“Reports are due next week!” When you hear that, do you jump right up and make plans for writing the report? No, no, no, it’s probably the anxiety that hits you first.
The unpleasantness of thinking about this task that has to be done and the look on your boss’s face when he sees the report, all that ungroundedness, uncertainty, and unmanageability comes rushing back before you even put pen to paper, and you even start to panic and sweat.
Anxiety is often uncomfortable, but it’s also a source of motivation, and the following tips can be used to dissipate the pain while retaining motivation.
There is no escape.
Let’s take a look at the most painful demonstration of writing a report: from the time you learn that the report is due, you start to feel anxious, but you can’t put pen to paper, so you eat, sleep, play games or catch up with dramas to avoid it. With the deadline approaching, anxiety like a snowball rolling bigger and bigger, and finally stayed up all night to finish writing the report in a hurry to hand it over. When I see the boss’s face when he reads the report, I know I’m wrong, but I dare to do it next time.
It’s normal to want to avoid anxiety when it strikes, and behind it are our inner beliefs of insecurity and our fear of the outside world.
But by allowing ourselves to avoid the pressure, in addition to writing a bad report every time, we will miss the opportunity for self-growth and personality development as a result, and this avoidance way of dealing with the problem is easy to fixate on.
Step 1 – Experience and accept that anxiety is not wrong
We can approach anxiety with a gentler attitude as opposed to forcefully avoiding it. After receiving the notice to hand in your report, start by feeling your experience carefully in the present moment; you may find that, “Well, I’m very upset and a little bit fearful right now, which makes me uncomfortable, but it’s okay to function.” The important thing is that any emotion is acceptable at this point, there is no need to feel ashamed or blame yourself for being upset, and there is no right or wrong in the experience itself.
After becoming aware of your emotions, a certain amount of acceptance is a more compassionate, caring attitude. It begins with acceptance of one’s anxiety, as this emotion also has the benefit of mobilizing various bodily functions to integrate resources and complete reports, and task completion brings a sense of accomplishment.
Sometimes the report is difficult to finish perfectly, and when we see that we are going to be disliked by our boss, we start to blame ourselves. Then there is also the gap between ideal and reality that needs to be accommodated. It is right to work harder and strive for perfection, but the basis of effort is to be sure that you have tried your best, rather than just blaming yourself for not being good enough.
It may feel difficult to try to be aware and accepting at first, and this is where a meditation practice can be a very effective way to do this, either a meditation to improve concentration or an open-ended monitoring meditation.
The first type of meditation involves pointing and maintaining attention to an object, such as focusing on your breathing, and then watching for wandering off or being distracted by the outside world (for example, the thought of writing a bad report comes up again). It’s normal to be disturbed, just shift your attention back to your breath, no need to get upset about it. Open-monitored meditations don’t need to focus on anything explicitly; just feel your thoughts, emotions and interpretations in the moment.
Step 2 – Believe you can do it right
When faced with the doubt of “can I write well”, it is much more comfortable to be confident. Confidence refers to the degree to which a person is confident that he or she can accomplish a given task using his or her own skills, also known as “self-efficacy”.
If you are anxious because you doubt that you will be able to write a good report, improving your self-efficacy can help you find a solution and increase your desire and anticipation to write well.
If you want to feel more confident, think about reports you have completed satisfactorily, talk to people who have done well, tell yourself that it is normal to feel a little uneasy and panicky, and ask people around you what they think (of course, it is better to get a positive answer from yourself or you will become more anxious).
However, a higher sense of self-efficacy is not better, as the accompanying complacency can reduce the quality of the report. Moreover, if you set too high a goal for yourself, such as a threefold increase in salary through this report, then even more self-confidence can hardly guarantee that the task will be accomplished.
Step 3 – Don’t avoid it, face it a little bit
The last is to break the avoidance, really start to start to complete the report. When you are very anxious, it is not realistic to force yourself to sit down and immediately get into the state of writing the report, and it is easy to break down when you are not ready to face the pressure directly, we can slowly and tentatively face the anxiety and start to take action.
Facing anxiety does not necessarily start with actual contact with the report, you can first imagine, think of yourself sitting in front of the computer to write the report scene, conceptualize the writing framework and slowly fill in the content. Then start from reading the report, collect the report information to start the reality of exposure, controlled a little experience of the process of anxiety, with the degree of exposure step by step increase, anxiety can gradually reduce.
Next, the key to start action is to break down the big goal into small goals, such as the “completion of the report” into six days to achieve a small goal, the first day you only need to read five excellent reports and summarize, so it sounds less stressful.
When writing the report, you can also give yourself a small reward for the completion of each small goal, and from time to time to imagine the completion of the report after the relaxation of the mood, so that the whole process of completing the task more enjoyable.
Anxiety, too, can be a motivator
In addition to “handing in the report”, many similar situations in daily life can be solved by these mental skills. For example, if you are upset because your weight is out of the healthy range, you can start by experiencing your own emotions, accepting your anxiety and your current weight, recalling your experience of successfully completing other tasks, seeking advice from professionals, and starting by drinking less milk tea and exercising more once a week to slowly form a habit of escaping from the vicious cycle of eating to relieve your anxiety.
The things or scenarios that bring on anxiety are varied, and the experience can be overwhelming, yet this basic emotion is of great importance to humans. For example, the anxiety-avoidance response sometimes allows us to avoid danger, and anxiety in the face of a task helps mobilize various bodily functions to integrate resources and complete the task.
Moreover, anxiety often arises because expectations are difficult to fulfill. Just as in the case of writing a report, we want the final version to be perfect and well-received, but the reality is that we have limited personal capacity, time, and information available to complete the report, and so anxiety arises. However, it is the realization of the gap between expectation and reality that makes us work towards it, and it is this gap that is the driving force behind the transformation of expectation into reality and symbolizes creativity.
If the goal of life is to be completely free of anxiety, the price is to give up autonomy and make no progress. A conscious life is bound to be anxious, and what we need to do is not to eliminate anxiety, but to deal with it constructively.
Of course, if anxiety has already caused serious impact on daily life, and feel very painful for a long time, then it belongs to pathological anxiety. Pathological anxiety includes generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder or panic attacks, phobias (agoraphobia, social phobia), etc. This condition requires professional help and systematic psychotherapy (e.g., cognitive-behavioral therapy or psychodynamic therapy).
Anxiety is unavoidable but controllable. Each time we successfully cope with anxiety we can grow the value of our experience, develop life boundaries, increase our enthusiasm for life, and take responsibility for our own lives. Utilizing these mental skills can help you become more comfortable with turning anxiety into motivation.