When was the last time you felt nervous?
Do you remember feeling butterflies in your stomach before you gave a big presentation at work?
Or was it a tiny, almost inconsequential moment in your day that left you feeling jittery?
You may remember the slight tremor in your hands or the chill that crawled its way up your back. Perhaps it was a sudden hot flush or sweaty palms that had you reaching for that glass of water. Sudden temperature changes are unnerving, because they make you feel uncomfortable in your own skin or disconnected from what’s happening around you. The randomness of this can quickly throw you off your game, especially if you haven’t anticipated feeling like this.
Believing nervousness to be a sign of weakness doesn’t take into account the significance of what it means to feel nervous.
It is the best indicator that what you’re doing is important to you, because you clearly care about doing your best and achieving good results. Before sitting an exam, for example, it can be easy to attribute these nervous reactions as a sign you haven’t prepared properly. But if you can see it in another light, your nervousness can be used as motivation. The world around you will fade as your attention is homed in on the task in front of you.
The sense of relief you get after overcoming these feelings is intense and sometimes overwhelming. We’re often unable to recognise the importance of this, because we’re too caught up revelling at how the moment of anxiety has passed. But think about how alive you felt in that moment, when you conquered your fear and achieved something. Even if it’s something as small as driving a different route home, the anticipation of this new experience, navigating in unfamiliar territory, will boost your confidence and be a way for you to push yourself to try new things.
Our lives can be filled with experiences that have very little meaning or significance to us.
Being able to appreciate why you feel nervous and how you can use this to your advantage will help fuel momentum into whatever you want to achieve. Think about this when you approach The Button Drawer Oracle for the first time. Every time you open the drawer, you never know what you’re going to find and this is how we go through life. We’re constantly surprised by what comes next, but this doesn’t mean we should fear every new opportunity or change.
By using the wisdom provided to you through The Button Oracle, try to feel gratitude for having hands that can shake, or a body that can feel intense emotion before you succeed at something. If you were never to feel nervous again, would you miss that rush of adrenalin? Would success still mean something, if you never felt the intense emotional release afterwards?
