Tag Archives: anxiety

Waking Up

The neurones begin firing as the first shreds of golden light burst through the cracks in the venetians; sending the crew to assess the situation. They speed from the back of the brain to the eyes, heaving the weighty lids open, commanding the eyes to take stock of the situation. Resisting the commands the eyelids fall closed again. Another command comes, assaulting the languid peace. A piercing trill coming from across the room, the ears channel the alert to the crew, doubling their efforts the eyelids are thrust open, no longer heavy. Reflexively, the green light flicks on and the warm, soft covers are thrown into the air. With a soft but firm thud the feet hit the ground, left and then right, moving rapidly towards the cacophonous perpetrator to silence it. Before central command is able to process what is going on, the enemy is silenced, the body alert.

No longer dark and peaceful, reality pours in, rapidly filling the room, expelling all hints of misty fantasies gone by. The heart begins to pound and like the room, the head fills with the light of the day ahead. The light is but fleeting when put into perspective and only lasts a short while. Like an expensive wine it is crucial to bask in every moment of day ahead because like everything, it will inevitably come to a close. Thoughts and plans, like race cars around Monte Carlo, rush around and around in the head, going faster and faster with each passing moment.

Crucial to survival the mind must take a pit stop. Slowing down into the pits, the breaks come on with every focussed breath, until finally coming to a complete halt. Crossed legs, relaxed hands, relaxed mind. Each breath comes and goes, brushing the tip of the nose, recharging the ageing batteries.

Once the mind is still, the day can begin again, but no longer with the anxious fervour of the awakening. The heart and mind are slowed, focussed, able to notice all that occurs in the day, the door is opened and the world rushes in. You are ready to face it.

Stress and Anxiety: Don’t Suffer Twice

This week, I listened to a great podcast about mindfulness and anxiety from Sam Harris and Tim Ferris. Whilst writing my weekly review I realised I experienced some stressful situations in the short, medium and long term which the podcast helped me control, with varying degrees of success. If you just want to see the techniques I use, jump to here

Short Term Stress

I had a very difficult exam (my final one for university!) which seemed to be designed to push you for time. I had roughly 30mins to go, with 30 marks unfinished (out of a 100 mark, 2hr exam), all long responses and I noticed myself getting frazzled and spending time thinking about how I was not going to finish, and flipping between questions.

After about 30 seconds of fueling the fire of anxiety, I identified my stress and thought, “it doesn’t matter how many questions I’ve got to go, I just need to keep powering through them and finish them the best I can,” and that’s exactly what I did. I put this ability to identify and put aside my stress down to my meditation, which I poorly adhere to but have still seen the benefits, this being one.

Medium Term Stress

My medium term stress was having a busy week ahead with Friday, Saturday and Sunday being full of work, and a lot of research to do. The way I managed this stress was ensuring I had a to do list of the essential pieces I needed to have finished, and just worked hard to get them finished by thursday so on the days I was working I was able to switch off afterwards so it still felt like I had a weekend; worked a charm.

Writing the tasks down and blocking out time in my calendar has been a great way to show me how much I really do need to get done because the worry about having a lot of work to do is always worse than the actual work.

Long Term Stress

My long term stress is more about the career I want to pursue, I am coming to the end of my degree and have several options but unsure which one to take. I’m still figuring out how best to approach this, but I currently have two heuristics:

  • Which path will be more fun to do
  • Which path has the most options afterwards

So far this led me to choose my degree (Exercise Physiology is more fun than Engineering) my jobs and the research projects I’ve been involved in as well. It is working out pretty well so far.

You can never know whether the decisions you make are the right ones, so by choosing a path which has the most options and will be fun in the short term removes a lot of the stress around making significant live decisions. Tim Ferriss’ fear setting exercise is also really useful for life-altering decisions as well.

Strategies to Stress Less

It’s not that I don’t stress, I do, but I’ve really learned over the past few years how to better manage my stress so that it doesn’t distract me from what is important.

For short term, in the moment stress, like in an exam, you have to understand your stress, allowing it to be put away and ignored so you can deal with the problem at hand. Mindfulness Meditation (with Sam Harris’ ‘Waking Up’ app) has helped in identifying this stress, allowing you to not be consumed by it.

For medium term, stress about the coming days or weeks, writing a list and scheduling your time in a calendar helps to make you realise that the stressor is probably not as time consuming as it seems, and by blocking out time for it, Steve Jobs’ ‘Imaginary time’ comes in and with a pressing enough deadline, clearly set out in a calendar and a list, you can achieve almost anything. What happens when your tasks aren’t time bound is called Parkinson’s Law, where “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion” so block off the time you need and have no more, trust me, you’ll finish it.

Finally long term stress. Making life decisions suck, you can never be sure of what result your decision will have, but there are ways to ensure you enjoy it. Choose something that you’ll enjoy doing, the worst thing that happens is you enjoy yourself, then do something else. Choose something which doesn’t close doors, or even opens them, nobody knows what they want to be doing in 5 or 10 years, so don’t limit yourself with your choices.

Finally, the main takeaway from this post should be that the object of your stress will never be as bad as what you think it will be, so don’t suffer twice by stressing about it. Just saying ‘don’t stress’ doesn’t help so I’ve given some thoughts on how I manage my stress so I’m not wasting my energy on my ruminations.

I’d love to know what you do to manage your stress and any techniques which have worked for you, leave a comment down below and get in touch if you’d like to chat through your stresses with me!

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