The Butterflies Before a New Experience Are Not a Warning — They Are the Body’s Signal That Something Worth Doing Is Happening
The physiological response to anxiety and excitement is identical — elevated heart rate, heightened alertness, heightened sensation. The only difference is the label. Research shows that reappraising pre-experience nerves as excitement rather than anxiety improves performance, increases enjoyment, and builds willingness to attempt the next new thing. This is Adventure Practice 2 of 12. When the butterflies arrive before a new experience, tell yourself “I am excited” rather than “I am nervous.” The body does not change. What the body means changes. That single shift is the practice.
Jump to a section
Why the Butterflies Have Been Misnamed Your Whole Life
The butterflies arrive before something that matters. The job interview. The first date. The presentation. The phone call you have been putting off. The race. The trip. The conversation. Your heart speeds up. Your stomach tightens. Your senses sharpen. You feel slightly outside your normal baseline. Your whole life, you have probably called this anxiety. You have probably told yourself you were nervous. You have probably treated the feeling as a warning to slow down, back off, or escape.
The body that produces these sensations is not warning you. It is preparing you. The same elevated heart rate, the same heightened alertness, the same sharpened senses are what the body produces when it is preparing for something exciting. Skydivers feel this. First-time travellers feel this. People falling in love feel this. People walking into a concert they have been waiting to see for months feel this. The physiology is identical to what you have been calling anxiety. The only thing that changes between “anxiety” and “excitement” is the word your brain attaches to the sensation.
This is not a denial of how the feeling lands. The butterflies are real. They are uncomfortable. The discomfort is not the problem. The framing is. When you label the discomfort as anxiety, your brain starts looking for what is wrong. When you label the same discomfort as excitement, your brain starts looking for what is meaningful. Same body. Same sensations. Different question being asked of the moment. Different answers coming back. One word changes which.
The Anxiety Reappraisal Research Research on “anxiety reappraisal” — most prominently the work of Harvard Business School professor Alison Wood Brooks — has documented that simply saying “I am excited” before high-pressure situations measurably improves performance compared to either trying to calm down or staying anxious. The mechanism is reappraisal: the underlying physiological arousal is the same, but reframing it as opportunity-focused excitement rather than threat-focused anxiety changes how the brain processes the situation. Studies have shown improvements across public speaking, mathematical performance, singing, and competitive tasks. The research is consistent enough that anxiety reappraisal is now widely taught in performance psychology, sports psychology, and clinical settings as a first-line tool for high-arousal moments.
The practice is the smallest one in this series. Two words. “I am excited” instead of “I am nervous.” That is it. The size of the practice has nothing to do with the size of the effect. You will spend approximately five seconds installing the new label. The label, once installed, can change what dozens of new experiences become for the rest of your life.
Why the Body Cannot Tell the Difference
When something significant is about to happen, your sympathetic nervous system activates. Adrenaline releases. Heart rate climbs. Breathing quickens. Blood flow shifts to the muscles. Awareness sharpens. Your gut tightens — those are the butterflies. This is the body’s high-arousal state, and it is the same whether the upcoming event is a job interview, a first date, a wedding, or a roller coaster you signed up to ride. The body has one preparation kit, and it deploys the same kit for all moments that matter.
How the Brain Adds the Label
Your brain receives the body’s signals and immediately tries to interpret what they mean. The interpretation is partly automatic and partly learned. If you have spent years calling these sensations “anxiety,” your brain has built a strong default: high arousal equals threat equals back away. If you have practised calling them “excitement,” your brain has built a different default: high arousal equals opportunity equals move toward. The body’s signal is the same in both cases. The brain’s interpretation is what determines whether you will move forward or pull back.
Why “Calm Down” Does Not Work
The intuitive response to butterflies is to try to calm down. Take deep breaths. Slow the heart rate. Get back to baseline. The research consistently finds that this strategy underperforms reappraisal. Trying to dampen high arousal in a moment that is genuinely activating your nervous system is fighting against your own physiology. The body is going to stay activated because the situation is significant. Reappraisal works with the activation instead of against it. You are not telling the body to stop. You are telling the brain that the body’s response is the right response.
Why It Works Even When You Do Not Believe It
The reappraisal effect does not require sincere conviction. Saying “I am excited” while feeling sceptical of the practice still produces measurable benefits. The brain processes the linguistic cue regardless of your emotional buy-in, much like the “yet” practice in self-talk. You can do this practice while rolling your eyes at it and still get most of the benefit. The word does the work whether or not you fully trust it. Believing in the practice is a bonus. Doing the practice is enough.
Common Anxious Phrases and Their Excited Replacements
The pattern works across hundreds of common pre-experience moments. A few examples to anchor it, then you will start spotting your own automatically.
