Last week, I shared a stat in a workshop that surprised a few people.

According to the latest Founders Report, just over 50% of entrepreneurs report struggling with anxiety, often experienced as restlessness, racing thoughts, critical self-talk, difficulty sleeping, and the feeling that something could fall apart at any moment.

On the surface, that number seems high, but I was more surprised that it wasn’t higher.

If you’d asked me based on my experience as a founder and more than 8,000 hours of coaching, I would place it closer to 75 or 80%. Not because we’re broken, failing or doing something wrong, but because anxiety is a completely natural response to the conditions we’re constantly exposed to.

Conditions that are, by definition, abnormal.

Those of us in the thick of building something are operating under near-constant pressure. We make fast decisions with limited information, stretch our time, focus, and capacity across competing priorities, carry risk, hold responsibility, and navigate the weight of other people’s trust.

All while moving through wave after wave of change, complexity, and setbacks.

None of this is neutral, and our nervous systems know it. So when anxiety shows up, it isn’t a sign of weakness or dysfunction. It’s evidence that your internal system is doing what it was built to do — keeping you alert and ready to assert or defend yourself.

The problem isn’t that it appears, but how you relate and respond to it when it does.

What I see again and again is that people don’t really suffer from anxiety itself, but from the internal resistance to feeling it. From the story that it means they are broken, weak, or off track, and the impulse to suppress it, fix it, or hide it behind control.

The point that I’m trying to get across, is that anxiety isn’t your enemy, and it isn’t something to be fixed, or suppressed.

If anything, like all other emotions, it’s a messenger that carries valuable information about what matters, what’s uncertain, what’s at stake or where something might be out of alignment.

And when you learn to relate to your anxiety as data, rather than danger, you create space, and in that space, you regain the ability to respond to it like a leader, rather than react to it as a helpless victim.

That choice begins with accepting your anxiety, even welcoming it, because as counterintuitive as it feels, when you meet it with acceptance, it begins to soften. And that shift allows you to listen to your anxiety without letting it take the wheel.

And from that place, discernment becomes possible — the ability to ask yourself whether your anxiety is a state to be tolerated as a natural part of the path you’ve chosen, or as a sign to change a pattern, a situation, job or relationship that’s no longer serving you.

This is the deeper work.

Because sometimes anxiety arises because you care, because you’re holding weight, you’re growing, you’re close to the edge of what you know how to hold (what feels familiar and safe!), and your nervous system is doing what it was designed to do.

Anxiety, in this light, isn’t a problem to be eliminated, it’s part of the cost of playing at a high level, and an invitation to increase your tolerance and channel its energy into focused action. Over time, and with practice, your brain learns that stress isn’t the enemy, it’s fuel.

But there is a thin line between healthy endurance and unconscious self-abandonment, and sometimes, that line is easy to miss, especially when you have learned to carry more than most.

And this is why discernment matters.

Because there are also moments when anxiety isn’t asking you to hold on, but pointing you towards something that is no longer working. To see that the cost of how you’re operating exceeds the return, that the strategies that used to work are starting to work against you, or that the direction you’re headed no longer aligns with what you want or value.

This is when anxiety becomes a red flag, a voice that wants to be heard.

And the ability to hear it clearly, to understand what it’s really asking of you, requires practice.

To begin that practice, try asking yourself:

What is my anxiety trying to tell me?

What is it trying to point me toward?

Is it asking for greater capacity, or a new way forward?

Is it a byproduct of growth, or a sign of misalignment?

The answer may not always be clear, but the habit of asking will bring you closer to it.

And when you learn to listen, you might find the anxiety softens, not because it has disappeared, but because it (the little dude/girl inside of you!) no longer needs to shout to be heard.

As always, I hope this helps.

PSI. Here is the link to the founder’s report I cited earlier.

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