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Looking to calm your nerves? Here are 4 tips from Super Bowl champions

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  • Post last modified:February 2, 2025

While running out onto the field for the first time before Super Bowl LIV’s kickoff in 2020, Chiefs punter Dustin Colquitt remembers looking up and seeing a piece of trivia on the video board: If the Chiefs win today, Dustin joins his dad, Craig, and brother, Britton, as a Super Bowl champion. It immediately triggered a bout of overthinking and anxiety.

Oh crap, Colquitt thought. To calm his nerves, he used a simple remedy: a series of breathing exercises on the sideline.

People everywhere deal with similar surges of pressure or nervousness. The professional football players who have made it to the Super Bowl are experiencing those same feelings, but on a public stage, elevated for tens of millions to see. The extremeness of it all forces them to figure out how to conquer those emotions in ways we can also apply ahead of a big job interview, a public speaking engagement or any pressure moment in our lives.

Here are four tips on how to quiet your mind from Super Bowl champions.

Find a helpful distraction

In the middle of Super XLIX in 2015, Seahawks wide receiver Doug Baldwin felt some anxiety creeping in. It was weird to him, after entering the game with what he called an “overwhelming sense of confidence.” But he knew where the anxiety was coming from.

It’s why he had practiced a few techniques ahead of time, one of which he started to do at that moment.

He closed his eyes and stuck his hands out in front of him. Then, using his thumb, he touched each one of his fingertips, one by one, and repeatedly tapped his fingers.

What it was doing was re-grounding me in that moment, Baldwin explained. Kind of helping me get in tune with my body. The simple touching of your fingertips, that sends electro signals throughout your body.

It also serves as a distraction, something Baldwin knew he needed in pressure-packed moments. Only an hour or two earlier, he preoccupied himself on his phone with his favorite strategy game at the time, “Galaxy On Fire: Alliances.”

I could distract my mind and go to something that was a little bit more controllable and lighthearted, he said.

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