1: Turns out anxiety and excitement are the exact same emotion.
Physiologically, that is. Which just means how your body operates.
“Whether you are anxious about something or excited about it, your body responds in a nearly identical ‘high arousal’ state,” Jane McGonigal writes in her book SuperBetter: The Power of Living Gamefully.
How does your body react?
“You have excess energy, you may feel butterflies in your stomach, your heart rate may increase, and so on,” Jane observes.
What do you tell yourself when this happens?
I need to relax. I need to calm down.
That’s the wrong instinct, Jane suggests.
“In order to calm down, you would have to slow your heart rate and reduce your adrenaline. That’s not easy,” she notes, “especially when you’re facing a stressful situation.”
Instead, “when you’re feeling anxious about a problem, it’s much easier to try to get excited about solving it than to try to calm down,” Jane writes.
Because getting excited doesn’t require you to change how your body feels.
“You just have to change how your mind interprets what you’re physically feeling,” she notes. “You can reappraise the adrenaline rush and the increased heart rate as signs you’re actually enthusiastic and eager or even exhilarated.”
2: This week, we’ve been exploring two very different responses to adversity: A challenge mindset and a threat mindset.
A threat mindset negatively impacts how we feel. It brings about anxiety and even depression.
“It’s natural to react to adversity with a threat mindset, but you aren’t stuck with one,” Jane notes.
Instead, you can respond to adversity with a challenge mindset. Doing so “improves your ability to successfully achieve your goals and reduce the suffering that can accompany stressful or traumatic experiences,” she states.
To shift from a threat mindset to a challenge mindset, we must master a specific skill.
“It’s called cognitive reappraisal, and it means changing how you think and feel about a stressful problem in your life,” Jane writes.
How does it work?
“There’s actually a very simple trick—a scientifically validated method—that I can teach you right now,” she explains. “It helps you turn anxiety into excitement, and it’s the easiest form of cognitive reappraisal to learn.”
The good news?
“It’s easy to do,” Jane writes.
3: You start by thinking about something that usually makes you nervous.
“Not something truly traumatic,” she notes, “but an everyday situation where you personally would like to experience more confidence and less negative stress, [including] public speaking, or taking a test, or asking for a raise at work, or flying, or going to a party alone.”
Even better?
Choose an upcoming situation that’s making you nervous, perhaps “a tough conversation you need to have, a doctor’s appointment, getting feedback on your work, a first date,” she suggests.
Now, concentrate on that. “Whatever it is that gets your nerves going, keep imagining it, and wait until you feel the telltale butterflies in your stomach,” Jane adds.
Now that you feel it in your body, simply say: “I’m excited!” Or, “Get excited!”
Say it out loud.
Repeat it again and again.
That’s it. That’s all you need to do.
According to research done by Harvard Business School psychologist Alison Wood, “this is literally all it takes to make people less anxious, more optimistic, and more successful in solving problems or undertaking stressful tasks,” Jane writes.
So, what’s the benefit of this approach?
“When we’re not thinking anxious thoughts,” she notes, “we’re free to use that mental effort and physical energy to be creative, focus on the problem, and otherwise get stuff done.”
Which is why participants in Dr. Brooks’s lab “not only felt more optimistic, but also performed better at high-stress tasks (like singing in front of judges) when using this technique.”
Personal aside: I learned about this research several years ago, and I’ve taught it to our two youngest daughters, who have now used it to succeed in stressful dance and cheer tryouts.
More next week!
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Reflection: When I feel anxious, do I automatically try to calm down—or could I reinterpret that energy as excitement?
Action: The next time I feel nervous, say “I’m excited” out loud and use that energy to take action.
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