On anxiety…
Man…“whose own restless energies never leave him in peace so that his future digs like a spur into the flesh of every present.”
~ Nietzsche (Genealogy of Morals. Essay 3, A. 13)
"I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened."
~ Mark Twain
“The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have.”
~ Soren Kierkegaard
“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”
~ Marcus Aurelius
Too many people feed into unnecessary stress. But the happiest and healthiest people are able to let go of things or experiences that no longer serve them. Life is too short to ruminate and consider same thought over and over again. By doing so, you’re essentially torturing yourself.
Anxiety stems from trying to control the uncontrollable, most often to avoid negative outcomes.
It's imagining something that doesn't exist in reality and being angry that reality doesn't conform to our imagination. This is why it's irrational.
For example, what if X will happen and I won’t like it?
Or X happened but I wish Y would have happened.
Both are not only a waste of time they are detrimental to your good vibes.
Ask yourself: "What is the worst that can happen?" and then accept it. In fact, you should believe it will happen, and understand that you'll be alright. The goal is not to believe that bad things don’t happen, or to attempt avoiding them, but rather to learn that you are far more capable of enduring them than you think.
When you start getting anxiety, recognize what’s happening, observe the feeling and watch it kind of float away. Most anxiety revolves around things that never happen or are outside of your control. Anxiety has never made anything better; it’s just leads to needless suffering.
When you identify anxiety, quickly ask for yourself: why am I anxious? Stop and observe your mind. Enjoy it. You may have good laughs about the joke you are creating. Harness it. Use it like a sailboat uses the wind to reach new places. Use it as fuel.
No amount of anxiety is ever going to change anything that’s going to happen.
Anxiety is the fear of something that has not yet happened.
If it has not happened, it does not exist.
Being afraid of something that does not exist is unproductive.
Suffering from things that don’t exist is absurd.
“A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.”
~ Seneca
“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”
~ Marcus Aurelius
“Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see, and once they have escaped them worry no more. We however are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come.”
~ Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, V
If you are depressed you are living in the past, if you are anxious you are living in the future, if you are at peace you are living in the present.
~ Lao Tzu
If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it's not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever.
“Whenever I see a person suffering from nervousness, I think, well, what can he expect? If he had not set his sights on things outside man’s control, his nervousness would end at once. Take a lyre player: he’s relaxed when he performs alone, but put him in front of an audience, and it’s a different story, no matter how beautiful his voice is or how well he plays the instrument. Why? Because he not only wants to perform well, he wants to be well received — and the latter lies outside of his control.”
~ Epictetus, Discourses, Book 2, 12, 1–2
You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.
Nothing that goes on in anyone else’s mind can harm you.
Then where can harm be found?
“Today I escaped anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions - not outside.”
Trying to shift from anxiety to calm generally backfires. The problem is that when we resist the state of anxiety, that can lead us to feel anxious about our anxiety, which makes us more anxious, which makes us even more anxious about our anxiety, a feedback loop from hell.
The flip side of anticipatory anxiety is positive anticipation.
Anxiety and excitement are sister emotions.
The key is acknowledging the happy, positive aspect of what you’re doing along with the nervous feelings.
When you reappraise anxious things as exciting, it actually makes you feel better about them.
There’s a fine line between anxiety and excitement. Physiologically, the two are almost identical. You know the feeling: elevated heart rate, stomach butterflies, sweaty palms, and nervousness. They’re all symptoms that result from the arousal of the nervous system.
Anxiety and excitement manifest through similar affects: accelerated heart rate, perspiration, and shallow breathing.
The difference between excitement and anxiety lies in our interpretation of them.
One response is to try slowing our breathing and calming our thoughts.
Another is to reframe the situation by changing our inner narrative.
We associate excitement with positive feelings, but we think of anxiety as an overwhelmingly negative emotion that’s at times debilitating.
With anxiety, you're thinking about a future event and dreading the different ways it could go wrong, or make you miserable.
With excitement, you may be thinking about the same event, but anticipating an enjoyable time and thinking about all the good things that could result form it.
It comes down to reframing your nervousness and relabeling anxiety as “excitement.”
Though it may seem like just a slight change, relabeling our emotions can significantly affect our confidence levels and how we perform, shifting from seeing these tasks as threats to seeing them as ‘opportunities’.
It doesn't necessarily calm you down. It does, however, change your experience of this state of high activation, from the torture of anxiety to the anticipation of excitement.
It’s all about perspective. Perspective is everything.
“Nothing neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so.”
~ Shakespeare
Turning anxiety into excitement might sound impossible, but it's not. 'Anxiety reappraisal' is a technique that acknowledges the elevated state you're in and reframes the sensation, rather than suppressing it. In its simplest form, it's telling yourself, “I'm not anxious, I'm just excited.”
Embrace the pre-activity jitters as your body’s way of preparing for action and it’s natural to feel this way.
Remind yourself that pre- activity butterflies are one reason you love a challenge—to feel excited and amped up.
Welcome the added adrenaline or excitement and perform with confidence and composure.