive affirmations that you can repeat to yourself in the midst of an anxiety-inducing situation can help you to remember what is true and what is not.

Another huge part of caring for yourself means filling your body with the right nutrients it needs to be happy. Combining daily exercise with healthy eating habits is a foolproof recipe for success. The truth is this: being kind to yourself is a multifaceted job that takes awareness, commitment, and practice. But, ironically, if you truly want to grab a hold of your anxiety and have the power to respond to any stressful situation with ease, the most transformational changes may begin with you.   

The Two Most Powerful Hooponopono Prayers to Heal Yourself

Hooponopono is a very powerful ancient Hawaiian healing method. Morrnah Nalamaku Simeona, a Hawaiian kahuna, is the founder of the modern updated version of the Ho’oponopono healing process that we practice today.

She gave us some wonderful prayers which we can use to solve all our problems, you find them below.

The Original Hooponopono Prayer

This is the original Ho’oponopono prayer, given to us to use freely by Morrnah Simeona. It is a simple but very powerful prayer. Here it is:

“Divine creator, father, mother, son as one… If I, my family, relatives, and ancestors have offended you, your family, relatives, and ancestors in thoughts, words, deeds, and actions from the beginning of our creation to the present, we ask your forgiveness… Let this cleanse, purify, release, cut all the negative memories, blocks, energies, and vibrations, and transmute these unwanted energies to pure light… And it is done.”

When you start using Ho’oponopono in your life, your recurring problems are cleansed, released, and erased. And they are replaced with Divine Love flowing through you. Often, we are so occupied and consumed by our fears and (small) problems and issues that we are not receptive to the Love of the Divine, we don’t even see it. But when you start practicing Ho’oponopono and start cleansing yourself and your memories, in fact, you give permission to the Divine to solve your problems.

And when this happens, and the Divine Love flows through you, you feel joy and happiness, and you know that everything will be all right. You feel empowered, happier, more energized, more responsible, and on purpose.

Aside from this prayer, you can also use the famous Ho’oponopono mantra: “I am sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.” The great benefit of this mantra is that it’s very simple and easy to remember, but still very effective. You can use it anytime you want. This short four phrase mantra combines the power of repentance, forgiveness, gratitude, and transmutation, and you can also use it to release any problem, just like the prayer.

There are also numerous Ho’oponopono cleaning tools and techniques to assist you in your daily practice.

Other Ho’oponopono Prayers

There are also other Ho’oponopono prayers, which you can all find on this website.

This is another very powerful prayer of Morrnah Simeona, it is her favorite (karmic) cleansing prayer. According to her, it works best if you repeat it four times every time you want to release something.

“Spirit, Superconscious, please locate the origin of my feelings, thoughts of …….
(fill in the blank with your belief, feeling, or thoughts that you want to erase) …….
Take each and every level, layer, area, and aspect of my being to this origin.
Analyze it and resolve it perfectly with God’s truth.
Come through all generations of time and eternity.
Healing every incident and its appendages based on the origin.
Please do it according to God’s will until I am at the present,
Filled with light and truth.
God’s peace and love, forgiveness of myself for my incorrect perceptions.
Forgiveness of every person, place, circumstances and events which contributed to this,
these feelings, thoughts, and beliefs.”

There are also 2 prayers in Hawaiian, “I Am The I” and “The Peace of I”, you can find the English and Hawaiian versions of both prayers on this page.

Erase Your Limiting Beliefs and Live the Life You Really Want

When you use the Ho’oponopono healing process, all your limiting beliefs and memories are released and deleted from your subconscious mind. All your fears, stress, worries, issues, and problems are neutralized and replaced by Divine Love and Light.

So when you practice Ho’oponopono regularly and incorporate it into your life, all your problems will be solved, and you will finally be able to find inner peace and experience true joy and bliss, and you will be able to receive Divine inspiration, which will guide you through life and towards your life purpose

Most people don’t realize that the Universe gives us exactly what we ask for, but often we are unaware of the things we ask because they are in our subconscious mind. Our reality is mostly created by our subconscious beliefs, memories, and programs.

So it’s very important we acknowledge this and take 100% responsibility for everything going on in our life because ultimately we manifested it and “asked” for it.

But the good news is, once we do this, and use Ho’oponopono, we have the power to cleanse and erase all these limiting memories and beliefs and create instead of the life we really want!

