When Our Nerves Are Lying

First published on July 12, 2017

Nerves. Feeling nervous. The words are evocative, but not as affecting as the feeling itself, if you conjure it up inside you now. 

Your nerves, the things which control the sensation in your body, are on edge. Your nervous system is on alert. 

For the majority of the human race's existence, this was a great safety mechanism, protecting our lives from all sorts of things. Now, mostly, the nerves, the nervousness, come around things which don't threaten our lives. They still feel real through. 

For me, recently, I've felt my nerves on edge about speaking in front of a group, about a trip away, about whether I'll be able to work effectively away from home - will I let a client down? - and about whether I've double booked myself with clients. 

Now the interesting thing about this list is that - so far - only one of these has happened. Further to that, only one of these was something which I knew was going to happen. This was a fun (it turned out) workshop I ran for the Coaching School. 

The others were all imagined, future problems, leading to my nerves jangling and anxiety firing like I was faced with a tiger or a snake. This is an important distinction to make: feeling nerves, feeling anxious, feeling fear isn't a bad thing. As David Gemmell says, fear is there to keep you alive. These days it's not necessarily keeping you alive, because we face different challenges, but it is keeping you on your toes, and that can be incredibly useful when you're facing some public speaking or a job interview. But feeling anxious and nervous about possible futures, things that may never happen, well that's not much use at all.

So, what to do? The first part, I think, is awareness. Then, if you want a really practical suggestion, Tim Ferriss' latest TED Talk gives a method I really like for first quantifying and then mitigating your fears. 

But mainly, just remember to distinguish fear of things that will happen, and fear of things that may happen. They aren't the same thing.