Four ways to Free Yourself from Anxiety and Doubt
(At Work and Life in General)
- Stop looking for all the answers
One who seeks is always the one who learns but questions are not always signs of curiosity. When you are always asking questions on your job, perhaps its time to ask one more important question, to yourself. Do I not know the answer or am I looking for confirmation from others for the answer that I already know of? American slangs usually confer that people are full of shit but my personal observation has been that people are actually full of doubt. Especially for young people who are incredibly used to confirmations from their friends on social media, (using likes, comments and shares), getting a thumbs up on their ideas is a big deal now. Unfortunately, in our cruel world, affirmation and appreciation are rare gifts that are seldom gifted from one person to another. This world confirms to proven ideas not ambitious theories and young people are often looked at with uncertain glares rather than enthusiastic endorsements. So, my suggestion is stop asking what you should do or whether your plans make sense. Take small steps instead and be prepared to fall. Its something you have been doing since you were a toddler and falling will only teach you how to stand up taller, avoid next pitfalls and hopefully run much faster.
2. Plan, Do, Plan, Do, Plan and Just Do
The ability to think ahead of doing something is perhaps one of the greatest human gifts. It allows us to strategize and plan for future events. Many people get stuck in this phase and build complicated castles in their mind from where they plan to rule the world, forgetting that to build a castle, first you need to know how to lay bricks (or find someone who knows how to lay them for you). Everyone can plan and plan and plan but it takes someone who has actual work ethic to plan and then just do it. I always tell young people to take the first step and then plan for the second. Set goals for the things you want to achieve but do your best to succeed on number one before you start accumulating resources for number three. People get carried away with their plans and try to merge their actions to meet multiple goals at once and this is exactly where anxiety kicks in because half way through they realize they are not close to achieving either one.
3. Listen when you need to listen
One of the best ways to be prepared in advance for problems is to listen when you are being offered good advice. We often ask questions when we need answers but answers many a times come along way before the questions have ever been asked. Confused? Ever got advice from your parents way before you had to use them? Ever had a friend tell you to invest in a deal only to find out later that you should have and letting it go was a big mistake? As people we are allergic to advice and taking suggestions when not asked for makes us severely annoyed. But good advice is like vitamins that help build up your mental immunity system. They allow you to react to problematic situations swiftly and remind you on how to tackle situations you haven’t faced before. Listening is perhaps the most underrated skill in human history that allows us as people to avoid making mistakes of our own and learn from people who have been there and done that.
4. Read books that have been read by many
Reading isn’t just a habit for nerds and introverts. It’s a historically proven method for finding deeply researched and accumulated information on specific topics (talking about non-fiction here). Try to find books on topics that bother you most at work. If you are an entrepreneur than you will find bestselling books by Malcolm Gladwell (‘The Tipping Point’, ‘David and Goliath’), Adam Grant (‘Originals’) and other successful authors whose works have been termed as ground breaking in explaining several concepts massively useful in entrepreneurial journeys. Reading is listening with your eyes and specifically works as good as listening to people who have spent years researching on questions, trying to find answers (and possibly found them) which you might have been looking for yourself. Bestselling books are not always hoaxes of marketing boosts, they are signs of approval that the authors’ researched materials were appreciated and found useful by several million people. Somebody has gone through many years working out answers to complicated questions for you. You just need to muster up enough energy to turn pages. That shouldn’t be so hard.
All in all, the basic idea of ridding yourself from anxiety and doubt at work (or life in general) comes from the same idea to use to rid yourself from nervousness before speaking on a stage. A whole lot of preparation. Lack of concrete information is nerve-racking and we always end up looking at others for answers. We go to the doctor to find answers to our illness and engineers to look for answers to our architectural dilemmas but no ‘one’ professional is going to give you answers for the daily problems you go through. You are the one who has to take a shovel and dig for answers well before the questions emerge before you. Work and life test us on a daily basis and time is always of the essence whether you are earning for someone else or for yourself. So, don’t wait, start learning more today, start listening today, start observing more today because today is the day to find answers so that tomorrow you will have one less question pondering over your anxious head.