Amara had been putting off applying for a senior role at her company for almost a year. She was qualified. She knew it. She had been groomed for the role by her manager. She had every reason to apply. What kept stopping her was the thought of the interview itself. She would imagine the panel of senior people, the questions she would not be ready for, and she would feel her stomach drop. She told herself she got too anxious for those situations. She told herself she was just not built for that kind of pressure.
A friend, who happened to be a sports psychologist, listened to her describe the dread one evening and asked a question Amara had not heard before: “When you imagine the interview, what does your body actually do?” Amara described the racing heart, the tight stomach, the heightened alertness. The friend nodded and said, “That is exactly what your body would do if you were about to win an award you cared about. Same physiology. You have just been calling it anxiety for so long that you have forgotten it can be called anything else.”
Amara was sceptical, but she had nothing to lose. She applied for the role. The morning of the interview, the butterflies arrived right on schedule. She noticed them. She said out loud, in her car in the parking lot, “I am excited about this interview.” She felt almost embarrassed by how cheesy it sounded. She walked in anyway. The interview went well — not because the butterflies disappeared, but because she stopped fighting them. She got the job. The framing did not give her new skills. It just stopped her from disqualifying herself from the room.
I had spent ten years calling my body’s high-arousal response “anxiety” and treating it like a warning. The friend’s question was the first time I considered that the same response could mean something else. It felt almost ridiculous to say “I am excited” out loud in the parking lot. I did it anyway. Something shifted, not in the body, but in what I was willing to walk into. I have used the relabel hundreds of times since. Job interviews. Difficult conversations. A wedding I officiated. A presentation in front of two hundred people. The butterflies still arrive every time. They no longer disqualify me from the rooms they show up before. The relabel is a small thing. The cumulative effect on what I am willing to attempt has been enormous.
The First Time — The Immediate Effects
The first time you say “I am excited” before something significant, you will probably feel slightly silly. That is normal. The new label feels less true than the old one because you have spent years practising the old one. Pay attention to whether the high arousal feels slightly different with the new label attached. Most people notice it does — not less intense, but pointed in a different direction. The first-time effect is mostly about discovering that you had a choice in the labelling all along.
First Week — What Settles In
By the end of the first week of using the relabel, you will start catching the anxious framing more often before it becomes automatic. The catching gets easier with practice. You may notice that situations you have been avoiding feel slightly more accessible. Not easy. Slightly more accessible. The dread you had built up around them softens because the anticipated feelings are no longer being interpreted as warnings. The week-one effect is mostly about awareness — you start noticing how often you have been using “nervous” as a default for situations that deserved a richer label.
First Month — The Quiet Accumulation
By a month in, the relabel starts happening more often without conscious effort, particularly in the situations you have practised it on most. The bigger effect is downstream: you find yourself attempting things you would have previously avoided. New experiences feel more accessible. Your default response to the butterflies is no longer “back away.” You walk toward them more often. None of these are dramatic. All of them compound. By month one, the practice is no longer something you do. It is starting to be how you respond.
What This Practice Will Not Do
It will not eliminate genuine fear in genuinely dangerous situations. The body’s high-arousal response exists for a reason — sometimes the threat is real, and the right response is to back away. The relabel is for the everyday butterflies before opportunities, not for legitimate alarm signals. The practice is also not a treatment for clinical anxiety disorders. If your anxiety is severe, debilitating, or persistent in ways that interfere with daily life, working with a qualified mental health professional is the right path. The relabel can be a useful complement to professional support, not a replacement for it. Knowing the difference between everyday butterflies and clinical anxiety is part of the skill.
- Trying to calm down instead of relabelling. The whole point is that you are not trying to lower the arousal. You are reframing what the arousal means. “Take deep breaths and calm down” is the strategy that the research shows underperforms. “I am excited” works because it accepts the arousal and points it forward.
- Using a milder word like “I am okay” or “I will be fine.” The research-supported relabel is the word “excited” specifically because it preserves the high-arousal energy. Switching to a low-arousal word like “calm” or “okay” asks your body to do something it is not going to do. Match the energy. The word excited matches.
- Saying “I am excited” with sarcasm or disbelief. Sarcasm undermines the relabel. The brain processes tone alongside the words. A neutral or genuine “I am excited” works. A sarcastic “I am excited [eye roll]” lands closer to the original “I am nervous.” Even if you do not fully believe it, say it neutrally.
- Applying it to genuine danger. Not every set of butterflies is excitement waiting to be relabelled. Sometimes your body is signalling actual threat — an unsafe situation, a person you should not trust, a decision your gut is correctly warning you against. The practice is for everyday pre-experience nerves, not for legitimate alarm. Knowing the difference is part of the skill.
