I would say I am someone who is fairly susceptible to feelings of anxiety. I don’t say that looking for sympathy or to feel any better about who I am. It is simply my objective take on my personal experience.
Maybe better described in other words, I am someone who strongly dislikes surprises, hates to lose, and generally has a low tolerance for ambiguity. All three of those things are areas of my life that I actively try to compensate for and adjust my baseline levels of.
For whatever reason, my body often has an immediate reaction when confronted with something new, unknown, or unexpected. Shoulders become tense, core tightens, and heart rate increases. Objectively, none of these physical responses help me in dealing with the problem at hand.
I would like to think that I have gotten good at setting aside those emotions, at least temporarily, when the stakes are high. I probably developed this trait from all my years of refereeing soccer, and in recent years with higher stress jobs and academic competitions. I’m proud to look at how I can now handle stressful situations, especially compared to my younger self. However, I still find myself experiencing these feelings of anxiety after climactic events of this nature take place, and when everything resets to normal. Feelings of self-doubt, insecurity, and lack of self efficacy cloud my better judgement and hold me back from moving towards self-actualization.
It’s when I feel this way that I can take a lesson from the past and use it to solve my present distress, and also whatever unforeseeable issues will arise in the future.
You see, looking back, each experience I have had of feeling those same feelings, just in a different scenario and context, turned out completely fine. The things I told myself I was too afraid to do, I did. The things I told myself I didn’t have an answer for, I solved. And the things that nearly paralyzed me with fear, I overcame.
If I had the opportunity to give advice to my previous self in any given stressful scenario, the advice I would give might seem lacking and contradictory to popular belief.
The advice I would give wouldn’t be anything technical or motivational or strategic at all. Instead, it would come with a smile, and would just be “It’s going to be alright. You’ll figure it out.”
As much as the younger version of me would hate that answer, I firmly believe it’s the right advice for the situation. In my most fearful moments, all it took to make it through was a bit of courage and self-belief. Taking a deep breath, bracing, and taking the leap.
Nearly all the implications and illusions that my mind constructed in the heat of the moment failed to manifest themselves in my life after I took the plunge of faith. They simply didn’t exist.
Now, in the present time, all that is required of me to overcome the feelings that limit my potential for growth and development is to put a little trust out into the world. Take a breath, close my eyes, and surrender.
It hasn’t steered me wrong yet.