Anxiety is your whaaaaaaaat?
It’s your friend. Really! Check this out: one of the most repeatable experiments in psychology tracks the relationship between performance and anxiety. This study has been repeated across every imaginable dimension: athletics, academics, even video games. The finding is the same, and it’s summarized in the graphic at the top of the post.
Put on your ACT Science hat for a second to interpret what the graph means. It’s true that having too much anxiety can hurt performance, but as it turns out, so can having too little. To be successful and perform at your peak, you WANT to feel anxiety. I know from personal experience that feeling anxiety is not the most pleasant sensation or feeling known to man. It’s uncomfortable. That said, if we can embrace it as our friend—and stop worrying about worrying—we can reach our maximum capability.
