performance Quiz
Takes these quizzes to see if you might need to work on your performance anxiety or motivation.
Performance Anxiety Quiz
Performance Anxiety is when we feel overly nervous before we have to give some type of performance. That might be a sports competition, speech, exam, update in a work meeting or any kind of test. It often shows up when there is a chance that we could fail at something that matters to us or we feel that others might be judging us. It is something that happens to most of us at some time as we all have goals we care about and are keen to do well.
It can be really frustrating because the more we want to do well the worse it can feel. We will feel this type of anxiety in different ways depending on our own bodies, how tuned in we are to them and what the performance is that we are facing. The main physical elements we can notice are a nauseous or upset tummy, elevate heart rate, faster breathing rate, tingly hands, tight back and shoulder muscles and a lose of senses (particularly peripheral vision). Psychologically we might notice we ruminate (reflect on the same thoughts over and over again) and that our internal head commentary becomes very negative and we come up with lots of excuses as to why we should quit.
While it is very tempting to bury our head in the sand and pretend we don’t have this performance anxiety it can be put us in a much stronger place if we face up to it. Once we accept we have it we can investigate why, build up our confidence levels and learn to change that unhelpful head commentary.
Motivation Quiz
Motivation can be thought of as the energy in our brain which determines how we behave. It directs the ways we think and feel when we consider a challenge. We need that brain energy to be in place to help us use the skills or strategies that are needed in order to be successful. When you are fully motivated you will put in lots of time and effort into practice and your performance, meaning you are more likely to do well, and enjoy the process along the way.
Our motivation is usually pretty strong when we start out in something as we tend to progress quickly, learn skills we couldn’t do previously and everything feels new and exciting. At this time things will often feel outcome focused but they are usually fairly achievable outcomes so we can stay focused and positive. Over time however we can get too fixated on the outcomes and the original reasons for starting something (i.e. to have fun, to meet new friends or to stretch ourselves) can fade and we feel deterred. We then start to notice that we have low energy, can’t be bothered to put the specific work in that our goal needs and our passion dies up.
Intrinsic motivation is what keeps us in this early phase. This is where we have a pure joy from working towards our challenge. We love feeling like we are improving and getting closer to our goal and feel excited to put the work in. We don’t always need to do well – we just enjoy the feeling of working towards it doing it. This is a great motivation to have as we know we will enjoy the challenge even if the environment or situation means the outcome is not great.