How I Learned to Turn Nervousness into Excitement
Use nervousness instead of letting it use you
One night on the way to a concert by one of my favorite artists I was feeling nervous. I think it was the fact that I wasn’t used to being in big crowds, it was a new experience, and I was worried something would go wrong.
I thought to myself “Why am I nervous? This should be a fun and exciting event.” I had mindlessly let my mind write the narrative that it wanted to write. I had all these negative thoughts and worries swimming in my head that were turning that excitement into worry.
I suddenly had a realization that it was my negative thoughts that were the issue, and if I simply chose to start thinking more positively about the experience, I could turn that nervousness into excitement. And that’s when I came up with a simple yet effective equation: Excitement = Nervousness + Positivity. By subtracting Positivity from both sides of the equation, we can rewrite that equation as Nervousness = Excitement + Negativity.
If you’re feeling nervous about something, you probably have negative thoughts that you might not even be aware of. Take the time to catch yourself having those negative thoughts and choose to replace them with more positive ones.
