Through many experiments, Ant Taylor discovered that his anxiety typically means he hasn’t articulated something he needs — a boundary hasn’t been set, or he’s managing someone else’s experience instead of saying what the organization needs. He’s protecting them from something and sacrificing his own truth in the process.
His practical approach: feel the anxiety, name it to his team, then find the underlying need.
His colleague LP has a complementary hack: reframing anxiety as excitement. The same physiological arousal sits underneath both. Ant found this independently through base jumping and air sports, where someone told him “the other side of the coin of fear is excitement.” A related tool: jumping up and down screaming “I’m excited” can physically transform anxiety into excitement, giving you the energy to draw the boundary or take the action you’ve been avoiding.
“Does that ever work out? Like does anyone have any case studies of that working out, like twice? It seems to work out in teaching us new ways to do it differently.”
The humor underscores the point: managing others at the expense of your own truth is universally ineffective.
Related Concepts
- Anxiety signals unmet needs at multiple depths
- Anxiety as constricted life force
- Every emotion carries an intelligent signal