Ten Examples Of Using Your Anxiety

BELOW ARE TEN EXAMPLES to clarify how to deal with anxiety by using your anxiety.


1. Anxious about future tragedies. Goal: Do something that makes terrorism less likely. Every time you feel anxious, say to yourself, "I will make terrorism less likely in the future." If this seems like wishful thinking, your first task will be to eliminate pessimism and hopeless, helpless thinking from your mind. Read the book, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, by Martin Seligman and put in the time to change your explanatory style (your habitual way of explaining the cause of events). This is NOT a trivial activity. It is vital!

Then get to work on the goal of making terrorism less likely. Maybe you'll first have to learn about terrorism. Read about it with a serious intention to help save the world from this scourge. Why NOT you? Use your anxiety as a calling. Use it to sustain your motivation. Use it to intensify your resolve and work work WORK!

2. Afraid your anxiety will never end. Goal: Learn to feel relaxed and secure. Every time you feel anxious, say to yourself, "I will learn to feel relaxed." There are plenty of methods you can practice: meditation, yoga, progressive relaxation, autogenic training, Silva Mind Control, etc. And using your anxiety is particularly helpful. Read books, listen to tapes, and ask your friends what they do. Put in the time to learn methods that will help you feel relaxed more often. Use your anxiety to remind you of your goal and use it to motivate you to take continuous, persistent, relentless action to accomplish your goal: Learn to feel relaxed and secure.

3. Worried that life will never return to normal. Goal: Sleep well at night. This is really worry about worry. The first thing to do is to get something more tangible to work with. In this case, sleep well. It could have been any of a number of things that represent returning to normal: regaining a normal appetite, feeling happy again, having an interest in sex again. By choosing something specific, you can take concrete steps. There are actions you can take that will help you sleep better. You can read books on sleep and apply the information. Remind yourself of your goal to sleep better every time you feel worried. Use your anxiety to motivate you to take action.

4. Worried your children are being traumatized. Goal: Help your children be psychologically healthy. Every time you feel a twinge of anxiety, let your goal repeat in your mind like a mantra and get to work doing what you can about it. Learn what you need to learn and put it into practice. If this task or any task feels hopeless, improve your explanatory style (and teach it to your children) and then get to work helping your kids stay mentally healthy. Anxiety produces adrenaline and that means it gives you physical energy to move. Use it.

5. Worried about the safety of planes because you fly a lot. Goal: Improve plane safety. Why NOT you? Put your brain to work coming up with ideas. Make yourself come up with ten ideas every day. Send the best ones out on the internet. Every time you get a jolt of anxiety, sit down and come up with ten more. Or, if you can't stop to think right then, say to yourself, "Tonight at eight, I'll put my American ingenuity to the test!"

6. Afraid of biological terrorism. Goal: Keep your family safe from disease. Every time you get a jolt of anxiety, say to yourself, "We must make our immune systems strong." Make a list of all the things that boost your immune system and work hard to make sure they are being done. Use your jolts of anxiety to re-motivate you many times per day. Use your adrenaline as a fire under your rump to get to work.

7. Scared the economy will ruin you financially. Goal: Protect your assets. Use your anxiety by telling yourself, "I will protect my assets," every time you feel anxious. And get to work. Rather than being aggressive and trying to make as much money as you can and taking risks, shift your attitude for the time being to a more conservative, protective mode, and take actions accordingly.

8. Afraid a terrorist will use nuclear weapons. Goal: Help rid the world of this threat. Here the possibilities are endless. Your first task will be to decide how to go about it. It may take you a year to do only that. But while you are putting your mind to the task, while you are thinking about it and reading about it and asking people about it, your mind is not worrying. It is seeking, reaching, accomplishing. The anxiety is transformed with each purposeful action into determination. And determination is a much healthier, more pleasant, and more productive emotion than anxiety. And since the purpose of terrorism is to paralyze people with terror, you are, by your very determination, reducing terrorism.

So your first task is to decide how you will go about ridding the world of a nuclear threat. Will you write your congresspeople? Will you start a lobbying group to put political pressure on our representatives? Are you a computer programmer? Maybe you could work to invent a program that disables the machinery that activates nuclear weapons. Are these dumb ideas? Then I challenge you to come up with something better! Every time you get a jolt of anxiety, tell yourself with feeling, "I will eliminate the nuclear threat!" And put yourself to the task with determination.

9. Anxious about WWIII. Goal: Help make the world a saner place. Find something you think is the most important element of sanity and sell other people on it. If you think love is the answer, learn how it blossoms between people. Become an expert on love. Sell people on the ways of thinking and behaving that result in love. Every time you feel an anxiety-jolt about WWIII, assert your goal to yourself with determination: "Help make the world a saner place!" And get to work.

10. Afraid humans are destined to destroy themselves. Goal: You could have a goal like the one above, or you could have a goal to change your assumptions about "destiny." If you believe there is nothing anyone can do about our future demise because humans are destined to destroy themselves, you should first teach yourself better habits of thinking. Learn to dispute your thoughts. Learn to see the errors in your assumptions. Read books like, How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life, and Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. Learn to change your explanatory style, because not only will it make you feel depressed or anxious to have a defeatist explanatory style, but it will impair your health and your ability to succeed at work. The thought that anything in the future is destined is not only unsound thinking, it is counterproductive and self-defeating for you personally. Root it out.