The Art Of Welcoming Your Inner Experience

How to alchemize anxiety into excitement

‘Super Saturday’ at the London 2012 Olympics was one of the most unforgettable days in British Sports history, as Jess Ennis-Hill, Mo Farah and Greg Rutherford all won gold medals in quick succession.

I was a reporter for BBC Radio 1 at the time and was asked to do a live report for 5Live, which was somewhat out of my comfort zone, from the fan park in London’s Olympic village. As the apparent enormity of the day became increasingly clear, and my time to go live interviewing fans drew nearer, I noticed some sensations that I labelled as ‘anxiety’ in my belly. I tried to shoo them away. Unsurprisingly that didn’t work and before long I was feeling a sense of fear that also went up into my head and coloured my thoughts.

“I’m going to mess this up! What if I say the wrong thing? I might never work for the BBC again. I could end up homeless on the street! I wish I didn’t feel like this. God I wish I could run away…!”

Photo by Andrey Metelev on Unsplash

When I eventually did go live, the adrenaline kicked in and I made it through in one piece, but it hadn’t been an enjoyable experience. I hadn’t been far from having a panic attack live on air. I subsequently felt a sense of relief, rather than joy.

Then in the years just after the London Olympics, I began to learn about the power of acceptance. Of welcoming feelings and sensations, rather than resisting them.

And so in 2016, I was waiting in the wings of a live TV broadcast and I felt that same sensation arise in my belly. This time, rather than wishing the feeling wasn’t there, I turned towards it. I became interested in the direct felt experience of the sensation, as if I were a scientist having made a fascinating new discovery.

What was this sensation made of? How did it actually feel? Without a fearful storyline in my head, was it actually ‘bad’?

By not resisting the sensation, it didn’t magnify and go up in to my head as it had that evening in the Olympic Park in East London. On the contrary, a magical thing happened. The sensation which I previously had labelled ‘anxiety’ became transmuted into ‘excitement’. Physiologically the two experiences can be very similar, although the mental narrative is of course very different.

And herein lies the amazing power of true acceptance. Of truly allowing all experience to arise without resistance. It can turn poison into pleasure.

So how can we truly experience the richness of all experience, and find the gold that lies at the heart of any feeling?