For many people, this a familiar feeling… your heart races, your palms sweat, and you fidget… right before that big job interview, or that big date with the person you’ve had a crush on for the longest. Before you too excited, let me just say that the material in this article is not the magic bullet that will turn you into James Bond. If you want the real secret to getting over your nerves, it’s frequent repetition… exposing yourself to the same stress enough times until your body and mind finally adapt. But if it’s your first job interview, date, or presentation in a while, there is in fact a quick exercise you can do to relax yourself a bit. Whenever you encounter a stressful situation that you aren’t used to facing, your body will run its fight or flight response, which is a series of hormonal and biochemical reactions that cause temporary physical changes in the way your body functions.[1] This is why “just think calm and happy thoughts” doesn’t really work too well. Your body’s physical response is not something you can just out-think. Physical changes require you to do something about them... And one of the things you can do is deep breathing:
If you want to take it to the next level you can add the following (while still doing everything else the way it’s described above):
The way this supposedly works is by manipulating the autonomic nervous system, of which there are three major branches: the sympathetic nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system, and the enteric nervous system (we only need to discuss the first two here).[2] When you get nervous and your body experiences a fight or flight response, it's because of the sympathetic nervous system.[2] Deep breathing is a technique that activates its antagonist, the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for rest and relaxation.[2] It's not so much the actual breathing that accomplishes the relaxation (although the extra oxygen won't hurt), it's all the hormones and neurotransmitters that get released (or stop getting released) once the vagus nerve is stimulated by diaphragmatic breathing and the parasympathetic nervous system is allowed to over.[3] Be forewarned that this exercise looks easier than it actually is, especially if you are trying the second protocol described earlier. While you might be thinking, “this looks easy!” as you’re sitting in the comfort of your home or wherever you’re reading this, things will change when you actually need to use these exercises. Your body will fight you. It will be very hard to breathe deeply when you're all tensed up and nervous, much less count to 5! You must focus and follow through though. The results won’t be completely instantaneous either… I remember when I tried it for the first time before some date and I was still jittery right after doing it… “Why is isn’t this working? I did it like 10 times!” The thing was, a few minutes after finishing, my thoughts transitioned to something else, and all of a sudden I stepped back and remembered what I just did a few minutes ago. It struck me how much calmer I was now. It was kind of like how you fall asleep… you don’t realize it when it’s happening, you only realize it after you’ve woken up. Speaking of which… this exercise sometimes helps if you’re having trouble falling asleep. As I said before though, don’t expect a miracle. If you compare being nervous to falling out of a plane, then this would be a parachute, not a jet pack. Thank you and God bless. References
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