Performance anxiety due to misaligned task
Performance anxiety results from illogical thoughts. Identifying these thoughts and understanding the illogical thoughts will kill the performance anxiety (high five!).
The main thought is that to evaluate oneself through performance. If the performance is good, then the value of self is perceived high through the ability to control one's own commitments.
If it is low, then the value of self becomes low. This creates a problem and a vicious circle because this decreases self-esteem, which in turn, causes performance to remain low. Another possible risk in this situation is possible social comparisons with close ones. If close friends, colleagues perform well in their own tasks, the person may be compelled to think that something is wrong with him/her, which will decrease self-esteem even further.
One needs to spend horrendous amounts of energy to overcome this situation with these continued underlying beliefs.
Here is one major possibility why the thoughts are illogical: Performance is a result of mostly how suited the task is for personal purposes. If it is not aligned with personal purposes, there will be low motivation to pursue them. Performance is largely affected from motivation. Motivation is energy. If one doesn't have motivation, s/he won't have enough energy to progress the task in an optimal pace. Therefore, the performance will decrease. So, it is not so much about one's ability to perform (especially if there is evidence that this person has performed well for other tasks in the past). It is simply due to a misalignment (i.e. bad choice of task or bad situation that makes the person have to choose the task). This misalignment itself cannot be attributed to a personal inability as well. It is usually out of control and has not much to do with one's ability to perform.
Recognizing this will first make one recognize that the low performance is not due to one's inability. So, the self-esteem is recovered. Also, once one recognizes that misalignment of purposes, this will kill the social comparisons with close ones (especially if those close ones are content with the tasks they are progressing with). Being content in itself is not a result of good performance but vice versa (good performance is a result of being content with one's task).
Of course, this is only one major reason for performance anxiety. There could be other types of illogical thoughts; however, this is the recipe for a major one.
What shall one do?
One shall complete the task as soon as possible with the recovered self-esteem and then try to switch to a task that s/he is content with. One could also support this with the thought that the world is not a place to do any tasks that come to us but to utilize our full potential and therefore we shall do the tasks we like or love and try to avoid as much as possible the ones that are unpleasant (at least for the long run, such as career, etc.).
The main thought is that to evaluate oneself through performance. If the performance is good, then the value of self is perceived high through the ability to control one's own commitments.
If it is low, then the value of self becomes low. This creates a problem and a vicious circle because this decreases self-esteem, which in turn, causes performance to remain low. Another possible risk in this situation is possible social comparisons with close ones. If close friends, colleagues perform well in their own tasks, the person may be compelled to think that something is wrong with him/her, which will decrease self-esteem even further.
One needs to spend horrendous amounts of energy to overcome this situation with these continued underlying beliefs.
Here is one major possibility why the thoughts are illogical: Performance is a result of mostly how suited the task is for personal purposes. If it is not aligned with personal purposes, there will be low motivation to pursue them. Performance is largely affected from motivation. Motivation is energy. If one doesn't have motivation, s/he won't have enough energy to progress the task in an optimal pace. Therefore, the performance will decrease. So, it is not so much about one's ability to perform (especially if there is evidence that this person has performed well for other tasks in the past). It is simply due to a misalignment (i.e. bad choice of task or bad situation that makes the person have to choose the task). This misalignment itself cannot be attributed to a personal inability as well. It is usually out of control and has not much to do with one's ability to perform.
Recognizing this will first make one recognize that the low performance is not due to one's inability. So, the self-esteem is recovered. Also, once one recognizes that misalignment of purposes, this will kill the social comparisons with close ones (especially if those close ones are content with the tasks they are progressing with). Being content in itself is not a result of good performance but vice versa (good performance is a result of being content with one's task).
Of course, this is only one major reason for performance anxiety. There could be other types of illogical thoughts; however, this is the recipe for a major one.
What shall one do?
One shall complete the task as soon as possible with the recovered self-esteem and then try to switch to a task that s/he is content with. One could also support this with the thought that the world is not a place to do any tasks that come to us but to utilize our full potential and therefore we shall do the tasks we like or love and try to avoid as much as possible the ones that are unpleasant (at least for the long run, such as career, etc.).
posted by Alex at 12:42 PM
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