Channeling Anxiety
How to use anxiety to your advantage by channeling it in a healthy way
The fear of public speaking is the most common phobia ahead of death, spiders, or heights.
My experience has been that a successful public speech comes down to preparation. If I start early, finish the presentation ahead of time, and rehearse in front of actual people it usually goes well enough. In the end, it just takes time.
An upcoming presentation generates a lot of anxiety for me. However, in preparing for a recent presentation at work I found a concept that helped me channel the anxiety usefully and not feel overwhelmed by it. This idea is what I want to share.
The idea is simple but powerful. It is based on the observation that I do not feel negative anxiety while I am preparing for the presentation. Preparation converts the feel of anxiety into productive energy. I believe this is the reason for anxiety and its proper place in a balanced mind. Anxiety is a source of productive energy to use towards solving our most pressing problems or important upcoming interaction.
This is why it is ironic that anxiety can cause us to procrastinate. Procrastination is a way to avoid the problem or source of stress. Of course, avoidance causes the anxiety to compound and can actually make a reality of the fears.
But by keeping in mind that the anxiety can be silenced through preparation, I was able to handle the anxiety of a big upcoming presentation. When looked at this way, anxiety actually acts as an internal, built-in barometer for preparedness. Feel some anxiety? Prepare more. Feel a lot? You need to prepare a lot. It’s the built-in feedback mechanism to tell us how ready we feel — and the only way to release the pressure is to prepare; to do the work. Anyway, this idea helped me a lot in both feeling comfortable with the anxiety and preparing the right amount.
Some Positive Beliefs about Anxiety
Anxiety is an invitation to focus
Anxiety is productive energy waiting to be used
Anxiety is an indicator of our most pressing problem or upcoming interaction
Anxiety indicates the size of the problem or the importance of the upcoming interaction
Anxiety is a useful tool that helps me navigate life. I’m thankful to have anxiety for this reason.
Thanks for reading. Would be great to hear your thoughts.
I really like the article! I had situations when I procrastinated because I was trying to avoid a situation. Doing this only makes us even more anxious and obviously doesn´t fix the problem! Preparing well is definitely the best way of decreasing anxiety and also building self-confidence for future similar situations. Another good tip I would add to your list is facing that very thing that makes you anxious first thing in the morning (preparing for it, I mean), even if only for 5 or 10 minutes. If you postpone it a lot to the rest of the day, there is a big probability that you end up not doing it.