Let's start with definitions.
(These are from the dictionary widget on my Mac)
anxiety 'aNGˈzī-itē'
noun ( pl. anxieties )
a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome
excitement 'ikˈsītmənt'
noun
a feeling of great enthusiasm and eagerness
Here are some thoughts that surfaced for me around anxiety and excitement:
Anxiety and Excitement are both feelings and as you can see, both definitions above convey that.
But here is the main difference:
Anxiety is fear-based.
Excitement is pleasure-based.
When you look up both words in a thesaurus, you'll see that most of the words associated with anxiety are what we would consider more negative.
And the words associated with excitement are more positive.
The thing is though, excitement is not exactly the opposite of anxiety. The opposite of anxiety is calm and peaceful.
And I believe that's where the misinterpretation happens.
Because physiologically, anxiety and excitement are very similar. In other words, the way our body reacts to both feelings is almost identical.
However, here's another big difference:
- With anxiety, the mind interprets the experience as a threat, as fearful and with a probable negative outcome.
-
With excitement, you are brought more into the present moment and the anticipated outcome is more positive
UNLESS, (and read this closely), when we are experiencing excitement, we allow the mind to come in and interpret our feelings and attach to a story and to expectations - that attachment to the story and expectations is what will make us suffer and feel disappointed when they don't happen.
At that point, we went right from feeling excited in the moment and more in our body, to straight back into the mind where anxiety lives.
We cannot predict the future, so if your feelings of excitement start playing out a future story, then that, in my opinion, can lead to anxious feelings.
Another point I'd like to share (and that I spoke of in last week's newsletter too) is, yes, you guessed it, PERSPECTIVE.
If you have the perspective or mindset that the life challenges that come your way are going to be hard and difficult to deal with, then that will lead to a life of living with more anxiety.
If however, you have the perspective or mindset of seeing the life challenges that come your way as potential to expand your challenge-solving skillset by coming up with new, unique creative solutions for those challenges, then you will experience less anxiety in your life.
So did this sharing help? What are you thoughts?
