13 ways to face challenges without anxiety
We all face challenges and setbacks in our day-to-day existence. Some are episodic and abrupt like losing someone or something. Some are more existential like aging or politics. But they all feel real in the moment and can be unsettling at best and disabling at worst.
I find this happens in all areas of my life. Even at my age, my emotions are up or down depending on the current score of perceived wins versus perceived losses. And when I get challenges in more than one area, or when they start to pile up, I get anxious.
I start to lose hope. I start to think and act with scarcity. I withdraw, become isolated and lose my initiative and creativity. I become a liability to myself, the people I live with and the people I work with.
It’s crazy. I have some much to be grateful for, but I forget myself and start to wallow in the bad stuff and catastrophize everything. I know better!
So what’s going on? Haven’t we talked about this before? Why are there lessons like this that require constant relearning?
I know that over the course of this podcast I’ve often coached you how to pull yourself our of a funk. How to get through the salt and sand and smog to a clearer place to live, love, laugh and achieve – if that’s what you want.
You may even remember a time when my words resonated with a challenge of your own, when they showed up at the right time to help you get through, over or around a bump in your road. When you were out on that training run, feeling sorry for yourself and my ravings struck a chord like a great blue lightning bolt of joy from the sky!
I am grateful for that resonance.
But, the truth, as I’ve often told you, and I hope you won’t take it personally, is that you are an afterthought. I wrote/write these articles, I speak/spoke these words, because I need to process something of my own and you are the happenstance, ancillary beneficiaries. I’m shouting my pain into the void and you just happen to be standing in the way.
The fact that it resonates is proof that the human experience is synchronic. We are linked in experience and emotion, if not more, in the great web of it all. We are travelers in the same small rickety boat, rocked by the same frothing, angry waves and splashed by the cold spray of life together.
And so I find myself here in need of reminding all of us that practice is required to make it through the storms to both the exultant mountain top and the peaceful bay.
Let us begin.
We are creatures of anxiety, and the modern world works hard to keep us in a state of fear.
We don’t like being anxious. Conflict makes us anxious. Deadlines make us anxious. Missed opportunities make us anxious. Pending engagements make us anxious. Past mistakes, remembered and ruminated on, make us anxious.
What are some of the unhealthy ways we tend to deal with this constant barrage of anxiety?
Self medication is a great one. There is no anxiety that can survive a two-bottle of wine binge, is there?
Eating your way into comfort? Check.
Maybe, and this is just a guess, but over exercising to deaden the screaming voices of your mind?
Avoidance is another. We don’t engage with that person, or that job, or that situation to avoid the conflict and the anxiety that comes with it.
Maybe we fall apart totally. Unable to go to work. Unable to get out of bed. Unable to engage any semblance of our best or normal self with the world – because we are anxious. We are afraid. Best not to play the game when the game just gives pain.
I think that’s enough exposition and enough rolling around in the pain of it.
Let’s move on to the solution.
How do we get through these tough points? How to we stay out of disabling anxiety and scarcity when confronted by challenges and conflict?
How do we, god forbid, “Rise to the Challenge?”
ONE
Check your assumptions. There is no such thing as a conflict or challenge free life. There is no destination that you are somehow going to think your way or work your way to where everyone is holding hands and singing songs and dancing with unicorns under rainbows.
It feels to me like this is a version of the ‘destination fallacy’, like there is some place or time where there will be no conflict and no challenges and all we have to do it get there.
And then, because we have this errant assumption of a conflict-free existence, when the inevitable conflict comes, we are not prepared. We feel affronted. It feels unfair.
Guess what? There is a place you will eventually get to where you will have no conflict or anxiety. It’s six feet under in a mahogany box. Other than that, the world is spicy.
Sometimes I hear the Boomer advice, “Life is hard! Get over it!” That’s not very helpful. That implies there is some problem with you. You need to toughen up! You need to roll with the punches! You need to persevere!
No, you don’t need to ‘toughen up’ like some cowboy riding the range. But you do need to expect that there will be conflict in life and then you can develop the tools to deal with it in a mentally and physically healthy way.
TWO
Cultivate detachment.
Not avoidance.
Detachment. This thing that is happening is just that, a thing that is happening. You can’t stop it from happening, but you can control how you react. Detachment does not mean that you don’t care. Detachment is the ability to see a thing without attaching a load of emotional baggage to it.