- Quitting because the first time felt awkward. The first time using the relabel will feel slightly performative. That is the cost of practising any new self-talk pattern. The awkwardness fades by the third or fourth attempt. The practice is small and the benefit compounds — give it a week before you decide whether it is working.
- Treating it as positive thinking. The relabel is not “everything will be fine.” It is a more accurate description of what your body is actually doing. Positive thinking insists on outcomes you cannot control. Reappraisal describes physiology you can describe accurately. The second is sustainable. The first usually breaks down under contact with reality.
- Forgetting that it works for repeated experiences too. You do not have to save this for big new events. Use it before any moment that activates your nervous system — sending a difficult email, making a phone call you have been avoiding, going to a workout class, walking into a party. The everyday applications add up faster than the big-event ones.
- Using it to override your nervous system on something that genuinely is not right for you. The relabel can help you walk toward opportunities your fear was disguising as threats. It cannot turn a bad fit into a good one. If your gut keeps telling you something is wrong even after you relabel, listen to your gut. The practice is for misnamed butterflies, not for misnamed warnings.
- Practise on small situations first. Do not start with the biggest event of your year. Start with sending an email that makes you slightly nervous. A phone call you have been delaying. A workout class you have not tried. Small reps build the muscle. The big events are then easier because the practice is already in place.
- Say it out loud whenever you can. Saying “I am excited” out loud lands harder than saying it silently. Your own voice is one of the strongest cues your nervous system responds to. In private moments — the car, the bathroom, the empty office — out loud is the way.
- Keep the word “excited” specifically. Do not let it drift into “I am pumped” or “I am ready” or other variations. Those work too, but the research is on the word “excited.” Stay with the specific word until the relabel is automatic. You can experiment with variations later.
- Pair it with a small physical gesture. A hand on your chest as you say it. A small fist pump. A deep breath. A slight smile. The body anchor strengthens the relabel by adding a non-verbal cue your nervous system also reads.
- Tell one person you are using this practice. A friend, a partner, a colleague who will not roll their eyes. Saying it out loud once makes you slightly more accountable. They might gently catch you when you forget. The social component anchors the habit.
- Write down the relabels that worked. A small log. “Tuesday morning, sent the email I was avoiding, said I am excited first, the email got a great reply.” Visible track record builds belief in the practice faster than anything else.
- Forgive missed relabels immediately. You will spend a long time calling the butterflies “anxiety” before catching yourself. The brain has been running the old label for years. Catching one in three the first month is enough. The percentage rises naturally with practice.
- Add the other eleven adventure practices once this one is automatic. Relabelling butterflies is the foundation. The other eleven practices in this series build on it. Do not try to install all twelve at once. Make this one your default first. The rest layer in faster once the foundation is solid.
Joel had played competitive sports through college and had been taught the anxiety-as-excitement reframe by a coach in his early twenties. He used it before games, before tournaments, before the moments that mattered on the field. What he had never done was apply it outside of sports. In his work life, his romantic life, his social life, the same butterflies showed up before significant moments — and he called them anxiety, treated them as warnings, and quietly avoided things he could have walked into.
The penny dropped at thirty-six. He was about to ask someone out for the first time after a long stretch alone. The butterflies arrived. He almost backed out. He suddenly heard his old coach’s voice in his head: “Same body. Different word. Pick the word.” Joel had been picking the wrong word in every domain except sports for fourteen years. He had no idea why he had compartmentalised the practice that way. He said “I am excited” out loud in his apartment and made the call anyway.
The relationship that came from that one phone call eventually became his marriage. The point of his story is not the relationship. The point is that for over a decade, he had a practice that worked beautifully in one context and had simply not occurred to him to apply it elsewhere. The butterflies before the phone call were the same butterflies he had felt before every big game in his twenties. The label had been the difference between walking on the field and not making the call. Once he saw the practice could cross domains, he started applying it everywhere — and the rooms he was willing to walk into expanded dramatically.
I had this tool in my pocket for fourteen years and I was only using it for one part of my life. It is embarrassing in retrospect. I think I had categorised “sports nerves” and “real-life nerves” as different things, when they were always the same physiology with different stakes. The phone call to ask her out was the first time I crossed the domains. Once I did, I could not stop noticing how many situations had been waiting for me to use the relabel. Job pivots. Difficult conversations. Travel I had been putting off. The practice was the same. The body was the same. The only thing missing was me realising I could use the same word “excited” on Tuesday afternoon at my desk that I had been using on Saturday afternoon on the field. The phone call took five seconds. The marriage came from those five seconds. The relabel cost me nothing. The cost of not relabelling for fourteen years was steep.
The next time the butterflies arrive, do not call them anxiety. Call them what they actually are.
