Today is January 17 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “In stressful situations, how often do you embrace the excitement instead of trying to remain calm?”
Harvard Business School professor Alison Wood Brooks designed an experiment to find out if telling people to calm down during a stressful moment was beneficial.
In her research paper “Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement,” published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, she recruited 140 people to give a speech.
She told part of the group to relax and repeat the phrase “I am calm,” while the others were told to embrace their anxiety and tell themselves, “I am excited.”
Members of both groups were still nervous before the speech, but the participants who had told themselves “I am excited” felt better able to handle the pressure, were more confident of their ability to give a compelling talk, and received higher approval ratings from the audience.
The excited speakers were found to be more persuasive, confident, and competent than the participants who had tried to calm down.
By changing the mindset just slightly, from “calm down” to “I am excited,” the speakers had transformed their anxiety into energy that helped them to perform under pressure.
“Individuals can reappraise anxiety as excitement using minimal strategies such as self-talk (e.g., saying “I am excited” out loud) or simple messages (e.g., “get excited”), which lead them to feel more excited, adopt an opportunity mind-set (as opposed to a threat mind-set), and improve their subsequent performance.”
Proverbs 31:25 states "She is clothed in strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future."
During stressful situations how often do you embrace the excitement instead of trying to calm down? Laughing without fear of the future requires one to embrace the excitement of the unknown.
As you go about your day consider asking yourself what traits or habits can you leverage in order to embrace stress?