About the Author

Alexander Jones is passionate about personal development and spirituality and enjoys writing about it. He is mostly interested in meditation yoga and Ho’oponopono, which he is practicing already for many years.

Ho’oponopono Prayer


4 Tips To Experience The Magic Of Simple Meditations

In the article How to Meditate for Clarity, Intuition, and Guidance, Jack Canfield answers the question What is meditation? with:

“Meditation is a practice where you train your mind or induce a state of consciousness, either to realize some benefit, such as relaxation, stress reduction, healing, strengthening your life force, or developing certain qualities such as love, patience, generosity, and forgiveness.”

He presents the 4 steps of the Simple Meditation: The 4-Part Meditation Technique:

1. Find a quiet place, close your eyes, and focus on slowing down your breathing;

2. Repeat an uplifting word or phrase;

3. Move into a state of quiet;

4. Imagine yourself surrounded by a sphere of light.

He also draws the following conclusions:

  • Meditation takes practice and is a natural progression;
  • Practice the above methods to calm your mind;
  • Learning to meditate is a journey, this guide will help you take the right steps.

Find at Positive Words Research a wonderful article about 20 Simple Meditations to Create Peace of Mind and Joy.

Jack Canfield, America’s #1 Success Coach, is the founder of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul and a leading authority on Peak Performance and Life Success.

Meditation

Best 20 Simple Meditations to Create Peace of Mind and Joy

Positive Words Research shares with you 20 simple meditations which will help you create for yourself peace of mind and joy. These simple meditations can be done by anyone and in any place, because they don’t take a long time.

1. Your heart and the hearts of the other living people

Picture that you have a heart, which you do. Picture that all of the other 7 billion people living in the same moment as you, also have a heart, which they do. Picture that your heart is beating at the same time as other 7 billion living hearts. Take 10 minutes to visualize this, after you made some relaxation exercises.

This meditation will generate compassion, joyfulness, magic, self-love, connection, warmth, blissfulness, deep awareness, amazement, and serenity.

2. Sit, don’t talk, smile

Sit in silence, don’t talk and gently smile for 15 minutes after you’ve made some relaxation exercises.

This meditation will generate an inner smile, serenity, and relief.

3. Sit, don’t talk, smile and mentally scan your body

Sit in silence, don’t talk, gently smile and mentally scan your body for 15 minutes after you’ve made some relaxation exercises. When you mentally scan your body picture that every organ is also smiling.

This meditation will generate peacefulness, healing, health increase, vitality, joy, gratitude, appreciation, relief, and self-love.

4. Large smile with your mouth and eyes

Make a large smile with your mouth and eyes and keep it like this for 60 seconds while counting from 60 to 1.

This meditation will generate happiness.

5. Give up good things

Take 10 minutes to affirm internally that you give up all the good things, good feelings and good experiences you lived in the past, present and future.

This meditation will generate relief and space for more good things, feelings and experiences to come your way. It will make you let go of future thinking and a lot of expectations that you have and are weighing you and making you feel tense. It will make you give up attachment to the good which is sometimes a more powerful type of attachment than the attachment that you feel for bad things which we cannot forgive and let go.

6. Cut connections between your body and all other bodies or entities

Visualize your body and ask him to disconnect and cut connections will all other living bodies or any entity. Affirm that all other people are free and they have the right to be free and you are free and you have the right to be free. Set them free and set yourself free. It is good to set yourself free and be free.

This meditation will generate feeling light, freedom, releasing a lot of tension, healing, increase synchronicity for future good things to connect and happen.

7. Forgiveness – give up bad things

Picture yourself. Picture a person, event, and state of things, an experience that has or is upsetting you. It might be something that happened recently, some situation that hasn’t changed for years or some tensed memory that you hold. Picture yourself staying face to face with this person or event that is generating tension for yourself.

Ask him to forgive you for any wrong you’ve done to him. Picture that the other person has his higher-self behind him, which is much bigger than that person. Picture his higher self quickly forgiving and giving you a warm hug. Receive his forgiveness and warmth in your heart. Next, picture his higher-self asking you forgiveness for any wrong he’s done to you. Forgive him immediately and give him a virtual warm hug. See him accepting your forgiveness and hug while smiling at you. Do the same with a tense event, experience, yourself, God or life in general. Forgive everything and let yourself be forgiven.

This meditation will generate peace, releasing a lot of tension, healing, a significant increase in your vibration, generosity, love for yourself, others and life, acceptance, lots of strengths, and resilience.

