Turning Stress Into A Good Thing

Nervous about a major presentation? Good. Embrace the excitement. You’ll have more fun and you’ll give a better performance. That’s the conclusion of professors at Harvard Business School, who, experimenting with 140 presenters, told some to calm down and others to get excited about the opportunity. The Wall Street Journal reports that “the participants who had told themselves “I am excited” felt better able to handle the pressure and were more confident of their ability to give a good talk. Not only that, but observers who rated the talks found the excited speakers more persuasive, confident and competent than the participants who had tried to calm down. With this one change in mind-set, the speakers had transformed their anxiety into energy that helped them to perform under pressure.” Wait, there’s more. The Journal cites a University of Rochester study in which researchers measured the stress levels and the performance of 60 students taking the Graduate Record Examination. Half of the students were given a pep talk, and told that stress has been shown to improve students’ performance on such tests. Did it work? The envelope please…. the researchers found that students who received the pep talk scored higher on the practice exam than those in the control group.