Have you ever wondered about the difference between fear and anxiety? Apart from the vague feeling that one doesn't last as long as the other?
Let me set you two scenes that will make it really easy to see.
First scene: you are in Africa, on a safari, walking away from your vehicle (and your guide told you to never, ever do that!), in lion territory, and you suddenly hear roaring. What you feel in that precise moment is fear, in the presence of clear danger.
Second scene: you are in downtown Sydney, about to cross Hyde Park, and you start worrying about lions hiding there. Obviously you know there are no wild lions in Australia.
But you think to yourself - "there are some lions at Taronga Zoo, one of them could have escaped from there, crossed Harbour Bridge (or swam across) and be hiding right now in the bushes of Hyde Park".
What you're experiencing is anxiety, a diffuse feeling of fear about something that *could* happen, in the sense it is not quite impossible, just highly, highly unlikely. Anxiety is about an imagined (but not necessarily imaginary) danger.
Why is it useful to know the difference?
Because it allows you to respond appropriately. Once you work out when there really is something to be feared, you can take action and protect yourself.
And by realising when it is anxiety, you can choose to question it and hence get the choice back to do what you really want, in this case walk through the park.
Next time you get that niggly feeling, maybe ask yourself - "is this a lion in Hyde Park or a real danger?"