How I Overcome Anxiety

// The Event

For the last three years, I've been a part of an event at Bournemouth and Poole College alongside the team at You Are the Media - the event is one of my favourite events, I host a panel led discussion with students in the audience and 'industry experts' on the panel.

The event is an interesting one - the 'panel' is made up of people that are friends to the You Are the Media community so I will know who they are and they share their experiences since they've left college or school, offering up advice to the students in the room.

The students are a mixed bunch, some will talk, some will sit on their phones for the entirety of the event and then there are a few of them who'll actually fall asleep - you can't do anything about any of them doing anything other than what they want to do but you do need to engage with them and that's the part that both excites me and also makes me worried. I'm worried they wont join in, that I'll be talking to a wall of blank faces and I have to adlib or riff on the spot - make up questions that aren't there and run an event as if I am the compere, audience and host all at once.

Every single time, I have these worries - but every single time, I am pleasantly surprised.

This year felt different, the audience were a little warmer and they felt like they wanted to be there this year, eagerly listening, taking part and asking questions.

The one hour we're up there flys past and when it's over, I want to do it all over again.

// The Question

This year, when I opened up the questions to the audience - I wasn't met with a wall of silence, I was able to actually engage and get some really good questions from them - the questions ranged from 'How do you cope with burnout?' to 'Did the work you did at college actually help you when you left?' - all valid and thought provoking questions for the panel.

Of course, having two coaches and some pretty experienced heads on the panel at the front led to some very good and considered answers but then one question caught me off guard.

"How do you deal with the crippling anxiety to succeed?"

A young lady, at the back of the audience had taken the mic and asked this pretty powerful question - I repeated it, just in case the panel hadn't heard and the panel went about answering it in the best way they knew how.

As the panel answered, I stood to one side pondering - listening thoughtfully to the answers that came back - listening to two coaches explaining how you should feel that anxiety, not let it get away from you and recognise the feeling. Hearing one of our panel explain how she feels anxiety every day and that she makes the choice to step up, all of them valid and really f*cking good answers but none of them felt like they were useful to me.

Now, I know that having anxiety around social situations, around presenting in front of a large audience and then carrying the weight, the burden of social expectations - that anxiety can't be summed up in a single sentence or short response and that everything the panel was saying, was totally valid but it didn't sit right with me.

Then suddenly, I had an answer brewing - I looked at the young lady who asked the question, waited for my opportunity to share my thoughts and went for it.

// The Answer

For me - anxiety always comes from a place of expectation.

Whether that be social expectations, expectations of my own creation or just the expectation of others - it's all the same. I think about the thing that's happening and in my gut, it builds - I don't really get nervous in front of an audience (I definitely get too excited which makes me forget things) but I do have that little thought to myself that I might mess it up. That doesn't show up as fear for me, I don't get scared of it but I do worry that I'll let people down - that I won't do the best job I can do and that's all I ever want to do.

I only ever want to do the best job I can do with the people I do it for - I try to do everything to the best of my ability.

If I feel like I haven't prepared, I haven't performed or I haven't showed up as the best version I can be - that's where anxiety lives for me.

I get anxious about that. The potential that I don't do a good job and quite often, that prevents me from doing certain things (speaking on a stage or in front of an audience is not one of those things)

So when, in front of a large audience of students, I stop to think about this feeling - this space where anxiety lives - there is only one way I manage that feeling.

I am grateful.

It sounds super simple and almost ridiculous to say but I am grateful for every single opportunity - if I ever stop to think about my fear of letting people down or the chance that I might mess it up for someone, I look at that opportunity and I am grateful I am in that situation in the first place.

My parents would never have stood in front of a large audience and have the opportunity to speak - they weren't 'performers' or typically 'business-like' - its all come from me.

When I was at school, I always wanted to be the one who was picked to read at the front of the class - I loved standing at the front, watching all the faces looking back at me and reading - it was weirdly enjoyable but I know now that my own kids hate that - they don't like standing at the front of the class and having eyes on them - but that was me.

Even when I look back at those moments, the chances I was given to stand at the front of the class (and I got a A* for English Speaking), even those small opportunities, I was grateful and I said thankyou to the teachers after class. Looking back and knowing I did that makes me feel a bit weird but I do remember saying thankyou to my English teacher (who was also my head of year) Mrs Clarke for letting me speak.

// The Thanks

Whenever I get the chance to talk, whenever anyone asks me to help out with a panel (this week, it was Mark) - I do always say thankyou for the opportunity - it doesn't take much and I don't ever know whether it's ever thought of something that you should do but I do it.

In the last month, I've spoken up in front of quite a few audiences - from small rooms, medium rooms all the way up to the large theatre last week and for every organiser and to every person who has invited me to talk - I've always said thankyou.

The opportunity to do something like that isn't something I take lightly and when I know I will be anxious that I will let that person down, it's that, that I am grateful for.

I want to be put into the position where I am anxious - where I feel like I will let someone down or let myself down because that feeling - that feeling of panic, anxiety or worry - thats the feeling which I know will allow me to grow into being someone a little bit better than if I just sat in the audience.

I want to keep pushing myself and yes, there are times where I feel like I haven't done the best job I could have done (I wrote about it a few weeks ago when I tried to shortcut the process with A.I) but then that feeling of anxiety will return and it's a stark reminder that I can do better and I probably should do better.

But being thankful means I have had the opportunity in the first place - it's hard to get the opportunity to build something, to own something that's yours or to just be the 'one at the front' and when you get the chance (or when I get the chance) - I try to grab it with both hands.

// The Reflection

When I got home and then sat on the train to London for an event, I couldn’t stop thinking about that question - and the moment that followed it.

Not because I thought my answer was profound and I'd uncovered the secret of life, but because it felt true. It wasn’t rehearsed or polished or wrapped up neatly in a quote for LinkedIn. It just came out in that moment - and in that instant, I realised how much of my life has been shaped by the tension between fear and gratitude.

I’ve spent years chasing confidence.

Trying to appear certain, trying to sound like I know what I’m doing - which was another question on the day - we all agreed, none of us know what we're doing but I think I’ve been wrong about what confidence really is.

Confidence isn’t the absence of anxiety - it’s the decision to show up with it. It’s saying, “Yeah, I’m scared I might mess this up,” and still walking on stage anyway. Still picking up the mic and still giving everything you’ve got to the people in front of you.

That’s the thing about gratitude - it doesn’t erase fear, it just reframes it. It turns “What if I fail?” into “How lucky am I to even be here?” It softens the edges of self-doubt and turns them into something more useful - awareness, humility, energy and you definitely get a big dose of humility if you mess it up.

So I think that’s what I’ve been learning, slowly, with every panel, every talk, every moment where my heart beats faster than it should - fear isn’t the opposite of gratitude, it’s the proof that you care enough for gratitude to exist in the first place.

When that student asked her question, I saw a version of myself from years ago, I was actually in her shoes once - trying so hard to get it right, to live up to something or someone that's seen and I think that’s why it hit me so hard, because I still feel that too.

I still carry that same anxiety - I tink all of us do.

Yes, I gave her the answer I've given you here - that you have to be grateful and when you are, you reframe it all differently but I think I should have told her just one more thing - you don’t need to kill your anxiety to succeed.

You just need to let it sit beside your gratitude and see what happens when the two of them learn to get along - they're not enemies, they need to co-exist to be understood - you can't ever live without anxiety, there isn't a world in which you won't be able to so you need to find ways to lessen the effects.

That’s the place I want to keep returning to.

And maybe, that’s the real answer - not the confidence to speak without fear, but the grace to stand there with it, say thank you, and keep going anyway.