Performance anxiety is the anticipatory fear response to a situation perceived as evaluative, threatening, and uncertain in outcome. It is, in moderate doses, performance-enhancing — the Yerkes-Dodson curve shows that performance quality peaks at moderate arousal levels, with both too little activation (underperformance from insufficient engagement) and too much activation (choking from overload) producing worse

Pressure is not something that happens to you. It is something you generate — in your own mind, from your own interpretation of a situation’s stakes. Two people in identical high-stakes situations experience vastly different internal pressure states based on their interpretation of what the situation means and what it requires. One experiences the same

Pre-performance anxiety is not something to eliminate. It is a physiological state that, correctly directed, enhances performance. The goal of a pre-performance routine is not to feel calm — it is to transform the energy of anticipatory arousal into a focused, execution-ready state. Calm and ready are different, and only the second one is useful.