The source of all anxiety is looking at things you can’t touch. Touch is the cure for anxiety; if you can interact with something, physically move it or speak to it or draw on it, then it ceases to be something that hijacks your amygdala.

That sensation you feel, when you feel anxious? That’s supposed to be a set of chemicals and impulses that help you deal with the problem. It gives you the alertness to find an escape route or the strength to fight or even the social impulse to befriend. But it’s reactive. Something frightens you, and that part of your brain goes “Oh, you seem to have a problem! Here’s a bunch of brain juice that will help you solve it.”

But if you can’t solve it? Then you just keep that feeling, and your brain just keeps pumping in more jitter-juice and you overload. That stuff is meant to come in short bursts.

In the days when we evolved this particular function of our brains, there was no such thing as a non-immediate problem. Our savanna ancestors didn’t think about things like the state of a distant world or a looming proposal at work. The sorts of problems we evolved that response to deal with are all problems that would be dealt with swiftly, and then the panic would recede until it was needed again.

Listen to me. You are not meant to panic all the time. And if you are, it’s not a disorder or a psychological problem. It’s a very expected response to a really terrible behavior that most modern people have adopted, which is paying attention to problems you can’t solve, all the goddamned time.

Look, your brain can’t tell the difference between a tiger and a really realistic video of a tiger, which is why scary movies work on us even though we know they’re movies. So when you look at a picture of a problem that would be really, really concerning if it was happening right in front of you, your brain reacts the same way. But unlike the problem in front of you, you can’t actually respond to the distant one. So it never gets solved, so you never stop panicking. You can’t fight, can’t take flight. You just soak in the jitter-juice.

You need to stop.

I know this is hard. For one, when there’s a tiger in front of you the last thing your brain wants to hear is “just ignore the tiger.” For two, things like “doomscrolling” and other ways we let our lives become flooded with distant fear-generating scenarios are downright addictive for many. And for three, a whole lot of people have figured out that numbers One and Two mean that they can make a lot of money or gain a lot of influence by constantly feeding you this stuff.

But despite all that, you need to do it. You need to stop allowing that stuff to constantly hijack your brain. If you don’t, it’s just anxiety all the time, forever. In order to get rid of anxiety, you need to be able to solve problems. And this is one you can really, truly solve.

Sometimes, when there are many paths in front of me, I feel scrambled. I imagine deadlines where there aren’t any, and I feel a sort of pressure that is entirely self-imposed. I don’t want to be scrambled. I want to be over easy.

Here is what I do:

1. Choose actions that can benefit the largest number of possible paths. For example, taking on a few freelance clients to save extra money will be pretty much universally helpful, regardless of what I end up investing that money in.
2. Remember that time passes no matter what, and as long as I’m not backsliding I’m moving toward my goals, because I’ve already done number 1.
3. While time passes, don’t ignore it. My life is very good now, regardless of what I want to build for the future. I have incredible children, and spending time with them is a joy. No matter what else I’m doing, that’s my “why.” So take it while I have it!

These three things calm me considerably. And being calm lets me think more clearly, which lets me take the actions I want to take. It can sometimes feel like the long way around, but that can be the surer path.

As a leader, you have to conduct yourself in a way that sets the expectations of what acceptable behavior looks like. More than telling people how to behave, you have to show them by how you behave.

I’m thinking specifically as a parent, but this applies in just about every circumstance where you’re influencing the behavior of others. It’s not just about the example you set, either. Yes, you need to “walk the walk,” so to speak. But you also need to teach behaviors that go beyond that.

You need to be a gently padded brick wall. What I often see leaders acting like instead is a spiky sponge.

What is a spiky sponge? It’s someone who barks but yields. They may yell, threaten, or even strike physically. But they’re also inconsistent, threats are often idle, and they’ll yield if they get frustrated. They try to lead through intimidation but often their main motivation is to make their own life easier.

Instead, you need to be a gently padded brick wall. You need to be kind in your demeanor, forgiving of errors, and welcoming to questions. But you must also be firm, consistent, and patient. People can bounce off you all day without hurting themselves, but they won’t move you. They know they won’t be hurt by you, but they also know that your values won’t be compromised.

