Have you heard of performance anxiety? Whenever you come up on stage to speak, dance or sing, have you ever felt like you don’t know what to say, your heat beats faster, your chest tightens and your throat gets dry? Have you felt like you just want to run from the stage and just hide? Have you always worried about getting up on stage in front of many people days, weeks or months before you are put in the spotlight where everybody is expecting you to perform well?

As you might not know, performance anxiety is very common in people, especially with an athlete, a musician or a politician. Fear of public speaking, for example, is one of the gravest fears that a person has. Most of us are so afraid of getting socially embarrassed and humiliated in front of everybody that we avoid activities that put us in a spotlight. In fact, the comedian Jerry Seinfeld has once said that those who attend funerals should feel sorrier for the person who would give the eulogy speech more so than the deceased.

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