Beating Anxiety

Anxiety is the result of either a) not believing you can achieve your goals successfully or b) having a fear of not achieving your goals.  Either can stop you in your tracks when it comes to being successful.

Worrying is not anxiety, but it can accompany being anxious.  Ultimately, what anxiety does as well is distracts you from your stated goal.

You must plot your course for success.  If you have your goals well-defined and your “insurance policies” in place (such as friends who can encourage you, experts in your chosen field who can guide you, etc.), anxiety and worry don’t have much room to take root.  If you are a negative person, however, you can give birth to these twins without much effort. 

If you don’t believe in your goals or don’t believe you can achieve them, your attitude will determine your level of success.  And that’s where worry and anxiety come in to roost.

Your first step in overcoming anxiety is to make sure you have your goals written down—or at least, entered in a PDA where you can easily retrieve them and view them regularly.  If you can see your goals and the small steps you’ll take to achieve them (and have a check-mark system to chart your progress), pull it out and read over it when you begin to feel anxious.

The second step is to correct your attitude.  If you dwell in the “I can’t” and “I’ll never,” you’re right—you can’t and you’ll never.  Instead, you need to dismiss those thoughts and consider what you have already accomplished and what next goal your series of baby steps will achieve.  We go back to the truth “attitude is everything.” 

Henry Ford famously said, “Either you think you can or you think you can’t.  Either way, you’re right.”  On this point, I think he was correct.  As an inventor, he had the opportunity to dwell on all the times his Quadricycle prototypes failed.  Instead, he moved on, learning from the failures and mistakes.  He didn’t let a bad prototype stand in his way of succeeding.  He overcame any anxiety and worry with positive attitude and a gritty determination.

The final step to overcoming anxiety is to have those around you who can encourage you.  We talked about this when discussing setting your goals and making sure that you have the appropriate support system around you.  Anxiety and worry rarely come to a party of more than one—they like to torment individuals.  Two or three people have the benefit of seeing different angles of a challenge and being positive about the outcome.  So if you find yourself worrying or anxious, tap your support system.  Don’t do it at 3:00 in the morning (your support system won’t be very supportive at that hour!), but do it as soon as it’s practical.  You’ll thank yourself and continue on towards your goal.

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