How do you calm nerves before a big game or performance?

Micha Shaw's position is that they are basically the same feeling in the body — butterflies in the stomach, a tight throat, tingly hands either way. What differs is the interpretation: a threat mindset or an opportunity mindset. Nick adds that at Test Prep Gurus they found the same thing with SAT students, and that moving from anxiety to excitement is far easier than trying to move from anxiety to calm.

Shaw would say that is the wrong target. She calls "calm down, just relax, let it go" some of the most unhelpful advice athletes get, because it never says what to do. Her version is to notice the feeling, let it be there, and change what you take it to mean. As she puts it, it is not even that you have to change the way you are feeling — it is changing the way you are perceiving that moment.

Shaw starts people at one minute of breath work a day, on the grounds that nobody can claim they don't have a minute. Once that is holding she moves it to around three minutes and adds a short meditation at the end. Her test is sustainability rather than volume — she wants it to feel so easy there is no reason to skip it. Her comparison is physical training: you don't practise fifteen minutes once a month and expect to be any good.

Shaw's starter is a minute of belly breathing with a hand on the stomach — on the inhale the hand moves away from the spine, on the exhale it comes back. She says the point of practising it when nothing is at stake is that the body later recognises the pattern, so when you bring the breath down into the belly under pressure it already knows what comes next.

Not in Shaw's framing. She says she is never nervous about something she doesn't care about, and never nervous when she hasn't put in the work, so for her the nerves are an indicator of being ready. Nick's experience matches it: once he had given a version of the same talk more than a hundred times and the nerves stopped, he noticed he was a little flat and decided he performs better with some.

Shaw separates nervous excitement from being overactivated, which she describes as tunnel vision and feeling like you are going to throw up or hyperventilate. There she uses the breath to intentionally slow her breathing and bring herself down a little, while being clear she does not want to go fully relaxed, because the energy is still needed. Nick calls that target the goldilocks zone.

Shaw names hers. She picked the idea up from a book and for no particular reason called her mean inner voice Rhonda, so she can say "okay Rhonda, that's not helpful" and get a little distance from it. She says it makes her laugh, which is part of why it works for her, and she is honest that she only uses it now and then rather than as a constant practice. Nick says he named his Frank.

Nick raises that directly — the same thing applies to an adult giving a big presentation at work, a kid in the school play, or a big test. Shaw agrees. She says she uses sport as the context, but the concept is the same in any domain and the only thing that changes is the words you use.