Being the latter takes patience and confidence, both of which come from reflection. Be sure of your methods by researching, practicing, and being willing to adapt. Test your values and your ideas so that you are confident they’ll support the gently padded brick wall you’re building on their foundation.

Imagine you are an emotionless robot who does not care at all about human life. You have no feelings or empathy at all, zero compassion for the struggles of others, and everything in your existence is a cold calculation designed to maximize your own self-interest.

If this were true, you should be super kind all the time.

In my line of work, I hear stories constantly about people in positions of authority being heartless and cruel. It doesn’t shock me – I know humans have a great capacity for cruelty. What often shocks me is how rapidly that cruelty comes back to bite that person in the ass and then how shocked the person is about it.

I mean, this is a pattern I see repeated more times than I can count:

Employee: [Makes a reasonable request.]
Manager: [Responds in a thoughtless and cruel way.]
Employee: [Quits, and makes manager’s life very hard.]
Manager: [Shocked face.]

Variations on the theme abound, but the central lesson is clear: Even if you don’t actually care at all, pretending to have a heart is absolutely to your benefit.

I’m a pragmatist. I don’t see a lot of difference between pretending to be kind and being kind, as long as they both lead to the same actions. If someone gives a hundred dollars to charity because they genuinely care about the cause, and someone else gives a hundred dollars because they don’t want their employees to think they’re a miser, then the charity still gets two hundred dollars. So to my way of thinking, everyone pretending to be kind would actually be a huge improvement, even if no one’s heart moved a millimeter.

Make kindness and compassion your default reaction, regardless of how you actually feel. Everyone’s life – especially yours, if that’s what you care about – will improve.

Today, my children and I went for a nature hike. It was absolutely lovely, and the children had a wonderful time. At one point though, the energy levels of my youngest flagged a little (he was excitedly running around quite a bit, and thus went through his energy reserves a bit faster than the rest of us). He started to worry that he “wasn’t going to make it,” because the journey was too far.

My oldest then stepped in and walked next to him, saying “You don’t have to make it all the way back. You just have to make it to that next tree right there. You can do that, right?” And of course he could! He practically bounced. Then she told him he only had to make it to the next tree…

Before it became a trick, it became a game. He happily jogged from tree to tree at his big sister’s direction, enjoying his short little stints and forgetting entirely about the full length of the trail still ahead of us.

Breaking down larger tasks into small chunks works, but it works even better if those small chunks become a game in themselves, something fun to bounce to. And it helps to have someone you love along for the journey.

The tricks are fun, too. Hopefully you get some – and enjoy them!

Happy Halloween!

A deep, personal flaw of mine is that I historically held onto feelings and opinions longer than was warranted. “Held onto” is putting it nicely; I clutched them in my ragged claw like a drowning man clutches the piece of driftwood he’s battling another survivor for in the icy waves.

I was the all-time world champion grudge holder. The tiniest slight and you’d be my enemy for life. It was enough that I had a genuine reputation for it; people would avoid conversational topics with me because they included a person who had done some minor bad thing ten years ago, and everyone else moved on from 9.7 years ago, but they knew I hadn’t and would seethe at the mention of their name.

Interestingly, the reverse was true, too. If I admired someone, they became this vaulted, unshakable icon and nothing would move me from that position. In the best of times, that translated to extreme loyalty to my friends and family who deserved it, and I’m not ashamed of that aspect. But in the worst of times, it caused me to ignore red flags and follow bad courses of action many times myself.

Through a tremendous deal of difficult work, I have (I’m proud to say) moved on from the grudge thing. A lot of it was probably just me getting older, but much of it was very deliberate self-reprogramming. It was me realizing that the correct amount of time to be angry with someone for something they’ve done is zero seconds. If the act is reflective of who they are as a person and you’re worried about it happening again, you should take steps to separate from that person. If it isn’t, you should forgive swiftly. In neither case does anger serve you in the slightest.

The opposite is harder to contextualize. I’m still very much the type of person to have “soft spots” for people I’ve ever thought positively of. Is that a bad thing? Should I always instead be saying “Well, what have you done for me lately?” If I think (as I do) that it’s good to forgive quickly, then doesn’t that also apply to people I like – or should I be more critical of my impulse to forgive because I already like them?

