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Turning Anxiety into Excitement: A Tip for Releasing the Anxiety That is Running Wild This SeasonDecember 2008by Sandra ZimmerHuman emotional energy either contracts or expands. When your energy is contracting, you feel negative emotions such as fear and anxiety, anger and sadness. But when your energy is expanding, you feel positive emotions like excitement, joy, love and power. In this article, I’ll focus on anxiety vs. excitement. Anxiety is the contraction state where you think you don’t have any power, think possibilities are limited and expect things will probably go badly. Excitement is the expansion state of being energized for action and creating new possibilities. Whether you are anxious about the economic downturn, anxious about public speaking, sharing your ideas in a meeting or interviewing for a job, anxiety can be a doorway to energy, expansion and excitement. The secret to using anxiety is in how you focus your attention into the tension and how you label the experience of tension. If you focus your attention on the tension and judge the feeling as wrong and bad, then the fear and tension will expand and get stronger. But if you focus your attention on the tension and allow yourself to just feel the tension (rather than labeling it bad), then emotional energy starts to move and flow, becoming a sense of expanding aliveness. Try this when you are feeling anxious or fearful about what might happen in the future. Sit or lie down comfortably. Take a few deep breaths and follow the air as it goes in and out your nose. This will allow you to place attention in your body. Then, instead of focusing on your tension and thinking it is bad, focus on the tension and feel it fully. That is, feel the tension and go deeply into it. Dive your mental focus into the area of your body where you sense the most anxiety. Follow it down to the bottom of the feelings and suddenly a shift happens! The tension dissolves and an internal space opens up that now feels free and energized. You may actually jump up from your chair or bed and race to accomplish something. I usually get great ideas as soon as my tension or anxiety shifts to excitement. Amazing! The deal is not to feel the fear and do it anyway. The real magic is to feel the fear, feel the fear and keep feeling it until it shifts into excitement and then you will be energized and open to new possibilities. This season, it may just be that the economic contraction causes us all to go more deeply into our authentic selves and open to greater possibilities than we would have ever allowed ourselves in more prosperous times!
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For more information, contact Sandra Zimmer at (281) 293-7070 or (866) 575-7070 ©Copyright 2000-2005 - Self-Expression Center
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Sandra talks about Stage Fright
