How often do you feel anxious?
Some feel like a hamster on a wheel, running all of the time, but not getting anywhere. They work themselves to death, but don’t accomplish anything. Some have said they feel like they are in a pressure cooker and have so much to do, constantly worried about the next thing. Anxiety can affect everyone.
Is anxiety always bad?
Simple answer, no. So, how can you used it to help yourself? What can you learn from it?
At times anxiety can be motivating. It can move use to get things done. Maybe we have friends or family coming to visit that we haven’t seen in a really long time, we are anxious to see them and want to have everything ready. The anxiousness moves us to prepare for our guests.
Anxiety can also alert us to a danger. Maybe it is a warning that you are not making a wise decision. It can help you to correct your course and take the right action.
What if anxiety seems to be working against us instead of helping us?
Three steps to use anxiety as a tool!
Awareness: Be aware of the anxiety and question the reasonableness of the anxiety. Why do you feel anxious? Take time to become aware of your thoughts that are causing you to feel anxious.
Make it Neutral: Take one day at a time, think it through. Whatever you are anxious about, will you be anxious tomorrow, or a week from now? When we neutralize the emotion we aren’t trying to make it go away, but we want to learn from it. Allowing the emotion, processing it, think about your future self, how does he/she handle this situation. Step back and evaluate from a place of calm, take time to examine and learn, without judgement.
Accept: Learn to live with what you cannot change. Prepare for situations the best you can, but accept that you can’t control everything in your life or other people. You can control your thinking and how you choose to react to situations or things people say. Put your anxiety into perspective; focus on the big picture and not stress over the small details. If we put our anxiety into perspective, we are less likely to feel overwhelmed.
We can use anxiety or any emotion we experience as a learning tool.