Butterflies before the game just mean the engine’s running. Nobody wins in a parked car.

Nerves and readiness share a physiology. The fast heart, the restless stomach, the slight shake are your body moving resources where they are needed, and fear is only one way to read that. Nothing has gone wrong. The same sensation that feels like dread before the start reads as energy the moment you begin.

Rather than trying to switch it off, give the feeling a job: warm up, move, run through your first thirty seconds. Call it being ready instead of being scared. Then start, because that feeling resolves in motion rather than in waiting.