Jerry Seinfeld’s Secret Cure For Performance Anxiety

How to cure your fear of public speaking

Many would argue Jerry Seinfeld is the most successful comedian in history.

With a net worth of $925 million, he is certainly the richest.

But even someone as successful as Seinfeld is no stranger to stage fright and performance anxiety.

As a trick to combat stress and anxiety, Jerry Seinfeld used to hang up pictures of the universe in the Seinfeld writing room.

Photos from the Hubble Space Telescope would show the universe in all its grandeur, an endless expanse of space and time. For Jerry, this made his day-to-day stressors seem small and fleeting by comparison.

In Judd Apatow’s memoir, Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy, Jerry is quoted saying, “That would calm me when I would start to think that this was important.”

When Apatow replied saying that perspective was depressing, Seinfeld clarified, “Most people would say that. I’ve often said this and people say, ‘It makes me feel insignificant.’ And I don’t find being insignificant depressing. I find it uplifting.”

This makes sense. From Jerry’s perspective, the entire world was watching his show. Even years later he couldn’t even go on vacation or film Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee without being hounded by paparazzi.

Not that surprising for the namesake of a show that TV Guide named the greatest TV show of all time.

For Seinfeld, stress and anxiety stemmed from the public’s expectations of him and the impossible expectation to live up to his reputation.

By staring at photos from the Hubble Telescope Jerry was reminded that life is fleeting and we are but a speck on the timeline of existence.

While this might seem melancholic, it can also be viewed from the opposite direction.

Who cares what people think of you? Who cares if you mess up on your group speech? Who cares if you try and fail? In the end, no one will remember your mess-ups.

This can seem depressing for some. But for others, it is a liberating feeling.

If our lives our fleeting, what’s there to lose? Why not give it all a shot?

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