Anxiety, Thy name is success

How many times have you felt this?

• Imagine how many opportunities you have lost just because you suffered from anxiety.
• A job interview which could have been much better and procured job for us was rendered waste because of your lousy state of mind.
• The perfect moment when you could have saved your relationship but it fell apart just because you were focused on your anxiety more than the relationship.

Anxiety is negative
Anxiety is the word that fills my blood with tremors when I stand up to speak before a group of people. And it has been with me since I have been in this world.

Much of anxiety that I have felt came from negative perception of the situation that I am confronted with and those negative feelings captured my brain so much that I could not perceive that success comes from anxiety.

Speaking in my school days
It was back in my school days when my teacher looked at me affectionately and asked me to prepare for a welcome speech to the New Year students, not realizing my psychological state of mind about speaking. He handed in the topic and hurriedly went school upstairs leaving me in a “What do I do?” state. Only God and I know how I spent the whole night in my bed trembling for the speech that I was destined to make the next day.

The faces of all my class fellows doubled and enlarged to scare me to death. 

I stayed awake in sheer insomnia until the small hours. Then I shifted my focus on the moving ceiling fan to let myself resigned to fate and slumber.

How I overcame anxiety
The morning opened with a sense of freshness and I went to school and stood before my class fellows.

I thought if making speech would hurt me; not making the speech would hurt me more. 

So, I walked to the stage. The faces looked normal. I uttered a few words hesitatingly to check to see if somebody would laugh. That nobody laughed helped me muster up my courage to speak a few more and then a few more sentences. This created cohesion of thoughts and started making the whole maiden speech of my life. The reaction of my audience was neutral. However, it was not as bad as those of other students who came to the stage after me. The situation ended but provided food for thought.

Divert your attention
Anxiety is devastating if you allow it to get on your nerves. It destroys the very fabric of your being. It shatters your muscles. It renders your talent worthless. But the very moment you ignore it and divert your attention to something positive, it melts down from which success can be built.

Anxiety is energizing
When situational anxiety like the one I mentioned of my school days hits you, it creates vibrations in your nervous system, it stirs excitement in your mind and soul and it keeps you alert so you become ready for something novel to take place. That’s when anxious state can be capitalized by putting in your best positive thoughts. You just need to tweak your brain into thinking that the groundwork for action is ready and the battlefield for success is prepared because you have physically become charged up to create success for yourself.

Action fights anxiety
Anxiety is optimism, excitement and confidence. It all depends on whether you fight or flight it. Once, you become committed to doing what anxiety stops you from, it becomes success for you. Thus your life’s most cherished success comes from anxiety, not confidence.