music

im not good enough to ever play in high stakes matches :(

remember that it is a video game and that you have a real life that is always available if you do bad

take deep breaths, listen to music, dont care if you mess up

One thing I do and I think other players do as well is never play against names or reputations. What I mean by that is say the other team has a player who is hitting everything. Rather than calling that player out by his/her name I just refer to them as their class. By doing this the game remains simple and straight forward, because once you start making adjustments based upon a reputation you over think the game and it just spirals out of control.

as you play more, you will get more comfortable in the situations, and it will start seeming less scary and foreign.

You just have to realize how meaningless it is

There is no real money or fame on the line and there never will be so you may as well have a good time because if you're not having fun then there's literally no reason to play tf2

pizza

just yell at your screen without your push to talk on

i've wished death upon trip and his family at least three times a night for the past week

lean in chair
listen to drake
space out

I do this every day when I wake up

http://i.imgur.com/reSSdZ8.jpg

play for fun and maybe the w

When I get stressed out, I stop talking and just try to control my breathing for a minute or 2, it always works.
Being well-rested and well fed also helps.
Not having a teammate criticizing you constantly also helps.
Have a glass of water next to you, whenever you die, take a sip from, it gets your mind OFF the game for just a second, that has always helped me.

even tho its not my prefered type of music i started listening to like rock/metal stuff during officials and lan about 2 years ago and it really cools me down

Smoke a bowl and have fun

listen to your breathing

Yeah, I'd try breathing in for a count of four with your nose, hold for a count of 7, and then breathe out through your mouth for a count of 8 and repeat.

Remember to take enough time to hit your shots.

Relaxing music helps me stay calm a lot even when some people get on my nerves

?

Relax
Take your time

And take your time
To trust in me
And you will find
Infinity

whenever I get psyched out I stare at my xhair really hard and focus on aiming

like cloudmaker.......

local mute the weak

the stakes aren't high

the stakes are never high in tf2

you can get used to anything, keep at it and it will go away eventually

i used to struggle a lot with being nervous during matches. as you gain experience and play through it, you'll gradually learn what works for you. this is always going to be a very specific and personal issue that you need to address yourself, but hopefully the responses in this thread can give you some things to implement into your own solution.

i'd encourage you not to follow the advice telling you that it's just a game and that nothing matters because it isn't going to help you become a better player. if your justification for playing poorly due to nerves is that it doesn't mean anything, then you're not a competitor and it's just illogical to spend your time on something you aren't invested in. accept the fact that you are already spending your time playing this game -- not putting your best effort forward would just be a waste of your time if you are playing for the sake of competition. if you're going to do something, do it well.

if your main struggle is being too jittery to aim or talk, do whatever you do to relax beforehand. it will never completely go away, and being nervous means you are focused on the game, which is a good thing. it's just a matter of using that feeling to your advantage, rather than letting it control you. I find it helps to go into your match with a plan that you can stick to. distracting yourself by making it about the game and focusing on what's going on in the match will take pressure off of thinking about your aim, for example.

after your games, spend time thinking about your failures and what the underlying reasons for them are. instead of brushing off a poor performance as you not playing well and being nervous, watch the demo and consider what decisions you made that contributed to your performance. i've never seen a player perform poorly and make good decisions at the same time.

one of the things that helped me the most was making it about the team and trying to always be the kind of person your team can fall back on when things get rough, never shutting down. if your team is down 0-3 in a match and people are starting to shut down, be the person to question what's going wrong and make decisions to address it. if their roamer keeps killing your medic, instead of saying "our medic keeps dying", phrase it as "we need to keep our medic alive, can you stay closer to our medic scout?". being afraid of making decisions is worse than making poor ones. even if you're not the main caller on your team, you need to be capable of analyzing what's going wrong and offer that information to your team.

in a tournament setting where you are playing multiple matches or just long matches in general, people tend to lose focus once in a while. if you're noticing your teammate start to zone out, be the person to try to bring them back into it and coordinate with them, because you need them to do the same for you. i can't tell you the number of times i've started to go into autopilot during a match and have b4nny ask me "where are you taking the uber? what do you want to do?" to get me back in the game. little things like that can go a long way.

Just focus

For me its ofclassing, it changes the pace of the game to my own pace and gives me more control over how I play. Feels really rewarding when I make a play and takes pressure off me.

Team wise was getting Fragile on my team, he calmed me down whenever I went full retard and talked me out of it when I was down morale wise.