8. Enlarge yourself more than Earth

Picture your body. Imagine that your body has a subtle energy inside your heart connected with your mind. Picture this energy heart-mind becoming bigger and surrounding your body, then becoming even bigger and covering your house, your neighborhood, town, region, country, the continent, the Earth, the solar system and going far-far in the Universe. Feel yourself limitless.

This meditation will generate inner super-power, powerful intuition, the ability to think beyond Earth consciousness, the ability to think beyond the duality law (good-bad, cold-heat, light-dark, positive-negative etc.). This meditation will also instantly give you the ability to get over your problems, to be above your problems, bigger than them. You will not feel most of your problems and the ones that your still feel will seem smaller than before.

9. Give up everything as in the moment of death

Give up everything by completely emptying yourself. Picture that you are at the moment of death which is a future real event, which will happen in your life. In that moment you will be forced to give up everything, good or bad. And you will do this giving up of everything very fast. Don’t be afraid. You cannot control your death. You will still die in the future, not now. Do this for 5 minutes, after you have practiced a relaxation method.

How to do it in the simplest way? Consider each memory that you have, each thing that you know as being “only concepts”, concepts that you don’t have to deal with them after death when everything will disappear. Use your imagination. Consider food, relationships, air, sky, spoon, knife, hands, hair, thoughts, heart, head, yourself, phone, laptop, the internet, facebook, water, trees, pills, emotions, diseases, sport, marriage, kids, adulthood, being old, life, movement etc. as just concepts which you don’t have to deal with them anymore after death. All these are only things that are happening on a planet called Earth. After death you will not be on the planet Earth anymore and therefore will not be concerned about anything that exists on this planet and how things are done on this planet.

This meditation will generate full releasing of all present attachments. It will fully empty you. You will download the second best power you could have in this world, the power of death, the power of full emptiness. You will realize that everything is impermanent, good or bad. Energy is always in movement, you are always in movement, taking different forms through eternity.

The first power that exists in the world you can get by practicing the next meditation.

10. Treasure life

After practicing meditation number 9 “Give up everything as in the moment of death”, practice feeling alive. Do it in a simple way. Just become aware that You are still here on Earth, You are Alive. You gave up everything as in the moment of death, and yet here you are, still here, still breathing. Smile. See, you are still able to smile. Treasure this smile. Give thanks to it. Say: “I am grateful for being alive in this moment, I couldn’t be able to smile if I wasn’t alive.”. Do you have thoughts crossing your mind right now? Treasure that. You couldn’t have thoughts crossing your mind if you weren’t alive.

This meditation will generate something that is hard to explain with words. It is a sense of knowing that, now, you are such a blessing. You are alive and there is nothing more valuable than this. Your own existence is more than enough. Nothing more needs to be done from you, than to be alive, and you already are. All that you do comes from the fact that you are alive and breathing.

11. Powerful Light Human-Being

Picture yourself very powerful, having and mastering the secret of light, being one of Earth protectors. Tell yourself that because you are here on Earth, everything is protected.

This meditation will generate much self-power and shining light that will go deep inside you.

12. Joyful & Happy

Take 10 minutes to picture yourself joyful and happy. You can even be joyful and happy in this meditation to help you feel yourself for real, joyful and happy.

This meditation will generate joyfulness, happiness, contempt, satisfaction, fulfillment and the feeling that your joy and happiness are under your control.

13. Calculate your remaining years of living deducting your current age from 100

Deduct your current age from 100 and tell yourself that you will live the difference. For example, if you are 34 years old, do 100 less 34, which is 66 and tell yourself that you will live 66 more years. Reflect on 66 more years in this way: ask yourself how many times you will still eat, breath, sleep, go to the toilet, wash your body, talk with different people, get a cold etc. Ask yourself how much water you will still drink in 66 years and the Earth will provide for you all this water. All the air that you need to breathe in 66 years the Earth will provide to you. Then think what will you do with 66 more years of living? What if tomorrow you would start writing a book? Would you think you could solve how to write a book and actually finish and publish it in 66 years? I think even if you had 3 more years of living you could definitely do that. But you have 66 years.

This meditation will generate a full relaxation of all your struggles. You will instantly feel how much time you actually have, to do anything you could want to do in your life.

