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 Is it reasonable that a large chunk of it has just been replaced by a baseline stress that runs like a dark undercurrent?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.