Try these 10 tips to reduce your stage fright: 1. Shift the focus from yourself and your fear to your true purpose contributing something of value to your audience. 2. Stop scaring yourself with thoughts about what might go wrong. Instead, focus your attention on thoughts and images that are calming and reassuring. 3. Refuse to think thoughts that create self-doubt and low confidence. 4. Practice ways to calm and relax your mind and body, such as deep breathing, relaxation exercises, yoga, and meditation. 5. Exercise, eat well, and practice other healthful lifestyle habits. Try to limit caffeine and sugar as much as possible. 6. Visualize your success: Always focus on your strength and ability to handle challenging situations. 7. Stand or sit in a self-assured, confident posture. 8. Give up trying to be perfect and know that it is OK to make mistakes. From www.adaa.org.
Blocked by Performance Anxiety? The first step in mastering stage fright, and all kinds of performance anxiety, is to get a good understanding of just what kind of problem you're dealing with. There's a trick to stage fright, as there is with most phobias, and you really need to understand the trick to find the solutions you need. Common and Treatable Performance Anxiety in its various forms is the most common phobia in the United States. It's often called "stage fright", but it doesn't have to involve a stage. Anyone whose activity brings them to the attention of an audience, however large or small, can experience performance anxiety. I use the terms, stage fright and performance anxiety, interchangeably. Performance Anxiety is most commonly experienced as a fear of public speaking. However, people whose career or other interests require them to take the "stage" for other purposes, i.e., actors, musicians, athletes, etc., will experience stage fright as an impairment of their own particular activity. A mime, for instance, can experience performance anxiety, looking timid and arthritic, even though no speaking is involved. Performance Anxiety is very treatable. However, many people just suffer with it, with all the limitations and negative emotions it imposes. They either don't realize help is available; they fear they can't be helped; or they think it will be too hard. While everyone's situation will vary in some ways, I find that there are four general ways in which people experience stage fright.
Four Types Some people go to great extremes to avoid any possibility of being "on stage". I've worked with clients who carefully chose all their college classes to avoid any presentations, and picked a career which wouldn't ever include any public speaking. These people usually succeed in avoiding presentations, but often have regrets about the way this fear controlled their life choices. If you belong to this group, you are probably troubled by both fear and regrets. There are others whose performance anxiety is less extreme. They don't let the fear dictate their major career and life choices. But they do strive to avoid the occasional presentation at work, the wedding toast, and the leadership of a civic group. They usually keep their fear a secret, and try to find ways around it. As a result, they never feel secure. The problem hangs over their head for lengthy periods of their life, even though they rarely actually give a presentation. If you belong to this group, you probably suffer considerable anticipatory fear and shame. Then there are those whose professional success has led them to the necessity of public speaking, even though they would rather avoid it: the attorneys, engineers, architects, authors, doctors, teachers and others whose work has become so successful, so much in demand, that they are increasingly requested and pressed to present their talents and knowledge before an audience. If you belong to this group, you must either develop the ability to face an audience, or cut short the successful arc of your career. And finally, there are people with a passion for creative expression. In this group we find performing artists, musicians, singers, actors, comedians, professional speakers and athletes. None of them are immune to performance anxiety. If you belong to this group and develop stage fright, you face a dilemma which
cannot be avoided. Your spirit urges you to seek out the audience, even as your body warns you to stand back, and >b> you must choose. The good news is that performance anxiety is common and treatable. If you want to overcome this problem, you can! But in order to overcome it, you must first understand how it works. The nature of stage fright Performance Anxiety is what happens when you focus on yourself and your anxiety rather than your presentation or performance. It stems from a tendency to resist and fight your anxiety, rather than to accept and work with it. It's the result of thinking of the performance situation as a threat, rather than a challenge. Tips for Coping With Stage Fright 1. If you want to talk (or sing, act, etc.), you have to breathe. And if you want to do these things calmly, you'll need to breathe diaphragmatically. This won't always come naturally, and you'll probably need to practice. You might think you already know everything there is to know about breathing, and if you're a professional singer you probably do. But everybody else, be sure to take a look at the breathing material. 2. Remind yourself that they're not here to see or hear you, unless you're a very famous person, or your mother's in the audience. They're just here to see the person who's playing this piece or talking about this topic. Today that happens to be you. That's not really important to them in most circumstances. 3. Expect, and accept, that you will feel anxious, especially at first. That's OK. If you allow yourself to work with the anxiety,
