How to lower base-line anxiety

 

These days it seems like more people are struggling than ever before. Even people who are financially stable and all that. The sort of struggle that I’m getting at here is more like a storm that rages on the inside. And it’s sort of a taboo to really talk about this, but there are just so many people these days who can’t exactly put their finger on the why-------. I’ll try.

It’s the feeling of being stressed. The sort of feeling that always seems to stick around, and rear its head when most inconvenient. It’s the feeling of that beyond what can be considered to be ‘reasonable’. It’s the feeling of not ‘wanting’ to do things. It’s the feeling of sometimes wanting to not go out and do anything at all. It’s all of those things.

Let’s jump back in time, and tell me if this is true. When you were a kid you never had this. You were just cheerful and in the moment. There was excitement, but no stress. There was wonder, and awe. There was high pitch energy. Sometimes there were scares and fears----of monsters in the dark. And you know the secret: all of that is still there. It’s just covered under a layer of many years.

So what has changed since you were a young kid? Is unmitigated excitement, happiness and energy just something of bygone days? Is it reasonable that a large chunk of it has just been replaced by a baseline stress that runs like a dark undercurrent? Is this just maturation? Is this to be expected?

Let’s rewind. Happiness, energy, kid. Everyone knows that we are all shaped by our surroundings. Family. School. Friends. And to a lesser extent by society. What if the impact of the last one is way larger than you initially think: and then not just values and norms about behavior, in their most basic forms. What if you can somehow tweak this to your benefit, in such a way that the dark undercurrent practically disappears?

Lets zoom out, and remove some of those behavioral norms that we have lived by after being a young kid. Most likely you started ingesting caffeinated coffee, you started ingesting alcohol in various forms, you started doing high intensity sports to level yourself out and to feel good.

So started experimenting about a decade ago: I switched to decaf in the morning, utilizing caffeine only to dodge the dip in the afternoon. I cut back on alcohol to only the weekends, which helped a great deal. Then a few months ago I switched to only sporadic use. I also cut back on high intensity sports, only once a week. I added strength training to boost testosterone. All of that lowered my baseline stress, and increased my overall energy.

The science behind all of this seems to be trickling in, but to me there’s the bigger logic of going back to some of the lifestyle from when I was a kid. And I think this is an easy enough strategy that works well enough for most enough: when stuck, go back to earlier parts of your life and figure out what was working better back then.

It helped me a great deal, and with most of these things: I wish I started this life-style adjustment much sooner.

 

Get more results by doing less.

What if I told you about a way to get better results, and it involves doing less? In fact, it involves doing nothing--------at least for a while. This, in so many words, is the art of not forcing: it comes down to giving things more time to get insights, ideas, inspiration and clarity------and to make the right decision when you find yourself in the middle of a crossroad.

It is tied to this expression that you must know as well: time will tell. It’s another one of my favorites. We all know this from experience: initially things look one way, but then over time it looks like something totally different. And it applies as wide as the art of not forcing: a person whom you just met, a job opportunity, a career path, a place to live and even more everyday things like clothes, books, series, movies and computer games.

I wish I had known about the art of not forcing when I was younger, because there are so many examples from my past where I have thought back and was like: if only I gave it some more time. It will not only help you to not make the wrong the decision, but it also ties in to something that’s very practical: it will keep you from wasting time and money on things that are not important. 

That’s why I would suggest that giving things time is an essential part of the art of not forcing. And it gets even better than that. Have you ever had this feeling for a longer period of time where you were like: if I only met someone. And then as soon as you let go of that feeling, when you started focusing more on yourself and having a good time--------that’s when you finally meet someone really interesting. 

That’s also the art of not forcing. Because if you try too hard, then you become an artificial version of yourself. And this is just something that people pick up on. They might not be able to say what exactly doesn’t seem right, but the most that they will be able to say is something like “something seems off”, or “this ain’t real”, or the blunt one “this ain’t natural”. 

The art of not forcing doesn’t mean that you should stop trying to get better every day. It means that you try to find that delicate balance where you try to get better each and every day, but where you don’t try so hard that you stretch yourself out too thin. It’s like this French cheese where you need to have a good thick layer in order to experience the full flavor. And meeting someone in a romantic way is just a small part of all this. 

You will meet more interesting people in general, you will come across opportunities and life will become way richer because of that. And when you have mastered the art of not forcing, you need to lean in on the ability to recognize opportunities when they come along. 

