Anxiety makes life small. It limited your ability to tap into all the great knowledge, skills, perspective, and experience you have acquired. Similarly, it limits the wonderment you are able to experience in everyday life, restricting most of what you experience to just the negative.

How it works

Most life events are neutral and harmless. How we perceive these neutral events determines how our bodies and minds ultimately experience them. If we see them as a threat, our sympathetic nervous system takes over. If we see them as an opportunity, our parasympathetic nervous system takes over. Our experience of a neutral event will be dramatically different depending on which nervous system is engaged.

Perceived as:

Threat
Opportunity

Nervous system activated:

Sympathetic nervous system (SNS)
Parasympathetic nervous system (PNS)

What it does:

(SNS) Initiates fight, flight, or freeze body response
(PNS) Initiates rest and digest body response

What it cares about:

(SNS) Physical survival
(PNS) Best outcome

Goal:

(SNS) Get through situation as quickly as possible to eliminate threat to self
(PNS) Achieve the best potential outcome in the situation

How it approaches goal:

(SNS) Shuts down all mental and physical systems not necessary for physical survival to ensure response time is as efficient as possible

(PNS) Taps into mental and physical systems responsible for abstract planning, creativity, and logical reasoning

What it looks like:

(SNS) Short neuron pathways resulting in quick but shallow thinking and limited use of mental and physical resources
(PNS) Longer neuron pathways resulting in slower but deeper thinking, referencing the full capacity of mental and physical resources.

What it feels like:

(SNS) Fear, anxiety
(PNS) Calm, clarity, confidence, flow

Situational outcome:

(SNS) Poor performance due to limited access to the right mental and physical systems
(PNS) Strong performance due to tapping into psychological and physical systems best suited for the situation

Long-term effect:

(SNS) Poor outcomes confirm to subconscious that you were correct in seeing the situation as a threat and assessing yourself as not equipped to handle that situation. The subconscious files away the learning ensuring that next time you face a similar situation, you see it as a threat and respond to it in a similar fearful way.
(PNS) Positive outcomes confirm to subconscious that you were correct in seeing the situation as an opportunity and assessing yourself as full capable of navigating it effectively. The subconscious files away the learning ensuring that next time you face a similar situation, you see it as an opportunity and respond to it in a similar calm and confident way.

Both experiences and outcomes are triggered by the same event. Most events we experience in life that trigger our anxiety (social situation, work meeting, emails, texts, house work, tough conversations, etc) are not threats. They are neutral occurrences of everyday life. You need train you mind and body to see them as the opportunities they are to live and enjoy the benefits of your parasympathetic nervous system.

The Anxiety Filter