An adventure that every human being has to live through is learning to be anxious so as not to be ruined either by never having been in anxiety or by sinking into it. Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate. ― Søren Kierkegaard
It’s hard to separate alertness from anxiety. Most days they tend to come bonded together and seldom leave without leaving some worry crumbs on the table. Alertness is the preferred, filtered state obviously, and I have found some hacks to use both to my advantage and also to quickly filter the anxiety out.
1. Receive all problems as truffles that just need a good rinse.
Every problem comes packed with its opposite inside it. First, you have to believe that. It’s the dualistic law of nature. Light and shade. Beginning and ends. Up and down. They go together.
David Barlow defines anxiety as “a future-oriented mood state in which one is not ready or prepared to attempt to cope with upcoming negative events. This definition implies an emotional resistance to an unknown future event. But if we can reframe these future events as welcome encounters with the unknown. They could then be seen as bags of adventure waiting to be unboxed. Not easy. But not impossible either. Welcome problems as stepping stones to getting what you want in life. Suddenly life will become exciting and buzz with opportunity instead of dread.
2. Fill yourself with anxiety first.
Anxiety will always lunge at you first. Let it. It’s the limbic brain’s natural reaction. Your mind will rush to `feel’ the problem first. Like a dog sniffs the air in anticipation of the approaching object. Don’t resist it. Practice the habit of feeling anxious first. It may make you weak. Or sweat. Or just get angry. Or feel restless. All are your minds way to make you alert. They are all healthy signs of you getting ready to solve the problem.
3. Find the fear you most dread.
Anxiety is a mixed bag of tricks. We don’t quite know exactly why we are anxious. We don’t want to look into that grim gunny bag. I suggest you first empty it on the table and let all the gremlins come tumbling out, head first. So that you can see all of them.
I have an aging parent who is coming down with the first signs of Dementia. I have been anxious about her for some time but have not been able to find a way to remove my anxieties attached to her. Until one day I just sat and looked at what was I anxious about and I realized I was less worried about her Dementia and more worried about my guilt of not being ready to give her the professional care that she will need soon. The anxiety was removed the moment I looked for what was really my worst fear.
4. Find the easiest thing you can do first towards solving the problem.
Every solution to every problem is simple. It’s the distance between the two where the mystery lies. ― Derek Landy, Skulduggery Pleasant
We sometimes become anxious by the perceived enormity of the problem. Until you decide to break it into million bits to make it look tiny.
For my mother, this meant looking for homes that provide this kind of care and making a few phone calls. It also meant looking at all the different ways to finance her costs for the long term. It also meant starting to openly talk to the family about how we needed to collaborate on finding the best alternatives in the next few weeks. Once the worst fear is spotted it can quickly be broken down into micro problems that can be solved one at a time with the help of others.
5. Ask for help from the eager and remove the blockers
Having decided on the map of alternatives, now go looking for help. Don’t try and solve your problem alone. Leverage is the secret of transformational progress. Use the help of those who are eager to help. Don’t worry if you get rejected. Keep asking for it in innovative ways. You will be surprised by who shows up with what at your door.
The other advantage of this act of asking will also reveal those who don’t want to support you. Actively. Well, you then also know who to remove from the solution. Eliminate them from the game. Be ruthless. Does not matter how close or important they might seem to the solution. You don’t want the weight of dissent to burden your backpack.
6. Celebrate small wins in a big way.
Every time you untie one knot in the wool ball…give yourself a huge hug. Make it count. Mark it on your calendar. Keep a track of the progress. I have been keeping a cadence of celebrations as I wind up the kilometers in my fight against my kilos. Every day is a step towards that problem becoming smaller. We are always one step closer to the summit. No matter how far it might seem. as long as we keep walking.
7. Fill your mind with junk joy.
I don’t care if you think it’s lame…get a mantra that gives you hope.
A mantra that keeps your mind on the feeling when the solution is reached. Have a mantra / words/a sentence that helps your mind when it gets tired of the steps. When the mind wants to slip and get anxious again. Feed it that junk joy food to stay alert. Again and again. and again. It’s this junk joy food that will save you from slipping back into anxiety.
8. Iterate options and improvise.
Try different tools to open the jammed door. Don’t get stuck to `the only solution’. You will never get the perfect answer the first time. Keep working on the solution and keep learning from the decisions you make. Small mistakes will happen. See them as answers to the bigger problem. In my mum’s case, we had to first move her to a relative’s place to learn about her poor sleeping habits that gave us some clues on the real cause of her blood pressure problems. Detours like this are not lost time, just useful experiments that enable the elegant solution.
9. Start again.
In meditation, there is a simple rule. When your thoughts invade your still mind, start again. That is the whole point of mediation. To train the mind to start again, every time a thought appears. Similarly when the problem you are working on steals the alertness away and turns anxious…Start again on the steps above.
Coda:
Alertness is filtered anxiety. You need both. Then you filter.
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This post was previously published on Change Becomes You.
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