not against it, you'll be able to calm down and proceed. If you resist the anxiety, you'll make more trouble for yourself. 4. Take the emotions and passion you feel for your subject or artistic expression and channel it into your performance. Don't try to "hold it down". If you try to suppress it, it will work against you. Express it! 5. Establish the right focus for your task. What do I mean by focus? I mean what you're paying attention to as you engage in your performance. This, unlike the other four tips above, will vary depending on what kind of performance you're engaged in. *Establish contact with the audience through eye contact and talking directly to them. Ask them questions to get them involved in your talk (i.e., How many of you here have ever had this experience...?) While your natural instinct will probably be to avoid the audience as much as possible, just like the reviewer cited above, you will actually feel less anxiety once you get the audience involved with you. *If your task is a performance art, your focus will be different. It's not your job to persuade or inform the audience. You want to perform a piece for their enjoyment. In this case, you can ignore the audience, and turn your focus to your music, or your character, and leave the audience to enjoy your performance on their own. *Where you don't want your focus to be is on yourself and your anxiety. This is why it's so useful to develop an accepting attitude toward the anxiety, to take a few steps to calm yourself a little, and then shift your focus to the task at hand. From www.anxietycoach.com
Overcoming Stage Fright on the Day of a Performance 1 Relax your body. To overcome stage fright, there are a few things you can do to relax your body before going on the stage. Here are a few things you can do to relax your body before your performance. [1] Eat a banana before you perform. It will lower that empty or nauseous feeling in your stomach but won't make you feel too full either. Chew gum. Chewing gum a little bit to ease the tension in your jaw. Just don't chew gum too long or on an empty stomach or you may upset your digestive system a bit. Stretch. Stretching your arms, legs, back, and shoulders is another great way to reduce the tension in your body. 2 Meditate. On the morning before your performance, or even an hour before, take 15-20 minutes out of your day to meditate. Find a relatively quiet place where you can take a
comfortable seat on the ground. Close your eyes and focus on your breathing as you relax every part of your body. Rest your hands on your lap and fold your legs. Try to reach a point where you no longer think about anything besides relaxing your body one part a time -- especially not your performance. 3 Avoid caffeine. Unless you're normally a caffeine addict, don't have extra caffeine on the day of the performance. You may think that it will make you perform with more energy, but it will actually make you feel more nervous and jittery... 4 Set a "stop time" for your anxiety. On the day of your performance, tell yourself that you can allow yourself to be nervous for a certain amount of time, but that after a certain hour -- say, 3 PM -- all anxiety will go out the
door. Just setting this goal and making this promise to yourself will make it much more likely to happen. 5 Get some exercise. Exercise releases tension and gets your endorphins going. Make time for at least thirty minutes of exercise on the day of your performance, or at least take a thirty-minute walk. This will get your body geared for an amazing performance. 6 Laugh as much as you can. Watch a comedy in the morning, put on your favorite YouTube video, or just spend the afternoon hanging around the funniest person in your company. Laughing will relax you and take your mind off your nervousness.
7 Get there early. Showing up early will ease your nerves and will make you feel less rushed and more at peace. 8 Imagine your favorite person in the audience. Instead of imagining every person in the audience in their underwear -- which can be a little weird -- imagine that every seat in the audience is filled with a clone of your favorite person. That person loves you and will listen to and approve of anything you say or do. That person will laugh at the right times, encourage you, and clap wildly at the end of the performance. 9 Drink citrus juice. Drinking citrus juice half an hour before your performance can lower your blood pressure and ease your anxiety.
Other Methods Before and During the Performance 1 Visualize success. Before you get on stage, just picture yourself knocking it out of the park. Imagine a standing ovation, picture the smiles on the audience members' faces, and hear the sound of your cast mates or director telling you what an amazing job you did. The more you focus on visualizing the best possible outcome instead of worrying over the worst case scenario, the more likely it is to happen. Picture yourself being amazing on stage from the audience's point of view. 2 Practice as much as possible. Do this until you practically memorize it. Practice in front of family, friends, and stuffed animals and even in front of empty chairs, so that you are used to performing in front of people.
3 Watch your own performance. Gain confidence in yourself by reciting your lines in front of a mirror. You can even tape your own performance to see how amazing you are, and to look out for areas of improvement. If you keep taping or watching yourself until you know you're really killing it, then you'll be much more likely to succeed on the stage. 4 Move your body. Staying physically active before and during the performance will help ease your tension and keep the audience's interest. Of course, you should only move when the character is supposed to move, but make the most of your movements and gestures so that your body becomes more relaxed by being active.
5 Turn off your mind. Once you're on stage, just focus on your words, your body, and your facial expressions. Don't waste time over thinking it and asking yourself pesky questions. Just start enjoying your performance and inhabiting the moment, whether you're singing, dancing, or reciting lines. If you've learned to turn off your mind and fully inhabit your performance, the audience will know. Tips Some of our greatest performers get stage fright. Don't think you are alone. Just get on with it, and soon you will be so engrossed that you will forget you are on stage. Remember, the audience won't eat you! So relax and have fun. Have a good time. Pretend you re just practicing at home or somewhere with your friends. First practice in front of family and then friends, soon you will be on the stage making everyone cheer and clap! From www.wikihow.com