- What up everyone?
It's your boy, FJ.
Today's video is about something I know so well.
I'm like a connoisseur.
I'm like a sommelier when it comes to this stuff,
anxiety.
My first forays into self help and self development
were because I was so anxious
that I couldn't stand it anymore,
and I discovered some of the big ones out there,
you know, Eckhart Tolle, "The Power of Now,"
and I loved that because it was like,
yes, if I can just train myself to be in the now
then I will not feel anxious anymore.
And there's something to that.
We overdo it a bit, I think,
when we're thinking about the future a lot.
We take what would be like a normal anxiety
and we blow it up to be like
the worst thing that ever happened,
like nuclear disaster size anxiety.
It's not good to be in that overblown state of anxiety,
but there's no way that you're ever
gonna get rid of anxiety.
It's always gonna be there.
And that's a good thing.
That's what this video is about.
Anxiety is trying to teach you something.
It's trying to show you something.
And I was trying to use these self help things
about anxiety in such a way
where I could just ignore all that.
I was looking for a roundabout way
of getting past my problems
and more like suppressing the anxiety
and sort of just forgetting about the things
that were worrying me.
It's a difficult line to walk
because in some, in many ways,
let's get real folks,
we worry about some stupid stuff.
I've talked about this before on the channel.
When I was a kid in like first grade
I was riding the bus home from school
for the first time.
And I threw up literally every day
because I got so anxious about missing the bus.
And then once I got over that, a couple of years later,
and my brother was going to school,
I threw up every day 'cause I was worried
that he would miss the bus,
because he's too dumb to find the bus on his own.
So yeah, there are things that you should
kind of let's try to simmer down
on some of the anxiety here.
But you're gonna find at a certain point,
you'll reach a bottom, a bedrock,
of anxiety that you can't go below,
and that is okay.
And in some ways, it's a good thing.
It's a good teacher.
Anxiety really comes down to a couple of things,
if I may oversimplify it,
comes down to control and feeling that we don't have it.
And related to that, but it's not quite the same thing is,
a fear of the unknown.
In some ways, the lesson to be learned
is not, is like more of an existential one
that isn't going to be very fun to hear
or for me to tell you about.
And it's one that I am continually learning
and I'm constantly horrified by,
but it is the simple fact that we have
way, way less control over our lives than we think we do.
You know, I've got an apartment,
it's nice.
I've got some money comin' in.
I work for a livin'.
I work for the man, you know what I mean?
I've got a cool YouTube channel goin' on.
How much of what it took for these things to happen
did I have any part in?
Not that much really.
When you think of just like the basic structures of society
and the industries that we benefit from,
I had nothing to do with it.
We rely a lot on the rest of humanity
that has come before us and is around us now,
the infrastructure of modern society,
technology, so on and so forth,
we are very much dependent on it,
and we don't often like to recognize that.
But that can be a great source of anxiety
when we first come across it,
when we first allow ourselves to see it,
and the thing to learn there
is really that simple fact that we have very little control.
It's one of those things, I think,
that once you can really full on face that
and just let yourself feel
the overwhelming anxiety and dread of it
you can get past it.
Sometimes we feel anxiety
because there's a truth just over here
that we don't wanna look at
and we can see it out of the corner of our eye
and we're like, ah, man, I know that's not good.
I don't even wanna look there,
but I'm worried because one day
I might accidentally look over
and bllll, oh my gosh!
That thing I didn't wanna acknowledge is there.
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So that's the more dreadful life lesson to learn.
But I think the other part of it,
which is a bit more uplifting,
and also, it's also existential I guess,
'cause when you look at the existentialists
they were all about.
(white noise)
Isn't that what existential anxiety is all about?
The realization that you can choose to do whatever
and it's too much power?
A lotta times when we are in anxious situations
that we are looping on, not the big huge ones
like I might lose my job and I have no control over it,
which is, you know, I wish I could help you there,
but sometimes it's more anxiety inducing
when you realize I have control over this thing.
