We often mistake anxiety for excitement. They can feel similar, and that is why they are so easy to confuse.
Much of that anxiety comes from outside us. Society and the people around us decide what we should want and who we should be, and we grow up believing they are our choices. We spend our lives pursuing the achievements others set for us, and we become do-ers, driven to do more and more. That drive to fulfill certain roles and expectations can be mistaken for excitement, but none of it ever feels like enough.
What's the difference between anxiety and excitement?
Anxiety is often fixed on an outcome, on the expectation that something needs to go a certain way. Excitement is a pull toward something that genuinely draws you, and it holds whichever way things turn out.
The two also live in different times. Anxiety lives ahead of you, in what is still to come. Excitement is here, in what interests you right now.
Why does anxiety disguise itself as excitement?
Anxiety is at service, a signal that something in us is asking to be seen. The trouble is what we do with it: we let anxiety move us and since it gives a certain rush, we take it as something exciting. That rush keeps us from looking at what the anxiety is pointing to. And it becomes addictive, because it feeds what is underneath, an old insecurity or a pain we would rather not face.
The world makes this even harder to see, because it rewards the do-er. There is always more being asked of us, and the one who keeps up with all of it (or at least shows on social media that they do) is read as successful. And because it brings praise, we rarely question it.
How do you tell if it's anxiety or excitement?
If you live in your head, the two will seem identical, and you will keep mistaking one for the other. But the body knows the difference, and when you listen to it, you can feel which one you are in. In the body they behave differently. Anxiety pulls tight; excitement opens you up. The expectation you put on the outcome gives it away too. With anxiety you need the result, and you need it to go a certain way. With excitement you would follow it whatever came of it, because what draws you is what you are doing. The more you trust what you feel, the easier they are to tell apart.
A second tell is in the effort. Excitement moves on its own. When something genuinely excites you, you go toward it easily, and little can keep you away. With anxiety it is the other way around. You have to push, and the effort is the sign. What genuinely excites you tends to come easily.
A third tell is whether you can rest. Anxiety keeps you moving, and when you try to sit still the urge to move comes back, because then you would have to look at what the anxiety is pointing to. Excitement behaves differently: you can set it down and pick it up later, and it is still there, because it carries no rush. The test, then, is whether you can stop, and if you cannot, what you are calling excitement might be anxiety.
What does real excitement actually feel like?
Real excitement is quieter than you would expect. It is calm and present, and it moves at its own pace. What matters is where you place your attention: on what you are doing, for its own sake.
What excites you is usually something you cannot predict, and you feel it in the present. Anxiety works the other way. When your attention is fixed on everything you have to get to, your energy goes into the future, and the body runs on the chemistry of stress.
How do you come back to real excitement?
You come back by letting go of the need to keep doing. You are not a machine, and when you cannot stop, you lose your center and follow the next task. Coming back means returning to that center, to yourself, and noticing what actually pulls you.
When something that seems exciting requires a lot of effort and an extra "push", that effort may be resistance, and resistance usually comes from fear. More often that fear is about a belief you have attached to what you are doing, one that dampens the excitement. To find that belief, you can ask yourself: "What would I have to believe about myself to feel this way?" What surfaces is usually something you had been avoiding.
What matters then is the belief underneath. Pushing past the fear, or trying to master it, only makes you force harder. You recognize that the belief is a belief and not a fact, and once you see it clearly, you can let it go.
You also do not have to get it right. That is the freedom underneath all of it: when you do not have to get it right, you cannot get it wrong, and the fear of getting it wrong is most of what the anxiety was made of.
And what you were chasing is built within you. The permission for it is yours to give.