experiencing what psychologists refer to as “perceptual narrowing.”
You stop noticing the full range of experience around you.
The thing to do in this kind of case is to give yourself props
to rely on if you feel an onset of panic. These could include a visual
map of your talk, the first few words written out in full, some good
quotations to use if the going gets tough, and many other things to
help you through the situation and give you recovery time to start
thinking again.
Another classic example of panic would be of a diver in trou-
ble under the sea. On breathing in, they discover that they are
inhaling water and not air. They stop thinking and grab at the
nearest air supply, even if it is attached to someone else, in the
fevered attempt to find oxygen. They panic. Even though in all
their training they have been taught to try to share another’s air
supply and gradually return to the surface, all memory of this
deserts them.
Both choking and panicking lead to a reduction in perfor-
mance. However, while their effect may appear to be the same to
someone watching, what is going on in your head is quite different.
Most importantly, the cures are different. When you choke you
need to think less; when you panic you need to think more.Think of times when you have choked or panicked. What caused you to do this?
What did you do to deal with the situation?
What tends to make you choke or panic in your work or home lives today? Think of some
positive strategies for dealing with these situations.Of course, there is such a thing as useful stress. This is the stress
that ensures that we get out of bed each morning and that the tar-
gets we set ourselves have an impact on our daily lives. We are all
different, however. What for one person would be an acceptable
level of stress, for another would be health threatening. Much of
our reaction to stress depends on our attitude to events. You saw in
the last chapter how change inevitably brings stress and how antic-
ipating some of the feelings associated with it can minimize the
negative aspects. You also learned on page 46 about the critical con-
cepts of learned optimism and pessimism.228 Power Up Your Mind