Scott Adams – he of Dilbert comic strip fame – has this wonderful video on achieving relief from anxiety. I don’t normally link to YouTube here in my Blog, but this seemed worth it. In this time of war in the Ukraine and a lack of solid, spine-tingling leadership in the United States, I have no doubt but what anxiety is on the rise. And here we thought that returning to normal was something to look forward to.
This screenshot captures Scott’s talking points:
- Most Things Don’t Matter – more true words have never been spoken. As my grandmother used to say, “It won’t matter in 100 years.” In fact, if you want to find proof of this, go to your local library and read through newspapers from precisely 100 years ago. I guarantee that you will be amazed at what troubled the world then, compared to today.
- Mental Shelf Space – Get Busy … with this, Scott is saying that you cannot ever unthink negative thoughts. Like a bell that’s been rung, there is no un-ringing of those pesky negatives. But you CAN crowd them out with other thoughts. They say that if you find yourself mentally handwringing life in the middle of the night and cannot fall back asleep, then after 20 minutes get up and do something. In my day, it was to get up and wax the kitchen floor. You will find yourself sleepy in about 10 minutes and have the cleanest floors in the world.
- Vampire, not Hobby (social media) – See? I’m not the only one suggesting that you quit Facebook (and all the other social media sites). They can be seen as time-sucks, but Scott is saying that they are also vampire-like, blood-sucking wastes of time. I could not agree more.
- Control the Controllable – it always works, he says, and I agree. Russia and Ukraine? You cannot control that. Inflation? Sorry. No control. Gas prices? Aside from voting out the idiots come November, you cannot control those either. But! You can control how you spend your time. You can control when and where you exercise or what you eat, etc. It’s a corollary to No. 2 – you are in control of mental shelf space.
- Stress = Energy = Exercise – Those stimuli that engender stress are nothing but little energy molecules banging around in your body and your psyche. “Drop and give me fifty,” will immediately cathect that energy. The sweat pouring out of your pores are those little stress molecules. Do it.
- Criticism = Chemical Reaction in a Stranger’s Skull – This one is, to me, all about, “sticks and stones will break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” Resilience. You have it. That criticism someone heaped on you? It’s only words.
- Learn to Like Embarrassment: Practice – This is akin to what I used to tell my staffs around the world: Go Forth and Fail. Get used to failing. Get used to embarrassment. In time, its sting will mean nothing to you. And you will have learned one helluva lot.
- A-B Test – Continuously: I am not entirely sure what he means by this one, except that it reminds me of the idea that “everything that is, could be otherwise.” In other words, everything can be flipped. Everything. If you think it’s A, then look for the flip side (B). What does it mean to you?
- Ego is the Enemy (Kill it) – yes! This is how I teach the idea of Ego in my classrooms; that it is the place where all the answers we think we have, reside. See Nos. 1 and 3 above and then ask yourself, “do I have all the answers? Have I ever?” Mr. Adams also suggests getting good at something … anything. It will help to fill your ego with answers that are real.
So, he continues onto the idea of building systems for stress relief.
Listen here to what he has to say about systems and most importantly to the idea that it’s a full-time job. Forget about never having stress and anxiety in your life. It’s chaos out there, sweetheart, and the best you can do is to minimize it and, perhaps, to have fun while doing it.
One aspect of his full-time-job approach that worked for me was getting my Doctorate. On the day that that sort of “skill acquisition” was complete and I walked away with the parchment, I can honestly say that 90% of my anxiety went away. In a manner of speaking, I became immune. GET A SKILL!
I hope this helps, and as Dr. Christian Conte is want to say, “I wish you peace.”