Where it comes to opportunities, I always keep this in the back of my mind: they will come by, there will be a few people who talk about it and there’s a short window where you can act on it. I’m not necessarily referring to the people close around you, but in order to recognize the really big opportunities you will need to go online. Follow different folks. Figure out who is real from who is not. And you will need to keep in the back of your mind that most people have not mastered the art of not forcing, so those people will not have millions of views, but it will be in the tens, the hundreds or a few thousand. And you might be one of those people, because you have it in your hands whether you will master the art of not forcing.
I wish I had known about the art of not forcing when I was younger, because there are so many examples from my past where I have thought back and was like: if only I gave it some more time. It will not only help you to not make the wrong the decision, but it also ties in to something that’s very practical: it will keep you from wasting time and money on things that are not important. That’s why I would suggest that giving things time is an essential part of the art of not forcing. And it gets even better than that. Have you ever had this feeling for a longer period of time where you were like: if I only met someone. And then as soon as you let go of that feeling, when you started focusing more on yourself and having a good time--------that’s when you finally meet someone really interesting. That’s also the art of not forcing. Because if you try too hard, then you become an artificial version of yourself. And this is just something that people pick up on. They might not be able to say what exactly doesn’t seem right, but the most that they will be able to say is something like “something seems off”, or “this ain’t real”, or the blunt one “this ain’t natural”. The art of not forcing doesn’t mean that you should stop trying to get better every day. It means that you try to find that delicate balance where you try to get better each and every day, but where you don’t try so hard that you stretch yourself out too thin. It’s like this French cheese where you need to have a good thick layer in order to experience the full flavor. And meeting someone in a romantic way is just a small part of all this. You will meet more interesting people in general, you will come across opportunities and life will become way richer because of that. And when you have mastered the art of not forcing, you need to lean in on the ability to recognize opportunities when they come along.  

Where it comes to opportunities, I always keep this in the back of my mind: they will come by, there will be a few people who talk about it and there’s a short window where you can act on it. 

I’m not necessarily referring to the people close around you, but in order to recognize the really big opportunities you will need to go online. Follow different folks. Figure out who is real from who is not. And you will need to keep in the back of your mind that most people have not mastered the art of not forcing, so those people will not have millions of views, but it will be in the tens, the hundreds or a few thousand. And you might be one of those people, because you have it in your hands whether you will master the art of not forcing.

 

Why alone-time is hugely underrated

Let me describe a setting and a situation, and then you reply from your most honest self whether this was you in the past, and whether a part of that is still you. By nature I have never really been the most social person in the room. I was always one of the alt-kids, one of the cool kids who seemed to be into stuff that the majority didn’t really get. So back in the days that was Nirvana, Radiohead, Blink 182 and the related cool stuff like the Tom Green Show, The X-Files, The Matrix 1 and everything in between.

In high school that was all okay and cool, in college it rolled well too, and then in ‘real-life’, ‘working-life’ it takes you a while to fit in-------trial and error, until you sort of find your groove. Then when you look back at some old photos you think like I gained some, and I lost some. Initially that’s where that thought sticks, but then after a while you realize that there’s more going on and you refine the thought into something like I gained some, I lost some and I returned to some.

When I was a young kid I always felt good about myself, and that’s most of the feeling that I returned to over the years. When I was a kid I preferred to spend time either by myself, or with a few friends. That’s it. I never was one for very large groups, even though I found my way with it later on. But that’s not really what I’m getting at here. At the heart of all this is that I genuinely enjoyed spending time by myself when I was young, and over the years society somehow instilled that feeling that this is not okay.

I enjoy my alone-time. I cherish my alone time. It’s one of the parts of the day that I always look forward to, and which truly gets me to recharge my batteries. It in no way means that I do not love my family and all the other people around me, but it just means that I’m a better version of myself if I can have a chunk of alone-time to retreat, regroup and then re-engage.

There is one thing though that most people think of, when they think of alone-time-----and that is boredom. I keep on returning to my 12-year old self as a bench-mark. When you were bored as a 12-year old, what did you do? Well, sometimes I was bored, but it was always for a short while, and I would always find something to do. And I believe the same applies to most people. It’s just that boredom has this bad rep, in that you are better off doing something ‘useful’ instead of being bored.

I will admit though that unmitigated boredom is bad, and even detrimental. If you truly don’t know what to do with your time, then you are better off in any job or any activity that helps you to pass the time. I think that this is the exception, but there’s this sort of reflex that gets you to never reach that point. By engaging in social media, you never fully reach that point of boredom-------and you never reap its benefits.

That’s where it gets interesting, and where I surprise myself every time. The alone-time, the boredom, the ‘doing-nothing’ always ends up helping you to solve the bigger questions and bigger challenges in your life. If you just take one day off, partially as alone-time, partially spending time with family, partially reading up on things that you normally don’t read up on, and partly being bored. At the end of all that you will always have gained a new perspective that you simply didn’t have before.