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Anxiety can hold you back, or become a catalyst for productivity.
By Sidhharrth S Kumaar — Written on Jun 17, 2022
Anxiety is your body's natural response to stressful situations. The unnerving emotion is accompanied by feelings of fear, stress and worry.
Everyone experiences a bit of anxiety but, for many, it can become a debilitating condition that can strike at any time for almost any reason.
For example, anxiety might kick in just before you're going to deliver an important presentation, or when you're preparing to ask for a raise, or collecting yourself to speak before a large social gathering.
While anxiety can cause someone to sink into an emotional shell, it also can be a positive emotion that motivates people to go out in the world and give their best.
In fact, anxiety can be harnessed and utilized as a positive emotion.
For many people, the excessive nervousness and fear hold them back from showing up for daily activities, expressing themselves, or taking action requisite for moving forward with their career, success, and personal life contentment.
But by accepting anxiety as a natural emotion, one can learn constructive ways to manage it effectively and turn feelings of panic and distress into a tool for yielding their peak productivity.
Here are 5 ways to channel your anxiety into productivity.
1. Turn your anxiety into excitement.
The general reaction of people facing anxiety is to try to calm down. However, the best strategy to channel anxiety into productivity is to think of it as a more positive emotion: excitement.
According to a report from Harvard Business School, individuals who reframe their thoughts of fear and restlessness into excitement are more productive and competent and perform better than those who try to stay calm in pre-performance situations.
As both excitement and anxiety elicit the same feelings of arousal, reframing the negative emotion into a more positive one can help you gain the upper hand in such situations.
This can be done by the simple process of reaffirming and saying out loud "I am excited" when feeling anxious. This straightforward strategy will shift your mindset from searching for threats to focusing on and grabbing opportunities.
2. Incorporate personal meditation into your daily routine.
Meditation is the practice of training your mind to remain peaceful, focused and stress-free. It is also proven to mitigate the symptoms of depression and anxiety.
The regular practice of meditation is believed to deliver results comparable to antidepressants. With your new composed sense of self, you will be able to push the boundaries of your comfort zone and get your head back in the game.
Out of all the meditation techniques, the mindfulness technique is proven to be the most beneficial for anxiety. This technique, combined with diaphragmatic breathing, stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, helps in acknowledging your emotions rather than being overwhelmed by them, and deactivates the body's "fight or flight" response.
3. Develop a mantra and affirmation.
Mantra chanting is a robust tool to develop a counter-narrative to anxiety-provoking thoughts. You can create your own mantra. Follow these steps:
What are your dominant thoughts when you are feeling anxious? Pay close attention to them and jot them down.
Now, create more logical counter-narrative mantras or affirmations against these dominant negative thoughts.
For example, change "I'm not worthy" to "I've come so far in my life. I'm worthy of all the opportunities, abundance, and amazing experiences I want."
Chant these mantras repeatedly with conviction every day and when you are feeling anxious.
4. Schedule time to acknowledge your worries.
Entrepreneurs, professionals and employees are used to handling several problems at once every day. More often than not, they feel a sense of urgency to deal with everything — right now. There's a constant fear of lagging behind or missing out, which triggers anxiety and stress.
It's not possible to give your best at a task when you're thinking about four others. Instead of messing up your current duty, assign an hour or a few minutes in your calendar to acknowledge your worries.
This simple solution saves your time, makes you more efficient, and boosts productivity. When you acknowledge your worries with a free mind, you're more likely to find the best solutions.
5. Use personalized sound therapy.
Sound therapy is one of the most soothing ways of directing your negative emotions into positive ones. Empowered with binaural beats, the calming music stimulates the ear-brain connection and relieves symptoms of anxiety. Thereby, introducing you to a self-assured and confident sense of being.
Sound therapy can be personalized based on the date of birth and name of a person to infuse positive feelings.
A credentialed sound therapist can provide you with a personalized sound therapy session after assessing your individual needs.
Depending upon your behavioral patterns and anxiety triggers, these sessions can help you to reanalyze your negative emotions and transform them into more positive ones.
And as we all know, a happy, content and energetic mindset favors productivity.
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Sidhharrth S. Kumaar is the founder of NumroVani and a registered pharmacist turned Astro Numerologist. For more information, visit his website.