Dealing With Anxiety
There’s a lot of reasons for people to feel anxious, even after you discount COVID, Brexit, and everything else going on in the world right now. It’s the human condition.
The truth is that humans are pretty fragile creatures. I live next to a big highway in central London, if I left the house right now and decided not to look both ways I could be hit by a car/lorry and be done. There are a million and one bad things that could happen to us at any given moment. But as Epictetus once said, “If you want to make progress, stop feeling anxious about things.”
It’s really difficult to live a happy and peaceful life if you feel anxious all the time. I think it helps if we try normalise the glitters of anxiety in life. It’s just like feeling hungry. When you don’t eat for a long period of time, your body starts giving you signals. “Hey, you! I’m hungry, feed me!” So you grab something to eat and your body stops signalling.
Your mind works just like your tummy - which isn’t always helpful. When the mind identifies it doesn’t like, it says, “You better do something about this thing I don’t like!” One thing I often feel anxious about is ‘imposter syndrome’, whether I’m actually capable of blogging or working in marketing, or if it’s all just an act. But another prominent one is the fear of being disliked, “What if this person I work with doesn’t like me? Why didn’t they respond to my email within an hour? Maybe it’s because I was in a hurry last time we talked?”
So what? You can’t make people like you — and that’s fine. The world is a big place. There are always people who will like you. If you’re a good person and are aware of your own behavior, there’s no need to ever worry about what others think of you. That’s not your problem.
What about the economy and the future? Yes, that’s another favorite topic for everyone who struggles with anxiety. What if you lose your job? What if there’s a new virus? What if people no longer buy your products?
We can train ourselves not to be anxious about these things. The key is to practice detachment. Start with small things. Let’s say you bought $1000 worth of Bitcoin and the next day, you’ve lost 10%, which is a very likely outcome. Say to yourself, “I took a risk, and I’m happy to part ways with the $100 I lost. It might come back, or it might not. Either way, I’m happy to detach from this loss so I can have peace of mind. There are more important things.”
You see, anxiety is always about fear. We fear that reality is different than our expectations. But reality doesn’t have to match our expectations for us to feel less anxious. Epictetus explained this well: “Things may not work out the way you want. When you choose not to be anxious, you do it in spite of your unfulfilled expectations. What you lose is what you pay for your peace of mind.”
You want and expect people to like you, but if that doesn’t happen, you should accept it, and move on. Don’t give anxiety power over you. Be prepared to pay the price of not being liked. Is that so bad? Is your peace of mind not more important than what your co-workers or strangers think of you?
Build up this mindset slowly and have some patience. It took me a few years to get over my anxiety about the future. To be honest, anxiety will never fully get out of your system. It’s human nature. But with practice, we can make sure anxiety doesn’t have a hold over you.
At some point you’ve just got to accept the fact that life is life, sometimes you succeed and other times you might fail. But that is okay, nothing is forever and we won’t be getting out of this thing alive either! Acceptance of this will not relinquish all your stresses and anxiety, but it may help take the edge off it a little bit. Nothing is worth giving up your peace of mind for.