Don't Panic!
Judy Hawkins
Nailsea, Somerset ringers in the 1970's
I'm very new at change ringing! But, with decades of life experience behind me, and (still) being prone to panic when I get ahead of myself, I've found that taking a step back to things I know for sure, that'll usually get the panic under control.
For example, when I'm about to start writing some software code, I usually have the whole thing in mind, the big picture, and I freak out a bit about it because it just seems way too big -- which is true, actually, you don't write the whole thing in one blow. So finding the first thing to write, the first simple chunk of it, that calms me down and I can get started, focused on just the one thing I'm pretty sure I know how to do.
That kind of thinking helped me the other day when I came back from two weeks away from change ringing. I wasn't sure of much, except that I knew how to pull a back stroke, so we started from there. Once I'd done that, I started remembering the other things I'd started learning, like what to do with all that rope when putting both hands on the sally, and I got to pull off from the set bell (taking time to feel how the bell moves as it comes up to its balance point before coming down -- that's great fun), and then do one single handstroke, with my teacher setting the bell for me, so I could do it all again.
In other settings, when I'm in the teacher role, if I see panic in someone's eyes, I'll ask, "What do you feel confident of?" and start from whatever they say.