How to Deal With Nerves
It’s almost game time. You’ve just finished your warm up and your muscles are ready to go. You’re taking a moment to rest and drink one last sip of water, but your mind is already racing ahead to the next thing. Your heart is pounding so loud that you’re sure your teammates can hear it. Your stomach is turning faster than a washing machine. Deep down, you know you’re ready for this…but there’s that little voice in the back of your head that keeps trying to tell you you’re not. You take a deep breath and try to zone out the distractions of the world and zone in on the competition in front of you—all while keeping yourself from exploding from the inside out.
If you’ve competed in sports at any level, you’ve probably felt these all-too-familiar sensations. Some call it nerves. Or anxiety. Or even just “too much excitement.” Regardless of how you interpret these feelings, everyone wants to know how to get rid of them.
As a collegiate track and field athlete and soccer player, the association of competition with nerves is strong for me. I used to get so nervous before track meets that I could hardly eat more than a granola bar and a few nuts during an entire day of competition.
I could write a whole book about everything I’ve learned since then, but today I’m going to focus on some techniques that helped me deal with my nerves and how I got to the root of my anxiety.
Take deep breaths often. This is the simplest and yet most essential component that helps me calm down. I learned that “belly breathing” is a great technique for regulating your nervous system. When you breathe in, instead of inflating your chest, pretend that you’re trying to blow up a balloon in your stomach. Take deep, slow breaths in and out, inflating and deflating the imaginary balloon inside your stomach. This allows your body’s natural regulation system to interpret nerves as normal rather than threatening.
Reinterpret your nerves as excitement. Did you know that smiling and laughter are natural anxiety reducers? Your body doesn’t know the difference between excitement and anxiety, so if you tell yourself that you’re just excited, your body will respond more positively to the feeling of nerves.
Remind yourself that nerves are normal. In fact, it would be abnormal if you didn’t get at least a little nervous before a competition! Nerves are completely normal and a small dose is actually very helpful in preparing your body for competition.
Listen to calming music before a competition. This may be controversial, but I often find it more helpful to listen to worship music or calming, instrumental music on the way to a competition. This way, I can save the excitement until I really need it!
Visit your “confidence vault.” Your “confidence vault” is a storehouse of things you can look back on to remind yourself that you’ve got this! This could be a physical or mental list and it can include moments of mastery from practice, past times when you did well despite feeling nervous, etc. Next time you start to doubt your abilities, head to your “confidence vault” to remind yourself of a few reasons why you can be confident. You’ve got this!
Focus on the process goals. Sometimes on competition days, we get overwhelmed because we try to focus on everything we’ve ever learned. I found it helpful to choose three process goals for that particular competition and to focus on only those three things. This simplifies your thinking and slows down the racing thoughts in your brain.
Speak positive messages to yourself. Your mind is the most powerful muscle in your body. The messages we tell ourselves before a competition play a huge role in how well we will compete. For example, I mentioned earlier that I had a difficult time eating on competition days. I learned from a sports psychologist to speak positive messages even as I ate my breakfast, such as “This food is fuel that will give me the strength to compete to the best of my abilities. I need energy and this food will provide that.” When I changed the thoughts I had swirling around in my brain, my body adapted, I was able to fuel better, and I ended up competing better!
Remind yourself why you’re here. I found it helpful to recenter myself and remember why I chose to play sports in the first place. Whatever your reason is, it’s helpful to pause and be grateful for a healthy body and the ability to push yourself in athletic competitions. Look around and remember that you’re not just competing for yourself, but also for your teammates, too!
I hope you find a few of these techniques to be helpful in reducing anxiety before your next competition—but none of these things helped me as much as what I’m about to say next.
The thing that helped me deal with my nerves the most was knowing that I compete from victory, not for victory.
Ultimately, there is nothing we can do to prove our worth by our performance. Sports can become a dangerous pursuit when we try to use competition to earn love and affection from those around us.
Jesus tells us that he loved us even before we did anything. He says that we are loved, chosen, worthy, and free. There is absolutely nothing we can do to earn his love, and no amount of mistakes we make can ever take his love away. He has already won the ultimate victory for us through his death and resurrection. Because of this, we can compete from a place of wholeness and freedom in knowing that we are simply called to do our best for God’s glory. That’s it! That’s all we have to do. Any victory we win on the track, field, court, etc. is just a bonus!
God has given you a gift and a passion for your sport—and that is a very special thing! I hope you can rest in the truth of who God says you are and learn to deal with your nerves in a way that allows you to compete to the best of your abilities.
I’m cheering you on!
Written and lived out by Sophia Morris