Facing Your Anxiety For The Better

While every person will have an individual solution to deal with this challenge, here is an unconventional but often effective approach:

> Facing your fear will resolve it and teach you the lesson it wanted you to learn.

Concretely picture, in as much detail as possible, what could go wrong. For me this looked like the following when thinking about jobs:

• i) I don’t like the job I applied for, so I quit after 3 months, but I also don’t like the next job, and the next, etc. At some point, I have so many terminations that no employer would ever hire me again.

• ii) I am humiliated and bullied by colleagues. Day in and day out with deeply insulting and hurtful offenses. I know it can cause long-lasting trauma.

• iii) I settle for a position that is not all I can achieve. I took it because it was the first available, but it prevents me from doing what I truly love.

Normally, the fear already dissipates once you clearly picture it in your mind.

You realize how exaggerated and unlikely it is that the worst-case scenario happens. Did any of your nightmares ever come true?

However, you will also notice how in your imagination you assume yourself to be passive – with things just happening to you without you taking any action. This is not reality, this is being caught in your thinking.

And now comes the second step. What if your anxiety is related to a very realistic possibility?

Your anxiety might be linked to not getting a single response from anyone. Just like my fear in ii) – I do think that is a real possibility. And this is where Preparation comes in.

Indeed, the world can be harsh, even devastating, and there is no way to escape that.

If you are so unemployable that you don’t get a single response after 6 months, it doesn’t matter whether you apply now, or in one or two years from now. Nothing would change, except that you would have let more time pass by.

Similarly, with colleagues: if you don’t have the self-esteem to stand up for yourself or quit, it is unlikely that a cowardly act like not applying would ever help you become someone who can stand up against bullies.
You must grow stronger. You must become better to be able to stand up against these fears.

It’s not convenient to realize, but in the end, taking action now and being decisive is almost always the best decision you can make.
If you are decisive, you will make it. You will grow if you need to.

And this insight is applicable to anxieties like what I outlined in iii) – the anxiety of not being all you want to be and therefore waiting until you find the perfect opportunity.

1. If you want to grow, you will. There is no limit to human drive.
2. If you are happy, you will never notice what you missed out on. It’s like saying you would miss being born in a reality where humans can fly with their own wings. Well, we cannot. So you don’t miss it, unless you think about it, do you?

You can almost always correct a wrong decision, but you cannot bring back time. The best time to take action is now. Taking action on a good plan today is better than putting a great plan into motion tomorrow.

Especially as scientists, we were trained to double- and triple-check our thinking. The issue is that outside of writing papers, this habit is rarely useful.

Forcing yourself to act won’t last long – you must change your mindset.