Embrace Your Anxiety By Reframing It As ‘Excitement’

Historically, I’ve always been a slightly anxious person.

First day of school? Super nervous. First time meeting my boyfriend’s friends? I might need to hide in the bathroom for a bit.

It’s something I’m typically able to get over fairly quickly, yet it happens often.

This week Fast Company made a great suggestion on how to handle that anxiety a little better: reframe it in your mind as excitement.

While technically you’ll still be experiencing the same feelings, when you think of them as simply being excited about something then it will be a bit easier to manage than considering yourself anxious instead.

In general, we all consider excitement to be a positive feeling while anxiety is most often considered a negative one.

When you lean into that feeling it can transform what would have potentially been a negative into a positive. Too much anxiety can cause your performance to suffer at work. By reframing it in your mind as excitement instead you can potentially turn that negative into a positive, and make the feeling one that works for you rather than against you.