The light is ready, a mild murmuring is reaching your ears, and only a velvet curtain separates you from the crowd. From the audience. From being in front of everyone. What is it that makes just a couple of steps to the stage so difficult? Why are we so afraid of stepping out of the crowd?

As I have heard, it’s in our genes to be afraid of the crowd, to be afraid of not being accepted, because without the community you wouldn’t survive back in the days. Neither would you survive now. Acceptance is a constant need, following us from the moment we are born.

When I get a stage fright, my hands start shaking and sweating, my heart is pounding, eyes wide open and it’s hard to breathe. The same symptoms sometimes happen to someone who have just fallen in love or out of the window of the 5th floor.

Stage fright also means no matter how and when, but the panic attack will get you. It starts as a feeling of someone’s hands squeezing your entrails, making the body shake, spreading the trembling from your chest up to your forehead, down to toes and back. It’s scary, but it’s not a heart attack until the left part of the body can make same moves as the right one. Check, and if it does, go on. You’re going to live tonight.

“What if no one likes me? What if I mess up in front of people?” People are overly obsessed with society’s opinion, they are so desperately trying to be liked that every performance in front of someone else makes them nervous.

But before you make any decisions, remember: people cannot evaluate themselves. Something got broken in our elaborately made genes, not letting any alive person objectively look at themselves. We are all about emotions. We cry at the funerals and laugh at weddings, smile looking at things we like and frown when the day seems bad. And emotions are part of every judgement we make. Judging yourself is the hardest.

Do your best and stop thinking. Those are the most efficient advices you could ever get, no matter what words they are wrapped in. Prepare yourself, but get rest as well. Overpractice affects your performance as well as not being ready. If you are not prepared, as it seems to you, it doesn’t necessarily mean you will fail. It doesn’t even mean you are not ready. Listen to what others say, even if it seems like an attempt to just make you feel better.

There is one more advice that helps me a lot. There it is: don’t think about yourself. People in the audience came for the product and you are just an instrument, a machine performing that product for them. And it’s actually nothing but the thing you are doing, whether it’s singing, dancing, public speaking, acting, or more.

Create, be passionate about what you do and never give up whatever happens.  Stage fright is definitely a big challenge. But challenges are made to be overcome.