You have a job interview on Friday. This is the final interview and the one which will determine whether you get the job. It’s your dream job, one you have coveted for a long time. You can’t stop thinking about it. Overthinking might be more accurate.

How you conduct yourself in this interview will determine whether you will be shortly moving into a new office inside a new company, or will remain where you are, dissatisfied and unfulfilled.

It’s all up to you. And you are terrified.

Every time your mind drifts to that upcoming interview, you feel your heart began to race, your hands become clammy and you visualize yourself sitting in the interview, frozen.

The pressure is enormous. Flub this and years of painstaking work and thousands of hours of extra effort will be instantly relegated to the garbage bin.

It’s all up to you. And you are terrified.

Each time you think of that upcoming interview, you feel anxious and can just see yourself freezing and completing blowing it.

How you present yourself will determine whether you advance or stagnate.

It’s all up to you. And you are terrified.

Each time you think of tomorrow’s meeting, the burden of responsibility feels heavier and your anxiety deepens.

Overthinking? No.

Most of us have, at some time, been in a similar situation. The more we think of “that moment” the more stressed, panicky and nervous we become.

Quite often we carry that emotion into the meeting with us, and when we leave, we do so with the certainty that we have blown it.

While the results of the meeting may clearly demonstrate that we did not blow it, our constant fretting has prepared us for a subpar performance.

You’re Rehearsing

You see, what we have really been doing is rehearsing. Each time we have thought of the upcoming event and felt ourselves stressing, visualize ourselves delivering our worst possible performance and hear ourselves stammer and stutter our way through, it is as if we are actors preparing for a grand opening.

When we attend a play and are mesmerized by the performance of the actors it is largely because they do not appear to be playing a role, but rather they seem to be real in every way. This comes about purely from painstakingly rehearsing their performance.

If it’s true that practice makes perfect, then by constantly practicing our nervousness, anxiety, stress and fear, are we not ensuring the outcome before the interview even starts?  And while our conscious mind would never believe we are, in fact, setting ourselves up to fail, understand how our actions have done a brilliant job to ensure that it does not end well.

The solution is simple: rehearse what you want to have happen, not what you don’t want. Always be mindful of what you practice and unequivocally understand that when you talk to yourself, make no mistake about it, you are ALWAYS listening.

We are all better actors than we give ourselves credit for. If we truly want to deliver exemplary performance, regardless of extenuating circumstances, we must remember to take a few moments to ensure we are rehearsing the proper scene.

Let’s make a habit of meeting like this.