Cognitive Awakening (3)
Section 2 Anxiety: The Roots of Anxiety
Anxiety must be your old friend. It always accompanies you like background music. Although we are very familiar with it, we never know who it is. After suffering silently for many years, I finally mustered up the strength to look at it one day. From then on, it moved away from me little by little. Although it occasionally fought back, it could never get closer. Today, I give you this cognitive weapon, hoping that you will no longer suffer from anxiety in this life.
Anxiety War
The year I turned 36 was my "first year of awakening". Before that, I lived a very chaotic life. As mentioned before, although I was very devoted to my job at that time, my spare time was almost occupied by things that did not require thinking. After being alerted, a kind of anxiety that I had never experienced before arose spontaneously, and I was eager to change. After all, whether individually or as a group, human beings' sense of security comes from their unique advantages in a certain aspect: either ability or ability. Wealth, or power, or influence.
But after being busy for a while, I found that I had no way to start, and I didn't see any changes or turning points. The feeling of asking for a unique advantage but not being able to get it is like a child facing a favorite toy but not being able to have it.
Fortunately, the era of online learning is coming. I found that talented people from all walks of life appeared on the Internet, and there were also many people who wanted to become better like me in various communities. I saw some hope, so I signed up for many courses and bought Many books, hoping to change myself immediately. Especially the moment I receive a book, I always have the illusion that I already possess this knowledge, but later I find that the "difficulty" of reading is completely different from the "comfort" of buying a book.
In order to relieve my anxiety, I began to unconsciously seek more and faster. As a result, I fell into a low-level diligence that only focused on the amount of reading - I read every book very quickly, only to find that I remembered nothing when I looked back. Looking up again, I see that the gap with some of my peers has long been out of reach. Even some people younger than me have already achieved a lot, but I still have to start from scratch. This situation made me irritable and anxious, and I was depressed for a time. During that time, I always had one sentence echoing in my heart: It's too late, it's too late, everything is too late...
Facing Anxiety
I was like a drowning person, completely wrapped in anxiety, as if I was slowly sinking to the bottom of the river. Watching the waves on the river gradually disappear, I finally figured out one thing when I felt desperate: doing something is better than not doing anything! Wang Deshun walked on the catwalk at the age of 79, and Chu Shijian started growing oranges at the age of 74. These are all real-life examples. But I am only in my thirties now, and my life still has a long way to go. It is not too late to start taking action now. So I shouldn’t compare the current situation with those so-called successful people. If I have to compare, I should compare it with the situation when they first started. In fact, I should compare myself with my past. Even if it is a little better, it is worth it!
I probably bottomed out and the anxiety slowly disappeared. Only then did I come back to my senses: I had always been passive when facing anxiety, and the initiative was never in my hands. I don't know when it will appear, nor do I know how to ask it to leave after it appears. In order to no longer suffer this kind of emotional ups and downs in the future, I must face it and completely solve this problem.
One afternoon, I took out a pen and paper and listed out all the troubles, worries, concerns and desires in my heart, ranging from life vision to things to be done in 10 minutes. Slowly, I sketched out the anxious thoughts. form.
First, completion anxiety. I always schedule my schedule too full and live in front of a deadline every day. For example, I want to learn a lot of things at the same time, but there is simply not enough time; there are too many things to be done routinely every day, and I feel short of breath after a day's delay. I can't get angry; I promise others at will, and my schedule is always disrupted by unimportant things... In short, as long as my inner desires are too wide-ranging or my external schedule is too tight, it will be difficult for me to be deep and calm.
Second, positioning anxiety. If you look directly at what the talented people in this field are doing now at the zero-basis stage, it is impossible not to be anxious: so-and-so has such a big influence at such a young age! They have seized the opportunity and taken the lead. How long will it take for me to do this? I thought that only I could come up with this brilliant idea, but I didn’t expect that someone else actually made the product... Wrong positioning will only make people feel that everything is too late. In fact, this is simply the wrong benchmark.
Third, choose anxiety. Sometimes too many choices can make people fall into anxiety. For example, if you suddenly have a period of free time, but because you want to do too many things, you end up wasting your time on wavering and being unable to calm down to do the most important things, or at all. Don't know what the most important thing is. In addition, the opinions of many talented people are also confusing. For example, A said that reading should be accurate to every word, and B said that reading should be based on topics, without reading to the end. It seems that both people are right, but their methods are completely opposite. Which method should be used? Which method? People like uniqueness and certainty. Faced with diversity and uncertainty, it may be difficult to deal with it by relying on innate habits.
Fourth, environmental anxiety. Sometimes we have to face some restrictions from the external environment. For example, due to the influence of family and work, there are some things we want to do but cannot do, and there are also things we don’t want to do but must spend a lot of time doing. This inefficiency or inability can sometimes drive people crazy.
Fifth, difficulty anxiety. Some books are just hard to read, some articles are just hard to write, some knowledge is just hard to understand, and some skills are just hard to learn... The core difficulty of something that can really make you stronger is unavoidable. It's always spinning around, and the longer it goes on, the more anxious it becomes.
sources of anxiety
To sum up, there are two reasons for anxiety: wanting to do many things at the same time, and wanting to see results immediately. Wang Xiaobo said: All human suffering is essentially anger at one's own incompetence. The nature of anxiety also fits this view: one's desires are greater than one's abilities, and one is extremely impatient. Anxiety is because the gap between desire and ability is too large.
Going deeper, anxiety does not entirely originate from our subjective consciousness, but from the physiological structure of our brains. We already know that the natural attributes of human beings are to seek for ease and to be eager for success. In other words, the seeds have been buried deep in our hearts: eager for success and wanting to do many things at the same time; No matter how hard you work, you will see results immediately.
This is the real source of anxiety! Anxiety is human nature, the default setting. For thousands of years, all people have been the same, but after entering the information society, this nature has been amplified due to the faster pace and stronger competition. Therefore, we do not need to blame ourselves or feel guilty, nor do we need to fight against our nature. Instead, we should find ways to see the mechanism behind it and try to change it. Of course, the easiest way is to do it in reverse, such as:
- Restrain desires and don’t let yourself do many things at the same time;
- Face reality and see clearly your true ability level;
- Prioritize first things and find ways to do only the most important things;
- Accept the environment and do what you can within the limitations;
- Go straight to the core and force yourself to break through it.
It’s just that the rhetoric feels like correct bullshit. Who doesn’t understand the truth? The key is how to truly improve your abilities and stay patient.
Faced with such a question, I wanted to give the answer right away, but obviously I couldn't explain it clearly in one or two sentences, especially since "improving abilities" involves all aspects, so I had to distribute the answer throughout the book. Instead, "stay patient." This topic can be broken through first.
Patience can be said to be one of the most precious qualities of human beings. It refers directly to our nature of eagerness for success and seeking refuge in the easy. It can be said that those who have patience win the world, so we might as well start with the key word patience.
This article is excerpted from: "Cognitive Awakening: Unlocking the driving force for self-change" Author: Zhou Ling