Fear or Excitement? You Get to Choose!

You Decide Whether To Feel Fear or To Experience Excitement

The mind is a wonderful thing. It is through the conscious mind that the same experience for one person may be gut-wrenchingly fearsome, and for another, an absolutely exhilarating thrill. Physiologically-speaking, arousal is arousal is arousal. Your body is primed for action when aroused. The adrenaline that courses through your body when you’re scared is the same adrenaline that courses through your body when you’re excited. An elevated heart rate and dilated pupils keep your body ready to see what’s going on and then move – whether that something is dangerous like a boogeyman in a dark house or something fun like a challenging ski run ahead of you.

Many of the same mechanisms that cause you to shrink in horror from a predator are also used when you are having sex – or even while you are consuming your Thanksgiving dinner. To your body, saber-toothed tigers and orgasms and turkey gravy look remarkably similar. An aroused physiological state is characteristic of both stress and pleasure.

I wish I wrote down the original source for that, but the quote as written is from Scott Berkun in his book Confessions of a Public Speaker.

Think about it: arousal is arousal is arousal, whether that means you’re in mortal danger, about to have mind-blowing sex, or about to enjoy a wonderfully-gargantuan feast. The difference is not in how your body reacts, but in how your mind interprets that physiological arousal. Your mind links the physiologically-primed state to fear, to lust, or to hunger depending on what you see in front of you and what you make of it.

On the face of it, this is nice trivia that has little application in real life, but in fact it has everything to do with life and how we choose our life paths. Fear and excitement feel the same physiologically. Elevated heart rate, maybe some butterflies in your stomach, increased awareness and inability to sleep, and a feeling of pent-up energy are very common signs of both fear and excitement. They feel the same physically, but emotionally and mentally they are polar opposites. Fear can be debilitating at worst, and needlessly (and negatively) stressful at best. Excitement is fun, enjoyable, and addictive.

I did a personal experiment years ago with roller coasters. I absolutely love good roller coasters. Few experiences are as thrilling as accelerating down the first drop of a coaster and then gracefully twisting and turning at high speed. Yet, I know a lot of people around me who hate the feeling of a roller coaster, particularly the first drop. I wondered if it had to do with how we think of the first drop, so I went on the same roller coaster twice but with two different mindsets. The first time, I rode it as usual, eagerly anticipating the drop and expecting it to be fun. As usual, it felt like a wonderful thrill – the tug of gravity and the sensation of acceleration were welcome friends. I smiled, I cheered, I may even have laughed. Then I went on the ride again, but this time, thought to myself over and over again that this is going to be scary, that this is going to suck, and that I really did not want to be there. The experience this time was totally different – the sensation of acceleration on the first drop was like my stomach had been wrenched out of me and left at the top of the mountain, and I felt fear and disorientation. It was a decidedly unpleasant experience.

It was the same ride, but I went with it thinking two different thoughts and my mind interpreted the physical sensations entirely differently.

When I wanted to be there, I had an absolute thrill. When I didn’t want to be there, I felt like I’d just been pulled through the wringer.

Ultimately we choose how to approach life’s experiences and challenges, and we choose how to interpret what is happening to us. We may choose to think and believe that things will be good, or we may choose to believe that things will be unpleasant. We may decide that what stands before us will be fun, or we may decide that it will be stressful and scary.

For a more grounded example, public speaking is a thrill for me because I choose to interpret what I am feeling as excitement. I choose not to interpret it as anxiety or fear. The feeling is the same and doesn’t go away, but I end up enjoying the build-up to a speech in front of an audience. It is up to me whether I interpret my body’s arousal and anticipation of action as either excitement or anxiety, and I decided long ago that it is far more productive and enjoyable for me to interpret it as excitement.

Keep this in mind as you experience challenges in life. There are certain circumstances where your body will prime itself for action. As the quote above indicates, maybe your life is in danger, maybe you’re about to do your part to pass on your genes, or maybe you’re about to stock up on calories and nutrients – any which way, your body knows that action will be required soon. It’s up to you, as the conscious owner of your body, to interpret those physiological sensations and then act accordingly.

Fear, anxiety, excitement, and fun can feel exactly the same. It’s how we interpret how we feel that determines what we actually experience.

Image Courtesy of D. Sharon Pruitt at Flickr Creative Commons.