Anxiety performance or Performance anxiety as it is popularly called; is a terminology for describing the state of being excessively worried and conscious about the quality of one’s performance. This state of anxiousness has a very debilitating and retarding effect on the victim’s performance rather than adding value to it. Anxiety generally has never been helpful to any situation; though there are few occasions where a normal level of anxiety can serve as a booster to get a task done. But on a general note, especially when severe or chronic anxiety is involved, anxiety is devastating to the mind, body and soul; this is no exception to performance anxiety.

Individuals that experience anxiety performance are usually those who are already worrywarts. But at other times performance anxiety could be as a result of sudden occurrence that elicited anxiety and eventually extended to the performance of an individual. In this given condition it is a vicious circle thing, a sudden situation led to something else and eventually elicited anxiousness over the outcome of one’s performance. For instance, someone who had problem perfecting in bicycle riding will certainly worry about what the performance is likely to be when it is time to learn how to drive a vehicle.

Various activities are better performed if the performer will zero the mind on what the final outcome might likely be. If there is a high level of consciousness in the performance of an activity, then there is bound to be error or mishap along the way. This is not to say that one should do away with consciousness while performing a task; but one should make self-consciousness a natural part of performance rather than allow it control the entire affair. This is the only way anxiety performance can be avoided.

Therefore, whether your performance is in the area of sporting, riding, contesting, stage performance, public speaking, and other arrays of activities; getting too conscious or focusing much on the activity can intercept the quality of the performance. If you are too concerned about delivering the most perfect speech as a public speaker, you might end up stuttering and messing up while addressing your audience. Anxiety performance is anti-productive and instead of helping to keep one away from faltering from performance, it makes one more prone to falter; all it does is to kick-in the thing we are anxious that might go wrong instead of kicking it away.

The most effective way to manage anxiety performance is to get one’s mind to a zone where it becomes zeroed as to what will be the quality or outcome of the performance in any given activity. It is better to always exhibit optimism about the end result of one’s performance rather than get too anxious and conscious; these two antidotes work well in managing and dealing with performance anxiety. Also, if skills are properly learnt and acquired in a given activity, there will be a reduction of consciousness on what the quality of the actual performance will be.