Look at it like you are an observing 3rd party. This will allow you to get out of your primitive hormone and emotion driven dinosaur brain and into your big, thinking brain.
Detachment means uncoupling your self-worth from the outcome.
Before you react, apply a lens of dispassion.
THREE
Understand the context. You are a thinking bag of water on one planet in a universe of stars. Is that thing that is upsetting you right now, really that important? How many times have you survived conflict in the past? Is it really the end of the world? Is it really something you want to spend negative emotion on?
I bet if you think about it a year from now it won’t be a big deal. And I bet in 10 years you won’t even remember it.
You’ve got so much to be grateful for. Life is a miracle. Put this thing in context.
FOUR
Is it under your control? Are you worrying about things that you have no way to change? It happened. You can’t change that. Why waste energy on it?
If it’s under your control, maybe you can change it. You get to choose. If it isn’t under your control you can let it go.
What is under your control is how you react and how you invest your emotions.
Why worry about stuff that isn’t under your control?
FIVE
Don’t catastrophize. That’s a great term. It’s another version of worrying about things that haven’t happened yet. You have a challenge and then instead of keeping it in context, you string together a whole story about how this one conflict is the end of the world.
I know I do this. It goes something like this… “Oh my god that was a terrible call with the customer. I’m not going to get the business. I’m going to get fired. I’ll never b e able to find another job. Everything I’ve worked for in my life will be taken from me. I’ll die broke, alone and miserable…”
Sound familiar?
None of that stuff is going to happen.
Don’t catastrophize. You’re making yourself miserable for no reason.
SIX
Stay in the present. Stay in the now.
We have the insane tendency, when confronted by a conflict or a challenge to not only catastrophize about the future, but also to helpfully dig up from the past all those other times we failed to rise to the occasion, just to reinforce the anxiety.
You can’t change the past. The future hasn’t happened.
Whatever this challenge is, it is now. Look around. You’re alive. You’ve probably got people who love you. If not you can always get a dog.
Don’t waste energy on things in the past that you can’t change or things in the future that haven’t happened.
All you have is right now. Live it.
SEVEN
Now we’re going to move from the ‘what not to do into some tactics to get out ahead if your anxiety habits.
The first is to live every day and to make every day have meaning. Don’t sleep walk. Don’t put off to the future. Live intentionally. Even if that intention is to lie on the couch and watch Hallmark movies in your underwear all day. If that’s what you need to do, do it and do it intentionally.
Make finding the meaning of every day part of your habit. A great example of this is to write down what you’re grateful for.
EIGHT
Cultivate a sense of hope and abundance. Hope may not be a strategy, but it’s a great tactic and an awesome way to be happy. Believe in an outlandishly positive version of yourself and live that life today.
You can do anything. Live with hope. Live with abundance. Make it part of your daily existence and validation.
NINE
Take care of yourself. Cultivate the ability to say ‘no’. At the end of your life today’s to-do list of things other people want you to do is not going to matter. Prioritize your health. Both physical and mental.
This means scheduling time to do the thing you need to do to stay healthy. Sharpen your saw.
And it means saying ‘no’ when it is in your best interest.
You are important. Treat yourself that way.
You can’t show up for work, or family or friends as the best version of yourself if you don’t prioritize self-care.
TEN
Look for the lessons.
This is so easy to say, and so hard to do. When you have challenges and conflicts, consider them with detachment and find the lesson. They are teaching you something.
Open you ears, open your eyes, and open your heart to the lessons.
ELEVEN
Cultivate connection.
It is far easier to respond to a challenge or a conflict if you have a trusted tribe you can turn to. Find a core group of people you can trust. Have them ready,. Set the expectation that you may be reaching out when you have a challenge.
Even if it is just to have someone to listen it will help.
Isolation is a killer.
TWELVE
Cultivate helpful habits. As I have learned, challenges and your ability to respond to them, are something you need to practice and keep current. Don’t wait until there is a crisis. Build your capabilities step by step, day by day and habit by habit.
THIRTEEN
Practice compassion.
One of the best ways to contextualize your own challenges is to help others. It is good karma and and creates a positive cycle of goodwill.
Have compassion for others. Practice empathy. Find a way to help.
And my friends, with that I have exhausted almost 2,000 words on this topic.
I feel better.
Do you?