From Fear to Focus: Five Tips for Unleashing Your Best Performance

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There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place at the heart’s controls. —Aeschylus

MANY people view fear as a negative, crippling emotion. However, it can act as a potent stimulus that enhances performance if we take the time to understand – and modulate – its power.

The Sweet Spot of Fear

Table tennis Olympian Amy Wang has had plenty of practice performing in the face of fear. She’s won the US National Table Tennis Championships in age categories of nine, ten, eleven, and thirteen before winning multiple open women’s national titles. Wang does, indeed, get scared when playing before a large crowd or on a big international stage. “But I need some kind of fear to boost my adrenaline to help me get ready,” she explains.

In fact, Wang has a preferred level of “nervousness” while playing a match. On a one-to-ten scale, “Five to seven is the best for me,” she says. “If I’m not feeling any nerves before the match, it means I don’t care. I relax and don’t focus properly.” Wang’s coaches can easily tell when she’s overly nervous during a match. Usually, it’s enough to remind her to loosen up and take one point at a time to bring her back down to her preferred range. And when she’s not nervous enough? A sort of self-correcting mechanism kicks in. “If I’m too chill during a match, my opponent will start catching up, which will eventually increase my nervousness level,” she says. “But it’s better to start off at the right place.”

It’s Only Human

Fear is a natural human emotion, and it exists for a reason. It causes adrenaline to surge through our bodies, increasing heart rate and flow to the brain and muscles to help us escape predators or defend ourselves against rivals. It’s in our DNA.

Luckily, we don’t need to run from saber-toothed tigers in the twenty-first century. Nonetheless, we still encounter stressful situations, mental or physical. And yet, our hormonal stress response – pumping out adrenaline and cortisol – has not evolved. In fact, the human biological alert system can’t tell the difference between a saber-tooth tiger encounter, a critical table tennis match at the US Open, or a high-stakes sales presentation. So, denying fear or trying to block it out is futile. And unnecessary. Once we learn to harness the energy of fear and minimize its dark side, we can enhance our performance in the direst of times.

Five Methods to Optimize Your Performance in the Face of Fear

Throughout decades of intense competition and various business challenges, I’ve researched, collected, and experienced many ways of channeling fear. Here are some practical tips to not only perform, but excel, in fearsome situations.

• De-fang fear. Preemptively tell it, Come in, fear. The door is open. I’ve been expecting you. This simple, welcoming stance can lessen fear’s sharp bite from the beginning. It sounds deceptively simple, but I’ve benefited from doing this for many years now. Without the heavy dread, fear loses its discomforting emotional grip, but still transfers its biochemical power to fuel clarity of thinking and quickness of movement.

Throughout decades of intense competition and various business challenges, I’ve researched, collected, and experienced many ways of channeling fear. Here are some practical tips to not only perform, but excel, in fearsome situations.

• Switch modes. When needed, remove yourself from primal fight-or-flight mode – where your sympathetic nervous system causes shallow chest breathing and elevates your heart rate and blood pressure. Calm your primal brain by literally looking to your right, and your left, and confirming that there is no threat from a predator. You are not being chased by a lion or getting threatened by a cave dweller with a club. Then take several deep belly breaths – imagine pulling a string tied to your belly button, straight out in front of you. This activates your parasympathetic nervous system, engaging a calming, “rest and digest” mode. As you exhale, tell yourself: I am safe, I am warm, I am relaxed… (repeat this until it sinks in). The reverse works, too: Pump up your excitement levels by puffing up your chest to breathe deeply and rapidly.

Throughout decades of intense competition and various business challenges, I’ve researched, collected, and experienced many ways of channeling fear. Here are some practical tips to not only perform, but excel, in fearsome situations.

• Create your own “reset” switch. Our brain can “change itself constantly by creating new neural pathways,” wrote neuroscientist Dr. Tara Swart in Forbes. Rewiring the brain simply requires “practice of a new behavior which will sufficiently challenge the brain to think in a new way.” Focusing on a favorite word or mantra (e.g., “I’m just grateful to be here” or “I was born for this moment”) can instantly connect you with a certain empowering memory or confident mindset. Repeat this as needed before, during, and after stress-inducing situations.

Throughout decades of intense competition and various business challenges, I’ve researched, collected, and experienced many ways of channeling fear. Here are some practical tips to not only perform, but excel, in fearsome situations.

• Give yourself a “freak-out” period. A law school professor of mine once talked to us about the stress of final exams. Yes, there can be a lot riding on them. If you’re the type of test-taker who starts to sweat and freeze up from fear when the blank test lands on your desk, do the counter-intuitive: go ahead and (quietly) panic. Allow yourself one minute to imagine the worst, failing out of law school, fainting during the exam, whatever. Let the fear rush through your head and body for the full minute. Then let it wash away as you breathe deeply three times and relax. You’ve used up your immediate anxiety quotient, and can still tap into a deeper well of adrenaline to boost your mental activity. Now it’s time to simply start, calmly, on the first question of the test. And then the second, and third.

Throughout decades of intense competition and various business challenges, I’ve researched, collected, and experienced many ways of channeling fear. Here are some practical tips to not only perform, but excel, in fearsome situations.

• Finally, don’t worry about your zit – everyone else is worried about their own zit. That’s Gary Vaynerchuk’s advice, which I love. We all have an inner voice adept at pointing out our insecurities. Our blemish. Our accent. An unusual presentation style or unconventional backhand stroke. And when we’re consumed by self-consciousness, we operate at a fraction of our potential. But here’s the liberating truth: everyone else is too busy wrestling with their own demons to fixate on yours. Instead, shift from self-scrutiny to valuable service. Focus 100% on listening, contributing, and participating with others in the moment. The fear will start to fade, replaced by genuine confidence born of purpose.

When you learn to accept fear as part of the success equation, you’ll stop spending energy trying to fight it. Then, you can leverage the super-power of focus and energy it brings. This leads you and others on the path to bravery and accomplishment.

Justin Bookey is an award-winning marketing strategist, former lawyer, and competitive table tennis player who has won medals at the US Open and the US national championships. He has collaborated with leaders at prominent companies like Disney, Sony, Honda, Qualcomm, and XPRIZE. His accomplishments include Emmy-nominated feature documentaries and Telly, Viddy, and ADDY award-winning digital marketing campaigns. He also founded PongFit, a nonprofit promoting fitness and community through ping pong. His new book is Ping Pong Leadership: 18 Principles to Succeed at Any Table in Business, Sports, and Life (Amplify Publishing, 2024). Learn more at Ping Pong Leadership.

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