Recently I went to get a haircut and there were two kids already at the barbershop, sitting right next to each other
They were probably 7 years old. For one of them, it was as if nothing was happening,
he was just going on about his day. But for the other one, it was a completely different story
He must have been scared that the lady that was cutting his hair would accidentally cut him or something. He was contorting and
kind of crying out and I think basically he was just really afraid of the clippers.
I saw that kid and I immediately thought to myself, I was that kid. I was scared of everything growing up.
I was afraid of freeways because all the cars were moving too fast.
I was afraid of movie theaters because of the noises. It was all too loud. I was afraid of the dark,
fear of heights, fear of roller coasters
The list goes on
One time, I was afraid to go to school because I thought that a tornado was going to come and destroy the building and
kill all of us, basically. Tornadoes don't even happen in this part of the world.
It was like fiction had a better grip on me than reality. Fortunately, I've outgrown a lot of those fears
but the fact remains that I am still a very high-strung high intensity person and that's a huge reason for why I
have explored self-help so intensely.
I'm looking for solutions, basically, things like meditation and diet and other habits that can help me
feel a little bit more
Internally calm, a little bit more put together.
I'm actively exploring where this is coming from
And I've been open about this ever since I started making videos four and a half years ago
One of the very first videos I ever made actually was like a poem that I wrote about
all of my childhood fears and since then, there have been several others that I made on similar topics.
Anxiety looks like different things for different people
so I'm literally just sharing my own experience here, but what it usually looks like for me is
tightness in my chest and difficulty breathing and
My thoughts turn very narrow and negative and basically I'm just not having a good time.
It can be a full-body experience and very difficult to handle or control
It can be triggered by thoughts of work, or feeling overwhelmed, or whatever might be going on in that moment
But it's always kind of of my own doing, as in it's like all happening in my head.
So what I thought I would do is just share what I do when this happens
When I start feeling like I can't focus on anything or get any meaningful work done
I usually lie down and at this point in the video, I'm just gonna play a long continuous clip
I got of a Swiss Lake, so you can either keep watching and enjoy or lie down and just listen to what I'm saying
When I lie down the first thing that I do is I acknowledge how I feel
I don't pretend it isn't happening or try to run or ignore it
But I also make sure to remind myself that I am NOT in any actual physical danger in this very moment.
I Breathe deeply
And just feel how good it feels to breathe
And I'll think about my ancestors, the miracle really that it took for me to exist right now. The long string of
generations of human beings that came before me, they had to survive and have children for me to be alive today.
They faced and overcame, who knows, how many obstacles and hardships
Both sides of my family were immigrants in over a dozen countries over the last few centuries
And I'm the living proof that they overcame everything that came their way
I'm sure that things looked very bleak at times, but somehow, I exist
I think about childhood memories;
Smells, things I remember people saying, food I ate. I would go looking for bugs in the backyard or drink chocolate milk.
I think back to 16 years ago, moving to Oregon.
Memories of Miss Levine from second grade who yelled a lot, but I think she meant well.
I think back to ten years ago
I used to wear converse high tops in my purple jacket and I got my first email address that I would use to send
one-sentence emails back and forth with my classmates.
I think back to five years ago, I went to the beach with my family and we ate clam chowder that was pretty gross.
I think back to a year ago, I was about to leave for Mexico.
I wasn't sure if making videos online was going to get me anywhere or if I was about to make the biggest mistake of my life
I think about the things that I accomplished over the last few years
Or if I'm really not feeling up for it and only focusing on what I can only see as, failures.
I'll try to pull lessons from them.
That way, they can count for something at least.
At this point, I've kind of led myself up to the present moment and I'll just lie there, paying attention to everything around me.
This is even better if the room is dark
I'll pay attention to the sounds making their way to me, to the feeling of the carpet or wood or tile floor under me
I'll pay attention to what my clothes feel like on my body
I'll put my tongue on the roof of my mouth and on the back of my teeth
If I feel an itch on my arm, sometimes I'll scratch it and sometimes I'll just let it pass
By now, I've calmed down and at this point I can just lie there
Maybe I'll sit up and meditate but I have a grip on the situation again. I'm gonna be completely fine.
Not everything that's winding me up in my head is happening to me right now.
One thing at a time.
I thought I would share this because anxiety seems to be more and more prevalent nowadays
and we need to figure out ways to deal with it.
They can feel embarrassing but it shouldn't be, really it's just your body trying to communicate something to you
and that's the important piece right there.
This is not the kind of thing that you can just ignore
or just calm yourself down from. There's an underlying message there that you have to listen to.
Probably something that you're afraid of or that you're trying to run from but
when it comes to fear, you can't run from it. It will eventually find you.
Basically what I'm saying here is that you can't run from yourself and that's something that many people
attempt to do their entire lives.
The only thing you can really do is, sit with it and get to know it and become friends with it, really and
you slowly realize that it's not the enemy. That confronting these things can be liberating.
It's a really long process and that's why I don't get down on myself for all the things
I'm still very afraid of. In this society that we live in, we have a
tendency to sort of idolize people, like the famous and the powerful and see them as if they were invincible.
We can see these people as if they were more than just people and they aren't. Maybe you look at the number of subscribers
that I have and you look at me differently.
And if you don't, if that doesn't affect you at all, you could ignore this
but if you do
or maybe if you do without fully realizing it, just know that I'm the same person that I was when I had
You know
252 subscribers or zero
Ultimately, what I'm saying is the things that you feel whether it's anxiety or anything else for that matter, are felt by other people too
the things that I feel at least and
I guess my conclusion to all this, the way I sort of rationalize things in my head, is that this is part of being human
You know, there's no point in running from it.