Holding grudges is obviously bad, so it was in many ways easier to train myself out of holding them. But holding people in high esteem and showing loyalty to those who’ve done right by you seems obviously good! Except I know that in certain contexts, my vision on that front isn’t exactly clear.

Maybe it’s a flaw I have to accept. Maybe having too many soft spots isn’t the worst problem in the world to have. Holding a lot of grudges left me angry and lonely for a long time. If the problem with having a lot of soft spots is that sometimes I get bruised, maybe that’s a worthy price to pay to not be angry and lonely.

When I’m writing for myself, I’m writing for myself. Meaning when I’m the one deciding to do the writing, I’m primarily targeting an audience of one. I write to form my own thoughts, to record them, to learn from them. If, as a happy side effect, people who have similar struggles or experiences get something out of it, I’m thrilled. But the writing isn’t really for them; it’s for me.

Professionally, I often write for other people. Someone will pay me dollars and say “Please write this kind of thing for this kind of audience,” and I’m happy to do that. So then I’m writing for someone else, and the writing itself is for someone else.

A third type of writing, a type that I rarely do, is when I’m writing for myself, but I want the writing to be for others. I almost never sit down on my own accord, without someone else asking me to, and decide to write something whose intended audience isn’t me. I mostly don’t do that because I mostly don’t try to convince other people of anything, and I try to avoid giving unsolicited advice. I try to stay humble to the extent that I’m able, and that means not letting myself believe that whatever I have that passes for “wisdom” is worth dispensing.

But, you know… maybe it is. Maybe it’s fine to just ask people if they’d like to read something. No force, no coercion. Just leaving it out there. Maybe it’s time to try to write for others now and then. Who knows? I might learn more in the process, and then I was writing for me after all.

In a very important way, all feedback is true. Most people don’t realize this, because most people don’t realize what feedback is.

Imagine you deliver a big presentation at work, and your manager gives you this feedback: “I think you should change everything about how you present in the future.”

Well, that’s true! They do think that. And that’s what feedback really is – it isn’t a universal truth about you. It’s an actionable truth about them.

Most feedback is subjective; it’s opinion. How fast my car goes is a measurable fact; whether it looks cool is a subjective opinion. But it might be the subjective opinion of someone that I’m trying to interact with – say, a person I’m trying to sell the car to. If their feedback is that the paint color looks lame, then that’s an actionable truth about them. It’s instructions for me, and helpful ones at that! That feedback tells me nothing about how I should feel about the color of the car, but does tell me what I should do in terms of interacting with that person. I now know that I either have to repaint the car or try to sell it to someone else. That’s incredibly helpful.

So if a peer tells you that you should change everything about how you present, that’s very helpful. It means you should decide how much this person liking your presentations is important to you and act accordingly. It doesn’t mean that they’re objectively correct about your presentation style.

In fact, let’s look at what “objectively correct” even could mean in that context. Presumably, the presentation had a goal. Maybe it was to get a client to sign off on a project. Maybe it was to give instructions to a new team. Hopefully it wasn’t just to waste air, so there was some goal in mind. Whether or not you hit that goal is the only meaningful objectivity you can bring to that sort of evaluation. Did the client sign? Did the team follow the instructions? Then your presentation was great, for what it’s worth.

But now you have to consider yourself. Do you get your rewards in the workplace based on whether or not the client signs, or whether or not this peer “likes” your presentations? If the peer in question is your direct boss, it might be the latter! In which case, your choices are change the presentation, or find a different boss. Those are both perfectly viable options, but it’s good to know exactly what you’re evaluating.

That’s what feedback really is – it’s someone telling you the price of interacting with them positively. It’s not objective truths about you, because that person doesn’t have any deeper insight into “objective truth” than you do. Their advice might be good! You might decide to take it on its own merits, and that’s great if it happens. But don’t ever forget what’s really going on.

Feedback is someone setting the terms of the relationship between you. You then always have a choice: Agree to those terms, or change the relationship. You always have the choice. Make it with a clear mind.