There's a decision I need to make,
there's a path I've got to go down or at least look down
and I don't wanna do it,
because the responsibility is all on me.
When I was first getting into self help
and I was feeling anxious,
and I'm talking like really anxious.
Like keeping myself up at night with it,
it was about a relationship.
The relationship wasn't even bad,
but it was just one of those feelings you get.
You just know this isn't the one.
And I hated that and I didn't wanna
have to face that decision of exerting
that control over the situation,
and then facing the unknown afterwards of like,
what is the result gonna be.
Even though now I say,
oh that wasn't the right relationship,
at the time that was not something that I consciously
was really thinking.
I thought maybe it's not the right one.
But that was the anxiety.
I was like, there's all these things.
This doesn't seem right,
but oh maybe it is right.
Oh, I just don't know, uh.
And I kept obsessing over these thoughts,
and that was when I was just trying to suppress it
and be like if I just stop thinking,
if I just do like Ekhart says and stop thinking
and just be in the now then I can just keep doing this.
I can stay in this relationship.
It'll be great.
That's not what he's advocating, I don't think.
But it's easy when you're looking for ways
to manipulatively reach your ends.
If you're trying to solve a situation
without really solving it,
if you're trying to get rid of your anxiety
by not facing the thing that
the anxiety's trying to tell you,
then those teachings are very attractive
because you can trick yourself into thinking
that it's just teaching you to don't feel,
don't worry, don't worry about anything.
Just keep goin'.
When you have that spark of anxiety,
and especially when you can't let go of it,
the reason that you keep looping around on it
is because there's a point in the loop
where naturally you should be making a decision.
But then you don't and so it just keeps going.
And it kinda spirals out of control after a while
because you start to become anxious about the anxiety.
And you're like, is this just gonna get worse?
Oh crap, this isn't going away.
Ekhart lied to me, man.
And the anxiety is leading you.
When you feel more anxious,
when you think about going a certain direction,
perhaps that is the direction you should be going in.
Not always.
That's not a rule.
When you're thinking about...
Am I getting blown out now with the sun coming out?
When there's a direction that you think about
that you could go down and you feel anxious,
it's your body tryin' to tell you
there's something there that you don't wanna face.
It might just be that you don't wanna face the unknown,
you don't wanna have a change in the status quo.
But it could also be that there's a truth there
that you have been ignoring.
You don't wanna see it.
The anxiety is trying' to help you
not lie to yourself anymore.
When you're feeling anxious, in some ways,
perhaps you are lying to yourself.
You're telling yourself there's no problem
and I don't need to face it
or the action doesn't need to be taken right now.
Now on the positive side,
once you start to go towards the anxiety,
what I've found is that always it goes away.
It feels like it's gonna get worse,
and maybe at first it does,
as you take that step into the unknown,
but the thing is, as you go into the unknown
it becomes the known
and there's much less anxiety surrounding it.
When you change the status quo
there's always gonna be discomfort.
When you make changes, you make hard decisions,
there's always discomfort.
When you allow yourself to see truths
that you didn't wanna see 'cause they were inconvenient,
as Al Gore might say,
it may bring up other issues,
but the anxiety is not gonna get worse
because suddenly you faced it.
Think about, what is it that I'm afraid to face?
What is the thing that I'm not going through with
and realize that the anxiety isn't gonna go away
until I face it, until I go through with it.
Sometimes it's something as simple as
I'm just scared to have a conversation about something.
I'm just scared to realize
that what I thought was true might not be true.
Allow yourself to go into it.
That's really what it is.
Anxiety gets dispelled with the truth
and with the courage to go into the unknown.
That's about it from me.
Thanks for watching.
Check out some other videos over here.
If you want a funny one,
check out my playlist of funny stuff.
But I'm sure you've seen it already.
Just watch it again, okay?
Smash like, subscribe if you haven't already,
'Til next time, stay cool and attractive.
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