Over the years, I’ve often recommended using positive mantras to help you deal with stage fright of all kinds and specifically the classic performance anxiety that almost inevitably goes with public speaking. I’ve witnessed a number of very successful outcomes with people who had serious stage fright, and I’ve found mantras helpful myself, a longtime performer, actor, musician, and speaker who has struggled with performance anxiety off and on most of my onstage life.  Mantras have helped me and a substantial number of folks I’ve worked with get through some high-stakes moments with relative aplomb and success.

Now, I’ve run across a study that seems to suggest that, for a certain group of individuals, mantras may backfire and actually make you feel worse.  This was, of course, very surprising, and so I’ve been digging into the study, and one other, to see what I can learn. The first study found that people with low self-esteem did not clearly benefit from positive self-statements. The second study discovered that some anxious people were not rendered less anxious by positive self-talk, but rather more anxious.

So, the conclusion is, if you have low self-esteem or high anxiety, repeating positive mantras might not be helpful.  There was an interesting twist in the first study that suggested that if you have low self-esteem, it might help you get better results if you created a more nuanced statement to repeat over and over, one that recognizes that you sometimes do well and sometimes not.  Maybe this idea works for realists with low self-esteem?

My pledge to you is always to bring you studies that confirm long-held points of view, whether by me or others, and also the studies that undercut current dogma, again, whether I have believed the contrary or not.  Insights gleaned from the field of neuroscience are changing so quickly that all we can do is form our best conclusions and stay up to date as thoroughly as we can.

Other research over the years has suggested that positive self-talk activates the reward system of the brain, thereby making us feel better the old-fashioned way.  If you have low self-esteem or high anxiety, it might be that your reward system is activated differently (or not at all) by things that help other population groups.

So for those groups of people for who mantras might not be the answer, what other (proven) forms of performance anxiety reduction still look good?  Here are 5 classic ways of thinking about reducing stage fright that have stood the test of sweat, time, and terror.

My personal favorite is to embrace the symptoms that adrenaline produces and tell yourself that it means that you’re about to do something exciting, and that your body is now geared up to do it. In other words, (1) re-frame the symptoms from negative nerves to positive excitement. 

(2) Second, get fit. Especially if you’re on the high end of the anxiety scale, getting some exercise beforehand is a great way to slough off some of the extra jitters. Don’t overdo it, though. You want to be calm, but not exhausted, when you stand up to speak. So, exercise early but gently, and leave some energy in your batteries. This is not the time to run a marathon.

(3) Try Meditating. Some form of meditation which involves sitting and paying attention to your breathing, or repeating a mantra over and over, or just quietly watching your thoughts, can be very helpful. But don’t try meditating for the first time the hour before your speech. Mind control won’t work when you’re agitated; you need to have already begun such a practice long before D-Day.

(4) Practice tension and release. A simple technique you can use without much preparation is to stand somewhere quietly and tense and release your muscle groups in some order you establish. Start with your toes, for example, tense them, release them, and work your way up your body. If you do this exercise with enough attention, you’ll ground yourself nicely and prepare yourself well. It’s a good daily habit in any case.

(5) And finally, breathe. Of course. I should hardly have to mention this one, but I still run across people who don’t know how to belly breathe and prepare themselves for speaking in a powerful, commanding voice. So, take air in by expanding your belly like an eye dropper. Don’t lift your shoulders. Then push the air out gently using your abdominals. It’s simple enough, once you get the hang of it, but it’s the opposite to the way you breathe normally, without thinking. And make sure that you exhale on a longer count than you inhale.  That starts a relaxation response going and puts you in a good frame of mind for handling the tension that inevitably comes, for most of us, with performance.