Everyday pressures lead us to stress, anxiety, worry and frustration, unease, and dissatisfaction. A healthy level of pressure is fundamentally good for us, having no pressure leads to hopelessness, and too much anxiety creates stress. Most of our behaviour is shaped around our emotions, and we develop habits that strengthen this behaviour. This leads us to feel anxious because, over time, we train ourselves to express certain behaviours through body language: from sweaty hands, cracking knuckles, or being overly fidgety.
Most of the time, anxiety is built up by the combination of overthought and pressure. Therefore, we develop fear patterns that can create a panic that makes us avoid specific actions that may benefit us. However, the way to combat anxiety is through being comfortable in the activity, being comfortable with conflict, conducting presentations, public speaking, starting a business, going to the gym. There needs to be action taken. Otherwise, the anxiety bubbles away beneath the surface.
I became super spiritual during my early twenties, so I wanted to evolve my learning through Buddhism philosophy. I was fortunate enough to meet a few zen masters who taught me the art of mindfulness meditation, which has developed into the Western world as a pretty powerful practice. Focus on the ideas of breathing techniques to help still the mind and ease anxiety. Sitting down for 1 hour is unbearable for most people, but there is absolute tranquillity when you finally make the breakthrough.
Method 2
I came up with something called practical meditation, which involves the same principles of mindfulness, but you’re awake. This is achieved through means of exercise or creative pursuit.
- For creative pursuit: Painting, learning a new language, playing an instrument, drama class, creative writing, designing, crafts.
- For fitness, like running, cycling, yoga, tennis, badminton, rock climbing.
Try to conduct the task on your own to avoid distraction so that you are immersed in the activity. Second, the interest shouldn’t be work-related. Otherwise, you won’t enjoy the pleasure of switching off and gaining peace of mind. This should be a practice that helps keep you grounded, and the purpose is focused on harmonyrather than gain.
The positive self-help age doesn’t make things any easier either, as everything should always be good all the time. It makes us avoid everyday challenges as though it’s somehow supposed to fade out. So, going to play devil’s advocate and tell you to prepare for the worst-case scenario. Only then will you be free enough to be open to tackling the problems that arise in everyday life. Reinforced by the Stoics philosophy as negative visualisation. For example, you get a divorce, your car breaks down, you lose your job, your company goes bust. Now you can work towards a solution to either prevent or prepare for the worst. Hence, we have a contingency plan, instead of hiding away in far far away in positive land.
Expectation becomes the root of all anxiety. When you set a standard that’s too high but can’t achieve it, then you will identify yourself as a failure. Developed is a false sense of hope that impacts the emotions and causes us to develop more anxiety, adds extra pressure. We go through this frustration loop, which eventually forms a crisis. Do yourself a favour, remove all expectations and by removing that massive amount of weight off your shoulders.
There is no cure to anxiety; even the cockiest person in the world feels the pressure. Keep the pressure scales at balance as this becomes a lifelong process of constantly finding the middle way. The only antidote to anxiety is managing it better over time, building better beliefs and habits, and, more importantly, trusting yourself.