Welcome to Episode 271 of Live Happy Now.

This is Paula Phelps, welcoming you back again this week.

Anxiety is something that many of us are familiar with, particularly now.

But have you considered embracing it?

This week's guest, Carla McLaren, makes the case for delving into this emotion and using it as a force of

energy her book embracing anxiety how to access the genius of this vital emotion takes a completely

new look at how anxiety can benefit us this week she talks about how important it is to recognize

what anxiety can do for us and learn how to use it for positive effect.

Carla, welcome to Live Happy Now.

Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here.

Well, we had to talk to you because this is a very interesting book, because for most of us, embracing anxiety is not the thing that we want to do with

it so can you start by telling us what made you begin to look at anxiety as a source of energy

and insight instead of the rest of us mere mortals look at it i have to say that in my movement through understanding anxiety has been rather choppy

because I wrote a book in 2010 called The Language of Emotions and I did not understand anxiety

at the time. So I thought of it as a problem because that's how people talk about it. I hadn't

heard anybody talk about it as anything but a problem because that's how people talk about it. I hadn't heard anybody talk about it

as anything but a problem. And I began to question whether what I was saying was true and whether

I understood anxiety at all. And in 2010, like right after the book came out, thank you so much,

I heard a radio show with Dr. Mary Lemia and she talked about anxiety as the emotion that helps us get things done. And I went,

what? I thought that was the one that paralyzed us and left us on the couch. What? And then I began

to think about it. And she talked about two different kinds of ways that you work with your anxiety. One is to be task focused and get things done in a regular kind of a list making, do this, do that, do that. You're always working. That's me. That kind of person doesn't feel a lot of intense anxiety because

they're always responding to their anxiety every day that kind of person is also usually not

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