Anxiety Motivation and Planning

A lot of people with anxiety have motivation problems. Anxiety is part of the human bodies Fight or Flight response. It might be useful to see the fight or flight response in terms of motivation. This very basic, fundamental part of us which is so active when we feel anxious makes us do one of two things: run away or stand and fight. It is quite common for people who suffer from anxiety and panic attacks to have problems with motivation. It is not in fact that they lack motivation it is that they are very highly motivated to stay away from things which might be dangerous and stressful. People with anxiety have great motivation and strength of mind, but it is sadly pointing in the wrong direction.

So what can you do to overcome this and start to empower yourself and move forwards? They key lies in planning. It is not a good idea to choose where you want to be and go for it, you actually need to do much more planning. This is especially true when getting to where you want looks so daunting and anxiety provoking.

When you plan in detail you do two things at the same time:

1. You break down large goals into easy to achieve targets.

2. You pre-empt, solve and mitigate against any problems that might arise.

The end result is a far easier and less anxiety-provoking experience.

Planning is easy. You can look at it in either of two ways. You could take a specific problem and then, with pen and paper, go into specific detail about what needs to be done and how that can be achieved. You could create it on paper as a process, or a series of steps, smaller events.

The other way to go about it, which might be better suited to someone that has suffered from anxiety in the past, is to put down on paper exactly what a life worth living looks like. Create a description of how you want your life to be in each individual area: work, travel, love, social life, spiritual life etc. Then set about breaking down those things into various achievable steps.

In doing this you can make your life more positive, direct your energy and make real progress. It is almost guaranteed that as your life moves towards where you want it to be your anxiety will diminish.