say I am excited: the study on turning nerves into energy, and what a replication found
Most of us are told to calm down before we speak. A 2014 study from Harvard Business School tested a different idea: instead of fighting the racing heart, give it a new name. Saying "I am excited" changed how people felt. Whether it changed how well they performed is where the evidence gets more interesting.
By Brightside English editorial team
Reviewed by a Brightside senior coach · · 5 min read
In Alison Wood Brooks's 2014 experiments, people who said "I am excited" before singing, speaking or doing maths felt more excited and, in her studies, performed better than those who tried to calm down. A 2025 direct replication of the public speaking study found the same boost in feeling excited, but no difference in how judges rated the speeches. It is a reasonable thing to try. It is not a sure upgrade.
The study
Alison Wood Brooks of Harvard Business School published "Get excited: Reappraising pre-performance anxiety as excitement" in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Her starting point was simple. Anxiety and excitement are both high-energy states: a fast pulse, alert attention. Calm is a low-energy state. So trying to calm down asks the body to make a big jump, while relabelling the energy as excitement asks for a smaller one.
The paper had four parts.
A survey of beliefs. Brooks asked 300 adults recruited online, most of them in full-time work, how someone should handle nerves before a big company speech. More than 90% chose "try to relax and calm down" as the best advice.
Study 1: karaoke. 113 university students sang the first verse of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" on a karaoke video game that scored pitch, volume and timing, with a small bonus for accuracy. Before singing, each person was asked "How do you feel?" and had to answer, out loud, with an assigned line: "I am anxious", "I am excited", or nothing at all.
Study 2: public speaking. 140 students had two minutes to prepare a persuasive speech on why they would be a good work partner, to be filmed and "judged later by a committee of peers". Just before speaking, each said either "I am excited" or "I am calm". Three raters who did not know the conditions scored the videos.
Study 3: maths under pressure. 188 students tackled a hard timed test, described as an "IQ test" with money at stake. Before starting they saw one of three messages: "Try to remain calm", "Try to get excited" or "Please wait a few moments". Heart rate was tracked throughout.
What it found
In every study, the excitement group reported feeling more excited.
- Karaoke: average accuracy was 80.5% after "I am excited", 69.3% with no statement and 53.0% after "I am anxious".
- Public speaking: the "I am excited" group spoke longer on average (about 167 seconds against 132) and were rated more persuasive, competent, confident and persistent than the "I am calm" group.
- Maths: the calm and neutral groups scored almost identically, and the "get excited" group scored higher.
One more result is worth knowing. Telling people to calm down did not calm their bodies. Heart rates stayed high whatever message people read. Brooks's conclusion was that it is easier to change the label on arousal than to switch the arousal off.
Speaking to Harvard Magazine in 2014, she summed it up: "If you say, 'I'm excited,' you're likely to actually feel excited."
Did it hold up?
The feeling part looks solid. The performance part is less certain.
In 2019 a team led by Michelle Poynter preregistered a direct replication of the public speaking study on the Open Science Framework, setting out their predictions before collecting data. They also added an indirect measure of anxiety, a version of the emotional Stroop task.
The results were published in 2025 in Psychology of Language and Communication by Poynter and Marcia Smith Pasqualini. Their self-report results were nearly identical to Brooks's: saying "I am excited" made people feel more excited, though not less anxious. But on every observer rating of the speeches, and on the indirect anxiety measure, they found no differences between the excited and calm groups. The authors discuss why such a small intervention could change how people felt without changing what an audience saw.
We did not find independent direct replications of the karaoke or maths studies, or a pooled meta-analysis of this specific technique. So the fair summary is mixed evidence: one well-documented original paper with positive results across tasks, and one careful replication that confirmed the feeling but not the performance gain.
This is how science is meant to work, and it does not make the original dishonest. Effects found in small laboratory groups often shrink when tested again.
How it gets misused
- "Say 'I'm excited' and you will nail it." The best current evidence says it may help you feel more ready. It does not promise a better talk.
- "Anxiety is just excitement, so ignore it." Relabelling is not the same as dismissing. Brooks's participants still felt anxious. They just felt more excited as well.
- "Never try to calm down." If you are dealing with clinical anxiety or panic, this study is not a treatment. It was about everyday performance nerves in students.
What it means for you
The useful idea is the mismatch Brooks pointed out. Your body before a toast, a pitch or a town hall is not going to become calm on command. Asking it to can feel like failing. Naming the energy as excitement, or as readiness, works with your body instead of against it.
Think of a founder in Kochi about to pitch to investors, a manager in Pune opening a town hall, or a parent giving a wedding toast. The pulse is up for all of them. A line like this, said quietly or out loud, gives the energy a direction:
"I am excited. This matters to me, and that's why my heart is racing."
"This is energy, not danger. Let's use it."
Then pair the words with things that do change performance: a well-practised first minute, a clear structure and a slow first breath.
If you speak in a second or third language, nerves often show up as worry about mistakes. It can help to shift the question from "Will I get it right?" to "What do I want them to take away?" That is an opportunity framing, which is what Brooks argued excitement encourages.
Sources
- Alison Wood Brooks, Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(3), 1144 to 1158, 2014. doi.org/10.1037/a0035325
- Alison Wood Brooks, the same paper, full text hosted by Harvard Business School. www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/xge-a0035325%20(2)_0287835d-9e25-4f92-9661-c5b54dbbcb39.pdf
- Erin O'Donnell, Get excited to perform well, Harvard Magazine, May to June 2014. www.harvardmagazine.com/2014/05/a-better-path-to-high-performance
- Michelle Poynter and colleagues, Reappraising Anxiety as Excitement: Replication of Wood Brooks (2013) Study 2, preregistration on the Open Science Framework, 22 November 2019. osf.io/cyzgj
- Michelle Poynter and Marcia Smith Pasqualini, Getting Excited About Public Speaking: A Replication, Psychology of Language and Communication, 29(1), 254 to 265, 2025. doi.org/10.58734/plc-2025-0011
Published by The Full Stop, the journal of Brightside English, in the The Experiments series. Every factual claim links to a source below; where accounts or findings are disputed, we say so. Sources checked on 26 Oct 2026. Reviewed by a Brightside senior coach. Corrections: see our editorial standard.