How to Use Anxiety to Your Advantage

Every single person deals with anxiety. For some people, even thinking about the word “anxiety” gives them anxiety, and the feeling it creates is anything but pleasant. A tightness in your chest, the feeling of space closing in, a surge of energy swelling in our bodies. We get shaky, jittery, and search quickly for a way to get rid of it. Having anxiety, especially extreme anxiety, feels awful. But what if I told you that your anxiety didn’t have to be an anchor and that it can actually be used as a powerful tool to your advantage?

Understanding Anxiety

Anxiety is a psychological response evolved over thousands of years to help us maintain focus, stay vigilant for threats, and prepare to physically respond to those threats. The feelings created from anxiety (shakiness, jitters, tightness) are caused by a huge dump of adrenaline. Adrenaline has the effect of narrowing our focus, increasing our energy output, and diverting blood flow towards our muscles. This narrowed focus helps us maintain focus on the potential threat, the increased energy output delivers more energy to our muscles to be more readily used, and the diverting of blood flow away from unnecessary bodily functions give more energy to our muscles and improves strength and power.

Anxiety as a Tool

These physical and psychological effects automatically occur whenever we experience anxiety, but because we try to push them down rather than embrace them, this creates the responses of shakiness and jittering. The energy and focus needs to go somewhere, and when they are resisted against, it’s like trying to keep a lid on a volcano. That volcano is going to implode if it’s not allowed to erupt. Instead of keeping a lid on our anxiety, we can allow it to erupt and learn to guide its effects towards whatever we are anxious about. This guidance helps us become more focused, have higher energy towards tackling the problem, and gives us greater strength and power if it is required.

Rather than trying to hide anxiety or ignore it, we need to start embracing it. Anxiety doesn’t have to be an anchor that holds us back, and it definitely doesn’t have to be seen as your worst enemy. If you learn to embrace your anxiety and learn how to guide its effects rather than resist them, you might find that your anxiety is a gift rather than a curse.