Don’t let existential anxiety ruin your life.
The period from mid-20s to early 30s is a very exciting time. You are stepping into the world of work and opening up new horizons of possibility. Your relationships and romances will become more mature, rewarding, and committed. You’re starting to feel, well, real Adult.
Or we become paralyzed by anxiety and doubt.
If so, you’re not alone. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 18.1% of Americans Experiencing an anxiety disorder and experiencing peak levels of anxiety Highest price in 80 years Among young people. This is a serious public health issue, and people like you and me are far from immune.
Anarchy may sound like a strong word. But simply put, if some kind of hang-up is preventing you from succeeding in life, that’s a problem.
Here’s my story: I graduated college using loans. a many Loan’s. And paying them back was my biggest goal in life.
For three years, I saved like a stingy. We spent the hottest summer on record without air conditioning. Save money on your bills by working by candlelight. I used to eat one pack of ramen a day, but there were days when I didn’t eat at all. It was worth it, I told myself. Because debt was the only thing holding me back. And it happened.
My loan balance showed an outstanding amount of $0.00. I was a free man. I answered nothing, and I answered no one. I could do anything in the world.
It was scary.
what are you scared of? I hated debt (and hated it with a burning passion), but my student loans were both a prison and a refuge. As long as I lived with a single-minded passion to stay debt-free, I was able to avoid the great existential questions lurking in the corners of my mind.
In a world where we are told that we can go anywhere, do anything, and be anyone, What if I can’t try everything I want? What happens if you waste time pursuing the wrong goals? How could you know what the right decision was?
I am debt free. But I still couldn’t sleep. I can’t count the nights I woke up in the dark trying to analyze and evaluate a hundred different options, a hundred different plans. Weigh the nagging “what ifs” against other “what ifs”.
I was suffering from a form of existential anxiety that was wreaking havoc on the life I had worked so hard to build. I think there’s a good chance you’ve ended up in the same place at some point in your life. I still don’t know how to banish the anxiety that plagues me, but it will probably never catch up with me. I learned how to be stronger than that using these three truths.
1. You can’t be everything, you have to be something
The fact that you can be anything doesn’t mean you can be everything. Part of my problem is what psychologists call the “paradox of choice.” This is in a world where there are endless toothpaste options. and Too many choices can actually increase anxiety and decrease happiness.
In other words, when choosing more That may actually be the case few.
In my own short life, I have come to understand how wasteful it is to waste time in constant reflection. I know I want to end the day with something accomplished. something That could never happen, rather than being paralyzed by fear and wasting time. anything.
Start by identifying your long-term goals and priorities and use them to filter out superfluous ideas for your plans. maybe do. For example, you may value creativity and want to use it more in your career, but that doesn’t mean you have to quit life and go back to art school. Another idea is to work with a life coach who can give you exercises to help you explore different options in a constructive (non-paralyzing) way.
You can also try a technique called “dreamlining” developed by Tim Ferriss. Author of “The 4-Hour Work Week”. The Dreamline allows you to define what you want your life to be in various areas and work backwards from there to create specific, achievable goals. Ferris Here we break it down Help you get started. Dreamline is revolutionary. ideal Life is actually just a matter of removing just a few steps from your life actual life.
2. You can’t control the past, but you can control the present.
What-ifs are not your friend. “What would have happened if I had gone to a different school? What if I had chosen a different major? What if I had asked her out on a date when I had the chance? What if I had stayed at my old job? Is that so?”
I’ve spent more time rehashing the past than I’d like to admit. Everyone has regrets, but you don’t have to. And fortunately, all of these “what ifs” have a name: “buyer remorse.”
If you’ve ever made a choice and then regretted it, you’ve experienced buyer’s remorse, but it doesn’t just apply to cars or relationships. It is an emotion fueled by fear that one may have made the wrong choice. many It’s part of your precious mental bandwidth. The first step to overcome it? Accept the past and look forward.
Nothing is more important to your success than the ability to leave the past where it belongs. You don’t have to be happy about it and we don’t have to act like you’ll never regret it in the future. They have happened and will continue to happen, it’s that simple. Only when we accept what we can never change can we have hope to influence what we can.
If you want to try a radical technique for orienting yourself in the present, consider trying the OODA loop method. The OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) is a decision-making process developed by U.S. Air Force strategist Colonel John Boyd that has spread from military to business and learning applications.
For our purposes, the key insight of OODA is that we are often stuck in the Orient stage. Here, data from our past, conditioning, prior knowledge and observational phase all come together, often creating a traffic jam that prevents further action. The whole idea of OODA is to speed up the decision-making cycle so you can take action sooner. Think of each decision you have to make about your life as a loop: must end with action Then observe how your thoughts become solidified.
You observe, pivot, decide, and act endlessly, adjusting your trajectory as you go. Freedom isn’t about making big decisions correctly, it’s about making a promise to yourself to allow yourself to change once you’ve made a decision.
After all, freedom is a willingness to take risks.
3. You don’t need clarity, you need courage.
You can spend your whole life asking yourself, “What if things go wrong?” But the question you need to ask yourself is, “What if things go well?” Courage is the ability to see the positives of risk and be willing to accept the negatives. Courage is what allows us to live life boldly, forging our own path. What matters is not the knowledge that you will make the right choice, but the conviction that what you are fighting for is worth the risk.
After all, freedom is a willingness to take risks. Despite all the anxiety and possible regrets, it is the only thing that allows us to live on our own terms, with true integrity and dignity. For me, there are still scary days and there will be more. But if that’s the price I have to pay for freedom, I wouldn’t trade it for all the certainty and security in the world.
So where should we find courage? In my experience, courage is not an innate quality like blue eyes. It’s a habit.
And like any other habit, it can be developed with practice. The technology I developed is called Appointment and responsibility. Here’s how it works:
Pick the smallest, most pressing task on your dream line from the top and set an appointment to accomplish it. this week. Then, tell your friends, partner, or feed about your plans so you can leverage your social responsibility to actually accomplish your goals. Making this work requires both appointment and accountability. specific One person who knows will back up your plans on your phone or in your planner.
It helps to start small, like signing up for a class, joining a discussion group, or exploring a direction in life that interests you. Small courageous decisions turn into big decisions over time. If you make enough plans, your new life will begin.
Must read
Camus’s iconic essay has some not-so-charitable comments about suicide, but it offers us some of the most evocative and compelling commentary on not just finding freedom in the world, but finding joy in it. It gives you one of those essays.
Jean Paul Sartre’s masterpiece is not the easiest to read, but for the intrepid reader, it will be one of the most valuable, insightful, and thought-provoking books you will ever read.
barry schwartz’s paradox of choice This questions the modern gospel that more choice means more satisfaction, and it lands like a fitting slap in the face. With wit and brave practical acuity, Schwartz shows how our obsession with choice can make us anxious, paralyzed, and, ironically, dissatisfied, in a world cluttered with choices. We offer a guide to help you regain your sanity.
Shannon cuts through the noise with sharp, practical insights for tackling anxiety head-on. She vividly depicts a “monkey mind” that is constantly starved for worry, and shows us that feeding on it only sends us into a loop of stress and self-doubt. Mixing humor and clear-sighted advice, she offers cognitive-behavioral tricks to starve the monkey and restore peace, making this book a must-read for anyone fed up with and driven by anxiety. are.
