So another way that is really helpful with stress is to have some techniques. This is a technique I created called BRAVE.
So what is it? What does it mean? So B is “breathing.” We underestimate the impact breathing well helps us because when you’re breathing in, you’re energizing, and when you’re breathing out, you are relaxing.
“Reframe.” Reframing is a really great technique. So one of the things is I’m going on stage. I’m about to give a talk. What if I forget my words? We have all of this negative talk in our heads. Another way to think of it is, oh, I’m going on stage to share my story with all of these other people who are there to cheer me on. What this does is it starts quietening down that negative chatter.
“Affirming.” So, affirming and affirmations sometimes get bad press because they sound a bit woo-woo. I remember the first time I was told about affirmations, and I said to the person teaching me, “I don’t do affirmations.” They said, “Well, you just did.” So we are affirming things about ourselves all the time.
We can choose to affirm, oh, I’m going on stage and I have nothing to say to I’m going on stage and I have something to say. Which of those affirmations is going to help you on your journey? You pick. I’m thinking the latter will be more helpful.
So this isn’t about affirming the end result. This is affirming about where you are on the journey.
“Visualization.” If you think about a theater production, you wouldn’t put on a theater production without doing a dress rehearsal. You can visualize yourself at that conference, feeling happy, feeling relaxed. Going through your talk, you may forget a little bit of it, but it doesn’t matter as long as the main message you want to get across has got across. When you visualize this, what happens is that when you actually get on stage, your brain already thinks that you’ve done it.
Then the E is “energize”. Emotion is an energy in motion. So pick the emotion that is going to help you. That could be an emotion of curiosity. That could be an emotion of excitement. That could be an emotion of contentment and happiness that you are on this journey. The BRAVE, as I said, works really well in any of those components. But combined, it’s really, really powerful.