I used to think the rush I felt before stepping on stage was anxiety. My heart raced, my palms sweated, and I told myself I was nervous. I convinced my brain of that story.
But as I started working behind the scenes as a massage therapist and movement coach, I noticed something. The top performers I was supporting—Broadway singers, Lindemann artists, athletes, sports broadcasters —were experiencing the same physical sensations. The difference? They weren’t calling it anxiety. They were calling it excitement. The more I interviewed on podcasts, taught classes, and worked on projects, the more I realized that what I had been labeling as “anxiety” was really excitement.
Here’s the thing: anxiety and excitement feel almost identical in the body. Both send you into your sympathetic “get ready” state: adrenaline, faster heartbeat, butterflies, tension, sharper focus. The only difference is the story you tell yourself about it.
A Harvard study by Dr. Alison Wood Brooks showed that when people reframed nerves as excitement, they performed with more confidence, clarity, and presence. And it’s not just public speaking, this works in singing, athletics, test-taking, creative work… and yes, performing.
So now, when my body starts buzzing and I feel those sensations, I don’t tell myself it’s nerves anymore. I remind myself, this means I care. My body is getting ready for something important. And more than anything, I try to let myself feel it fully and think, 'I’m alive'.
It has changed the way I walk into presentations, into teaching, and even into big moments in life. The sensations haven’t gone away—they’ve simply become part of the fuel that carries me forward.
In resilience,
Christine
Alison Wood Brooks (2014)
Study: Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement
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Published in: Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
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DOI: 10.1037/a0035325
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Key finding: Saying “I am excited” improves performance in high-stress tasks like public speaking or math tests, compared to saying “I am calm.”
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