| Have you ever seen or watched on TV a | | | | block nervous energy from moving around in your |
| thoroughbred horse on a racetrack or just before a | | | | body ends up making you function, look, and act in a |
| race. Thoroughbred horses are highly-strung creatures | | | | rigid, inflexible, and boorish manner. |
| with a high degree of "nervous energy" that (when | | | | 5. You try to trick and distract your mind by keeping it |
| forced) that nervous energy makes them run faster | | | | physically engaged with "desensitizing affirmations" |
| and keep running long after an ordinary horse would | | | | which can work for a few times until the mind realizes |
| be exhausted. | | | | it's been tricked and it adjusts itself not to be tricked |
| There is nothing wrong with our nervous energy, it's | | | | again. You are worse off. |
| perfectly natural, it's commonly felt by most people, | | | | 6. You "walk away" and the nervous energy |
| and it has a function. The problem arises when our | | | | generated is suppressed. These suppressed nervous |
| nervous energy is displaced, suppressed or misused. | | | | energy unfortunately may turn into emotional illnesses |
| Here are seven ways you may have become the | | | | (depression, anxiety, anger etc), and sometimes even |
| victim of your own nervous energy. | | | | physical illnesses. |
| 1. You think (and have decided) that your nervousness | | | | 7. You squander your precious nervous energy |
| and fear of rejection is a problem. You are placing the | | | | (playing games with people, wearing "masks'' to please |
| emphasis on the wrong place. Your problem is trying | | | | others, following rigid techniques and routines |
| to avoid having to confront what is really holding you | | | | prescribed by others, pretending there is not really |
| back. | | | | much to it ) and in the process miss the opportunity to |
| 2. You worry about it, beat, criticize, degrade and | | | | put to use this powerful energy - and direct it to the |
| devalue yourself for being nervous and afraid of | | | | goal for which it is intended. |
| rejection. What you are doing is expending | | | | Your fear of rejection is really the rejection of your |
| unnecessarily large amounts of nervous energy which | | | | power and control over your own life. There is nothing |
| creates a growing sense of paralysis. | | | | wrong with you. Your body is behaving very properly. |
| 3. You fight it and try to control it. The very act of | | | | Faced with an important challenge, it generates enough |
| fighting and controlling it is off-putting, you end up | | | | nervous energy to cope with what has to be done. |
| forgetting what you were going to say, become | | | | The key is not eliminating your fear, but harnessing that |
| unsure of yourself and just want the experience to | | | | nervous energy and making it work for you, rather |
| end. | | | | than against you. With information, a little help and |
| 4. You tighten your muscles and breathe shallowly in | | | | experience, you can learn to harness your nervous |
| an effort to resist the dreaded physical sensations of | | | | energy, and like a thoroughbred horse "run" long after |
| nervous energy moving around in your body. Trying to | | | | "ordinary people" would be exhausted. |