It will also make you realize that your life will not be significantly different from now on, as compared to how it was before. This is valid in terms of you needing to take time, every day, to eat, breath, sleep, wash your body, go to the toilet, talk with people, think etc. In this terms, your life will be the same. It will make you feel that what you did until now it was all good and it will be all good in the future. And that is enough just to take care of your basic needs. You will understand that all other things that we do are only for our own fun, only so that we could occupy, with something, the remaining time that you don’t spend on basic needs.

14. Focus on your breathing

Make some relaxation exercises. Then focus for 15 minutes only on your breathing. Alternate your breathing, play with your breathing. Keep your eyes semi-closed. Focus for the last 5 minutes only on the place from your nose where the air comes in and out while breathing normal.

This meditation will generate mental relaxation and stomach relaxation.

If you sing while you play with your breath it will also relax your throat. If you take very fast the air out while making a short powerful relaxation sound, it will relax your heart. If you move your middle while breathing it will relax your middle. Basically, any part of the body that you move while focusing on your breathing it will get more and more relaxed, will release more and more the tension accumulated in those muscles.

15. Inspired meditation

Take 15 minutes to meditate without any method. Don’t have any intention for this meditation. Begin by sitting in your most common meditation position. Then let yourself be guided by your intuition on what to do. You might feel to move your hands up, to do a certain sign with your body that you don’t know the meaning, to breath in a certain way, to make strange and funny faces, to stay in “strange” positions with your body. Anything that comes to you, do it. Let yourself be moved from here to there, by your own body.

This meditation will generate more intuition, more connection between your active consciousness and your body and release of tension specific only to you.

16. Gratitude

Re-acknowledge and recollect events that happen to you. Think of 1 to 3 things you are grateful for in every area of your life: yourself, your projects, relationships etc. and say that you are grateful for them. Think of 1 to 3 things you are not grateful for, in every area of your life, and intentionally say that you are grateful for them.

Do this meditation either intentionally taking 15 minutes of your time or from time to time during the day.

17. Being and feeling blessed

Stay for 15 minutes after you’ve made some relaxation practices and picture yourself being blessed by everything, spiritual beings or people. Picture that God is blessings you with pure love and light (if you are a God believer). Picture that other spiritual entities are blessings you will light, it can be your protective angel, Archangel Michael, Buddha, Krishna etc.

This meditation will generate peace in you, self-love, self-acceptance, clearing of negative energies, peace of mind, loving-kindness, and blessings.

18. Give and receiving thanks from things around you

Picture that everything around gives thanks to you and you give thanks to them. Do this meditation as you walk on the street, at work, at home or while taking lunch or dinner with your friends. Picture that the trees are saying thank you, to you. Say back thank you to them. The air is saying thanks to you, for breathing it, you say back. The water is saying thank you for drinking it, you say thanks back. And so on with every object around you that you encounter during your day.

This meditation will generate a lot of gratitude, awareness for the many things that are serving you, joy, blessings, blissfulness, and magic.

19. Positive expectations

Practice the following three affirmations:

  1. Always believe that something wonderful is about to happen!
  2. Stop being afraid of what could go wrong and focus on what could go right!
  3. Expect to find joy as you move forward!

This meditation will generate faith, hope, joy, and stop negative thinking.

20. Positive words

Scan this list of positive words and create your small list of positive words. Memorize it or keep the list somewhere where you can have quick access to it. Take 15 minutes to reflect on your list of positive words. Repeat in your mind or with a loud voice the positive words. Search the meaning of the positive words on the internet to better embody their meaning.

This meditation will generate positive thinking, clearing negativity, attract the cumulated energy of the list of positive words.

Notes:

  • Do only one or few of these simple meditations during a day, except the gratitude meditation which can be done many times during the day;
  • Skip some days and don’t meditate at all;
  • Do these simple meditations wherever you are.

Which meditation is your favorite?

lotus flower meditation

Awesome 65 Positive Meditation Practices To Enjoy Now

Meditation gives you peace of mind. Find here more than 65 positive meditation practices. Also find which is the simplest form of meditation.

Let’s keep it short. The simplest form of meditation is the following: stay, don’t say any word and smile scanning the organs in your body. You can do this in any place you are if you have the opportunity to stay and not do anything. While working or driving this meditation can not be done. But if you are in the subway or traveling with the train or in the back of a car you can simply do this meditation. It is so easy and it improves the health of your mind and body.

Find here more than 65 positive meditation practices:

Meditation gives you peace of mind