Nervous Means Alive
This post will take you about 2 minutes to read.
“It’s okay to be nervous, it means your alive.”
The advice you receive from your parents is endless. Be safe. Take care of yourself. Sit up straight.
You’re rarely ready to learn at the same time your parents are ready to teach you. The advice falls on deaf ears. You don’t even hear it.
Then one day, you start believing it.
I used to get terribly nervous before rec league basketball games. I felt like I was a 10 year old kid getting ready to go play Michael Jordan in front of thousands of people. I thought the nerves meant I was just afraid.
It means your alive, my mother would say. It was comforting, but I really didn’t understand it.
Until, I believed it.
When you’re getting ready for a job interview, a date, a cold call, a game - you get nervous. You think about all the ways you could fail. Instead of using that energy to your advantage.
Learning to sell yourself or your ideas is not easy. And a major obstacle is overcoming your nerves. But you will continue to fail, if you let your nervous feeling take over.
“Everyone gets nervous. Everyone. If they say they don’t, they’re either lying or they’re sociopaths. The trick is to use the nerves to trigger adrenaline. Let them lift you up to a higher level. A better you.”
Your body reacts the same when you’re nervous and excited. It’s simple. If you’re nervous, tell yourself you are excited. And then use that excitement to perform.
Because Mom was right after all.
Feeling nervous? It just means your alive.