Viv Groskop

to be true that we're not thinking about other people all of the time we're often worried about ourselves and yet we believe at the same time that everyone is thinking about us.

It's always I think the most useful thing and it's something that I learned through moving from being a journalist to a stand-up comedian is that in the moments when you think everyone's thinking about you and of course you need to think that when you're on stage

it's the most useful thing to turn it back around and think, what can I do for them?

How are they feeling?

How can I look after them?

And you do realize the more you put yourself out there, especially something really extreme like stand up, that other people, they just don't actually really care about you at all in a good way.

You know, so if you have a bad gig,

everybody's going to have forgotten about it by the time the next act comes on.

And so you can forget about it the next day and get on and try again.

The same way if you have an amazing thing happen to you, you know, if you really nail a presentation or you give a great pitch or you have a great night at stand up, it's not going to change the world.

You know, we're always operating inside as if there are these really high stakes for everything.

And actually, most of the time, the stakes are much lower than we think.

So we can afford to take the pressure off ourselves.

The most obvious advice is breathing and of the many, many actors and performers and comedians that I've interviewed or been alongside, that is the obvious go-to that they will talk about.

Many performers

And I'm talking about people who are household names.

They do breathing exercises as a matter of routine.

I was always really surprised to see this.

When I started out in stand up, I would be working alongside people who were hugely successful way, way ahead of me in the game.

And they would take themselves off to one side.