Anxiety is often perceived as a negative experience. No one wants to feel the pangs of constant apprehension or that feeling that something bad is about to happen at any moment. However, as long as it doesn’t reach pathological levels, it is possible to use anxiety to your advantage.
3 unexpected benefits of anxiety
Modern life, with all its obligations and challenges, engulfs us in a stressful lifestyle. However, it is necessary to understand that anxiety is not simply an unwelcome guest.
From an evolutionary perspective, it has played a crucial role in our survival: the “fight or flight” reaction usually triggers an adaptive mechanism that prepares the body to face immediate threats.
Anxiety, like all other emotions, especially those we classify as “negative,” are survival tools that we have refined over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution to protect ourselves. Therefore, like everything in life, anxiety also has a positive side.
1. It helps us focus
In fact, it has been proven that while anxiety restricts overall attention, it also helps us focus more on potential threats. An anxious person, for example, sees “small print” better. This ability to focus on details can be particularly beneficial in contexts where attention to detail is crucial. A study conducted at the University of Waterloo also revealed that a manageable level of anxiety improves our memory, especially for details.
2. It allows us to be more empathetic
Psychologists at the University of Haifa have also found that anxiety can help us become more empathetic and understanding of other people’s problems. It is likely that after having to struggle with anxiety, we become more sensitive and tolerant of other people’s personal challenges.
3. It gives us extra motivation
When we are motivated, our performance increases. Not only do we do things better, but we also approach them in a more positive frame of mind. According to the Yerkes-Dodson law , the right level of anxiety helps us reach the ideal point of motivation. Anxiety, as long as it is not too high, gives us the energy we need because it activates the sympathetic nervous system, which is like our “accelerator.”
How to use anxiety to your advantage instead of paralyzing yourself?
Anxiety disorders can be crippling. There is no doubt about it. However, the widespread use of the term anxiety to refer to a general malaise causes confusion because it leads us to accept two fallacies:
- Feeling anxious is dangerous and harmful
- The solution is to combat or prevent anxiety
That way of thinking has led us to perceive everyday anxieties as problems that we must avoid at all costs. However, the problem is not anxiety. Anxiety is just the messenger: it tells us that we are facing uncertainty and that we must rise to the challenge or warns us that we must change something in our lives. The real problem is that our beliefs about anxiety and the desire to escape from it end up closing the cycle of anxiety.
Applying cognitive restructuring to anxiety will help you change the way you view and react to that state. An experiment conducted at Harvard Business School found that when we perceive anxiety as a positive state of arousal, we manage to improve our performance.
In fact, if you think about it, anxiety is nothing more than apprehension about an uncertain future: something bad could happen, but something good could also happen. So when you feel those butterflies in your stomach or your heart starts beating faster, don’t immediately assume that being anxious is negative.
Reframe these feelings as a sign of anticipation and excitement. You have the ability to redirect that energy by telling yourself “ I’m excited ” instead of “This is going to be a disaster, I’m anxious.”
It will also be helpful to pair each worry with an action, a simple trick to turn anxiety into something productive. Basically, it consists of making a list of the things that worry you and generate anxiety. Then, think of practical actions that will help you solve them or minimize their impact.
In this way, you can use anxiety to your advantage because you will take advantage of its alarm message to prepare yourself and face those situations that could create problems for you. The key is to redirect the energy it generates towards action, instead of getting lost in the labyrinth of worries.
Soren Kierkegaard wrote: “ Whoever learns to feel anxious in the right way has learned the most important thing .” Learning to deal with stress, tension and apprehension is not easy, but when you manage to use anxiety to your advantage and stop seeing it as an enemy, you can even turn it into a tool to connect with yourself, listen to yourself and build the life you want.