Have you ever seen or watched on TV a thoroughbred horse on a racetrack or just before a race. Thoroughbred horses are highly-strung creatures with a high degree of “nervous energy" that (when forced) that nervous energy makes them run faster and keep running long after an ordinary horse would be exhausted.

There is nothing wrong with our nervous energy, it's perfectly natural, it's commonly felt by most people, and it has a function. The problem arises when our nervous energy is displaced, suppressed or misused.

Here are seven ways you may have become the victim of your own nervous energy.

1. You think (and have decided) that your nervousness and fear of rejection is a problem. You are placing the emphasis on the wrong place. Your problem is trying to avoid having to confront what is really holding you back.

2. You worry about it, beat, criticize, degrade and devalue yourself for being nervous and afraid of rejection. What you are doing is expending unnecessarily large amounts of nervous energy which creates a growing sense of paralysis.

3. You fight it and try to control it. The very act of fighting and controlling it is off-putting, you end up forgetting what you were going to say, become unsure of yourself and just want the experience to end.

4. You tighten your muscles and breathe shallowly in an effort to resist the dreaded physical sensations of nervous energy moving around in your body. Trying to block nervous energy from moving around in your body ends up making you function, look, and act in a rigid, inflexible, and boorish manner.

5. You try to trick and distract your mind by keeping it physically engaged with “desensitizing affirmations" which can work for a few times until the mind realizes it's been tricked and it adjusts itself not to be tricked again. You are worse off.

6. You "walk away" and the nervous energy generated is suppressed. These suppressed nervous energy unfortunately may turn into emotional illnesses (depression, anxiety, anger etc), and sometimes even physical illnesses.

7. You squander your precious nervous energy (playing games with people, wearing "masks'' to please others, following rigid techniques and routines prescribed by others, pretending there is not really much to it ) and in the process miss the opportunity to put to use this powerful energy - and direct it to the goal for which it is intended.

Your fear of rejection is really the rejection of your power and control over your own life. There is nothing wrong with you. Your body is behaving very properly. Faced with an important challenge, it generates enough nervous energy to cope with what has to be done.

The key is not eliminating your fear, but harnessing that nervous energy and making it work for you, rather than against you. With information, a little help and experience, you can learn to harness your nervous energy, and like a thoroughbred horse “run" long after “ordinary people" would be exhausted.