BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM

You know that moment. The job interview is starting in 30 seconds, and your brain decides now is the perfect time to replay every mistake you’ve ever made. Or you’re halfway through a presentation when a small stumble pulls your focus completely off the material. Performance anxiety doesn’t care who you are. It shows up for professional athletes and first-time public speakers alike, and it always manages to pick the worst possible moment.

Cindra Kamphoff has spent her career studying what happens in those moments. She holds a Ph.D. in sport and performance psychology and has worked with organizations including the Minnesota Vikings and USA Track & Field, coaching athletes on managing self-doubt under real pressure. What she’s found is that confidence isn’t a feeling you wait to have before the high-stakes moment. It’s a skill you build, and one you can use in the middle of things going wrong.

Kamphoff’s four performance tools

Learn, burn, return

The instinct when something goes wrong mid-performance is to freeze or spiral. A fumble, a mental blank, a sentence that comes out wrong: whatever it is, Kamphoff has a three-step framework for getting through it.

First, learn: ask yourself what you can take from the mistake. The prompt is simple: “Next time, I will ___.” One sentence. You’re done. The point isn’t a full debrief; it’s just a fast pivot so your brain has somewhere to go.

Then, burn: choose a physical motion or phrase that tells your brain you’re moving on. A finger snap, saying “that fast,” or, memorably, pretending to flush a toilet. Former Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Adam Thielen used that exact move after a fumble during a 2020 playoff game, then caught a 43-yard pass that helped the Vikings win. Using the same motion every time helps your brain wire a new response, one that interrupts the spiral before it snowballs.

Finally, return: bring yourself back with something simple. “You got this. You’re doing the best that you can.” It doesn’t lean “pep-talk”; it’s just more of a reset.

Write a power phrase before you need it

In 2012, Kamphoff ran a marathon and wrote motivational phrases on her arm so she could read them when self-doubt hit at mile 22. “I’m strong, I’m fast, I’m fit, I’m ready.” It sounds simple, but she wasn’t making things up. She had done the training. She loved running. She had put in hundreds of miles to get there. No amount of mid-race doubt could change any of that, and having the phrases on her arm meant she didn’t have to argue with herself about it. She ran her final four miles faster than any other stretch of the race and won her division.

A power phrase starts with “I will,” “I can,” or “I am,” and it’s grounded in something real about what you bring to the situation. Useful questions when building one: How are you at your best? What does that actually feel like? Your answers are usually more solid than what the pre-performance nerves are telling you.

Give yourself three goals instead of one

Putting everything on a single outcome makes it harder to perform and harder to bounce back if things go sideways. Kamphoff suggests setting gold, silver, and bronze goals instead: a range from your realistic best down to a result you’d genuinely feel okay about.

A runner might set winning as the gold goal, a personal best as silver, and a solid finish as bronze. All of those are real targets. None of them require perfection, and having the range means there’s something to run toward even when the gold isn’t happening. The focus shifts to what you can actually do, rather than the outcome you can’t fully control.

Fact-check the spiral

When negative thinking hits before something high-stakes, Kamphoff recommends three questions: Is that thought true? Is it serving you? And what would be a more useful thing to tell yourself instead?

If the thought is “if I don’t ace this interview, I’ll never get another job,” none of those questions take long. The thought isn’t true, it isn’t helping, and a more grounded version might be: “Even if this one doesn’t go the way I want, I know I’m capable, and there will be other opportunities.” It’s a condensed version of what cognitive behavioral therapy calls thought challenging, fast enough to run through in under a minute.

The larger point Kamphoff keeps coming back to is that none of this requires being naturally confident. Confidence, in her view, is a decision. “Many times the action of confidence comes before the feeling, and it’s a skill,” she says. You don’t wait until you feel ready. You act, and the feeling tends to catch up.

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