Anxious about starting a new job?

Try this technique to perform at your best while navigating the new. 

Whether you’ve landed your first job out of university, or after 20 years of work you’re finally in the job of your dreams, feeling anxious is totally normal. 

Left unmanaged, however, anxiety can impact our performance and lower self-confidence. Not things that help us to shine in a new work environment.

So let’s dig into how anxiety impacts your performance at work, and how you channel your nervous energy into something helpful.

Anxiety is an emotional energy that focuses us on negative outcomes

Anxiety is a high-energy emotion, “a state of distress and/or physiological arousal in reaction to stimuli including novel situations and the potential for undesirable outcomes” (Brooks & Schweitzer, 2011).

Physiological arousal means you are ready for action and more likely to respond to your environment - like you’re on high alert. When you’re feeling anxious, it’s incredibly difficult to suppress or hide your anxiety - and studies now show that trying to keep calm may not be the best advice.  

Re-frame Anxiety as Excitement 

Research from the American Psychological Association and HBR has found that re-appraising or re-framing the anxiety as excitement is better at improving performance than trying to calm down.  

Rather than trying to switch from a high energy emotion (anxiety) to a low energy emotion (calmness), you’re making tiny tweaks to shift from one high energy emotion (anxiety) to another (excitement). 

Use your system to reinforce the shift

1. Start with your mind: Tell yourself that you are excited. Repeat it to yourself in the morning and say it out loud. “I am excited to start a new job.” “I am excited to try something new. “I am excited to learn.”
   

   We are what we repeatedly think, say, and do!

2. Reinforce with your body: Consciously imagine how a confident version of you would walk and talk. What are you wearing? Put on that outfit. Are you smiling? Wear a smile. Do you lean in during a conversation? Demonstrate your interest. Perhaps you walk with more of a bounce in your step?

   
   Get channelling your inner Bruce Almighty now. 

3. Supercharge through your environment: What are the sights, smells and sounds that bring out your most confident self? Use your micro-environment to boost the shift from anxious to excitement such as playing a song that evokes good memories, spritzing the smell of a favourite perfume / cologne, or making your phone background a favourite photo. 

So next time you’re feeling anxious, or apprehensive about something in the future - don’t tell yourself to calm down, tell yourself you’re excited and reinforce this belief through your behaviour and your environment.