Maximum Performance

ments the body makes to improve the movement of the intricate system of levers in the body, adjustment of life outside the body by comparison becomes a fairly simple affair. ## Optimal Anxiety Performance requires tension; without it, your muscles would become disorganized, you'd stumble and fall. You'd be hard pressed to keep your head sit- ting correctly on your shoulders. The trick is to per- form with exactly the right degree of tension -^just enough to key you up, not so much as to tie you up. Anxiety, which accompanies all performance, is not only inevitable, it's desirable provided it's completely under control. It's that delicate balance, the abiUty to relax un-Just as a heavy foot on the accelerator can mean danger, so too much adrenahne sweeping through your body can ruin your performance. You become ex- ceptionally powerful-and tend to apply this extra power where it isn't needed. At high speeds there's a premium on driving skill. A concentrated boost of adrenaline requires a controlled use of the super power. Obviously, a resource like this can be either an as- set or liability. The first step toward controlling it is to appreciate that the nervousness you feel before a performance is vital to that performance. Without it, you're going to be flat; with it, you have the oppor- tunity to excel. It's not necessary to feel well in order to perform well. Sometimes it seems that the opposite is true: the worse you feel, the better you're going to perform. Don't worry that you don't feel hke playing or giving your report. Your interior processes are working in your behalf. Be glad that you feel like throwing up as you unpack your bowling ball. If your mouth is dry, your palms are wet, your heart is pounding and you feel your neck hairs standing on end, under normal circumstances you could interpret these as signs of illness. In terms of performance, you're super well. Test pilots welcome the "butterflies in the stomach" feeling they get just before they put a new type of high-performance airplane into its first dive. They call such surges of arousal ''adrenal-burgers." They know they're going to perform to their maximum, with their system alert, in a circumstance where alertness and competence are matters of life and death. Athletes recognize the feeling as "prestart phenomenon," a phrase invented by the Russians. Recall the champions I interviewed after their record-breaking performances. They all said that they had felt so bad just before their event that they had considered drop- ping out. Once you accept that anxiety can be your ally, the next step is learning how to control it.