Letting go to go
This article has had a large impact on my life since I read it a few months ago.
In it, the "Recovering Overthinker" describes Morita-- the Japanese philosophy of letting go of preconceptions of how your experiences should be and participating in life despite your expectations of how your subjective experience should look.
For eg, imagine you avoid going to the gym because you are anxious about it.
A classical psychologist would try to understand why you are anxious and fix or at least ameliorate your anxiety about working out in public.
A Moritian psychologist would ask "Why do you think that a perfect state of mind is a prerequisite to going to the gym?". They would encourage you to abandon your expectations of your subjective experience and accept your mental state as it is. And, they would tell you to go to the gym regardless of how you feel and what the outcome is.
I find this way of thinking liberating. A few months ago, I found myself postponing a lot of my participation in life because I was lacking some quality or mental state that I thought are mandatory prerequisites to my participation. I hadn't worked out in months because I never found the perfect time to hit the perfect workout. I didn't participate in run club because I wasn't feeling social. I didn't invite friends over because my house wasn't neat enough. And I didn't work because I felt lethargic.
Things have been better now-- partially because of reading this article, partially because I visited Portugal and realized that I could drink in the morning and still have an amazing day, and partially because I have been taking Ashwagandha. I have been going to the gym in the afternoons despite how lethargic I feel or how ineffective I think the workout will be. I have been participating in run club religiously. I have been reading more. I have been going out for dinners with my fiancé often. And, I have been finishing my work faster at my job.
And now, I am back writing!!
I have been ignoring negative feelings and reduced my tendency to hyperfixate on emotions or supposed "injustices".
This post reminds me of this comment
I suspect that if somebody had given me this advice when I was a student I would have disregarded it, but, well, this is why wisdom is notoriously impossible to communicate. Wisdom always either sounds glib, banal or irrelevant. Oh well:
Anxiety, aversion and stress diminish with exposure and repetition.
This is something that, the older I get, the more I wish I had had this tattooed onto my body as a teenager. This is true of not only doing the dishes and laundry, but also vigorous exercise, talking to strangers, changing baby diapers, public speaking in front of crowds, having difficult conversations, and tackling unfamiliar subject matters. All of these are things that always suck, for everyone, the first time, or the first several times. I used to distinctly hate doing all of these things, and to experience a strong aversion to doing them, and to avoid doing them until circumstances forced me. Now they are all things I don't mind doing at all.
There may be "tricks" for metabolizing the anxiety of something like public speaking, but you ultimately don't need tricks. You just need to keep doing the thing until you get used to it. One day you wake up and realize that it's no longer a big deal.
What you really wanted from this answer was something that you could do today to help with your anxiety. The answer, then, is that if you really believe the (true) claim that simply doing the reps will make the anxiety go away, then the meta-anxiety you're feeling now (which is in some sense anxiety about future anxiety) will go away.
I think I always knew that the solution to my anxiety was to participate anyways (Also, notice that I saw "participate". Not "win at" or "excel" or "crap out at"). But you sometimes need the right combination of words to kickstart yourself into taking the advice. This article will be a reminder of this principle for me.
And, hopefully, for you as well!