The butterflies are coming. Maybe today. Maybe tomorrow. Before the email. Before the call. Before the conversation. Before the new thing. When they arrive, take five seconds. Notice the physical sensation. Say “I am excited.” Take one breath. Move forward. The body is the same body. The brain is now reading the body as preparation instead of warning. That is the entire practice.
One week from now, you will be relabelling more often than you are missing. One month from now, the butterflies will be a signal you walk toward instead of a signal you back away from. One year from now, the cumulative effect of dozens of small relabelled moments will have produced experiences you would have skipped under the old label.
Adventure Practice 2 of 12 is the foundation because it is the smallest and the most repeated. Two words, used dozens of times, change what your body’s signals mean. The signals shape the willingness. The willingness shapes the life. Say the words. The next time. Every time after that.
Visit Our Shop
A Daily Reminder That the Butterflies Are the Signal
Hand-picked mugs and growth-minded products — small daily reminders that the body’s signals are more honest than the labels you have been giving them.
Browse the ShopImportant Disclaimer & Affiliate Notice
Educational Content Only: The information in this article is for general educational and self-improvement purposes only. It is not intended as professional psychological, therapeutic, or clinical advice. The anxiety reappraisal practice described in this article is supported by research as a useful tool for everyday pre-experience nerves, but it is not appropriate for all forms of anxiety. If you are working through clinical anxiety, panic disorder, post-traumatic stress, or other mental health challenges, please consult a qualified mental health professional.
Not a Treatment for Anxiety Disorders: This practice is for everyday “butterflies” — the high-arousal response that arrives before opportunities. It is not a treatment for clinical anxiety disorders, panic attacks, generalised anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, or other diagnosable conditions. People with these conditions often experience anxiety that is more severe, more persistent, and not always tied to specific upcoming events. If your anxiety is interfering with daily life, please work with a licensed mental health professional. Reappraisal can be a useful complement to professional treatment but is not a substitute for it.
Mental Health Resources: Call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. SAMHSA’s National Helpline is available 24/7 at 1-800-662-4357. The Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) offers resources and a therapist locator at adaa.org.
Anxiety Reappraisal Research Note: The references to anxiety reappraisal, the work of Alison Wood Brooks, and the research on relabelling pre-experience nerves draw on well-established findings in performance psychology and behavioural science. Studies have shown the practice produces measurable improvements across various performance contexts. Specific outcomes vary substantially between individuals and situations. The figures and patterns described here are general and do not constitute clinical or diagnostic guidance.
Real Stories Notice: The stories in this article — Amara and Joel — are composite illustrations representing common experiences in adopting anxiety reappraisal practices. They do not depict specific real individuals. Any resemblance to a particular person, living or deceased, is unintended and coincidental. The stories are designed to make abstract concepts about reappraisal feel relatable and human.
Personal Application Notice: The relabel in this article is a general technique, not personalised therapeutic guidance. People’s nervous systems vary widely based on temperament, history, neurodevelopmental differences, trauma history, and broader life circumstances. If a recommendation does not feel right for your situation, please trust yourself and adapt or skip it. You and any mental health professionals you work with know your situation better than any article ever could.
Genuine Danger Notice: The practice in this article is for misnamed butterflies — high-arousal sensations that have been mislabelled as anxiety when they are actually excitement preparing you for opportunity. It is not for situations where your body is correctly signalling genuine threat. If your gut is telling you a situation is unsafe, a person should not be trusted, or a decision is genuinely wrong for you, listen to your gut. The reappraisal practice is for everyday opportunity-shaped nerves, not for legitimate alarm. Knowing the difference is a real skill, and learning to honour your body’s accurate threat signals is just as important as learning to relabel its excitement signals.
Trauma Notice: For people with trauma histories, the body’s high-arousal response can be tied to past trauma rather than future opportunity. In these cases, the “relabel butterflies as excitement” framing can feel inappropriate or even harmful. Trauma-informed therapy with a licensed professional is the more appropriate path for processing trauma-related arousal. The practice in this article is not designed for trauma response and should not be applied as such.
Crisis Support: If you are currently experiencing a mental health crisis, having thoughts of self-harm, or feeling overwhelmed in a way that feels unmanageable, please reach out to a qualified mental health professional, a crisis support service in your country, or a trusted person in your life right now. Reappraisal practices are not a substitute for real-time human support during a crisis.
Affiliate Disclosure: A Self Help Hub may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase through one of our links, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. We only recommend products and services we genuinely believe in.
Copyright Notice: All original content on this website is the copyrighted property of A Self Help Hub unless otherwise noted. Reproduction without written permission is strictly prohibited. Please check our full disclaimer page, privacy policy, and terms of service for the most current information.
Copyright © A Self Help Hub · All Rights Reserved · Unlock Your Best Life · Grow, Improve, Succeed
