Why you are anxious
This morning I witnessed an intense struggle, a great conflict over a key outcome. At least, that’s how it felt to me. It’s likely no one else noticed it, so I’m going to tell you the harrowing story.
It’s an internal conflict, and I’m still basking in it, watching it closely so that I can capture it, imperfectly, and offer it to you in the hope that it will be relevant to your own experience and struggle. Based on conversations with clients, prospects, friends, and colleagues, I strongly suspect it will. Bringing awareness to this kind of conflict and easing the anxiety just the right amount is part of my purpose here.
Today is my son’s first day back at school after the holiday. We were all hoping for another ice day to grant us just a bit more freedom and relaxation. Alas, no dice. I had to get up and take him to school, which is earlier than I like to get up these days.
But, it’s actually been a constructive constraint for me this year. It gets me up and awake, and helps me make productive use of the morning.
Let’s talk about constraint. Many of you reading this feel constrained in different ways, and you don’t like it. Part of my message to you is to be careful what you wish for, because there is great anxiety in true freedom. Søren Kierkegaard wrote this in an 1844 treatise about the very concept of anxiety. This is part of the reason that I can’t ever separate philosophy from mental health - I don’t know how that would be done, as many “disorders” we commonly frame as psychological issues show up extensively in philosophical literature. For Kierkegaard, and me, anxiety is acutely existential.
He wrote: “...anxiety [is] the dizzying effect of freedom, of paralyzing possibility, of the boundlessness of one's own existence — a kind of existential paradox of choice.” Get it? Be careful what you wish for. And love your constraints even as you work to free yourself.
After dropping my son off I have a choice, every day. Some days it’s made for me, but not today. I can drive north to my favorite nature preserve, or south to my place of business to write a post like this, or east to go home. NUMEROUS factors jostling within my brain contribute to this calculation. They do in yours as well. Are you aware of it? And the fact that I have this freedom is INCREDIBLY statistically unlikely in the history of humankind. That leads to questions of privilege, which have their own kind of despair.
Here is what I was weighing:
I haven’t written a post like this in about a week. We’ve had holidays, which has excused this for the past week, but today I am out of excuses if I am to stay current with my audience.
The earlier I write and release, the more effectively I will supersede the activities and aggravations of the day, increase open rates, and get into my prospects’ thoughts.
The morning light, temperature, and climate conditions would make this nature walk positively ENCHANTING. I can’t get that if I write first.
I have a lunch and afternoon appointment scheduled, so this all must be packed into the morning.
And there are numerous other factors that either aren’t worth mentioning or escape my awareness.
Can you relate to this kind of calculation and the anxiety it brings?
Here’s a few key metaphysical premises to help you navigate decisions like this, mellow your perspective, and keep JUST the right amount of anxiety. Anxiety is not necessarily undesirable, by the way. It simply means we sense that life is limited and that we know every choice is a tradeoff. It’s part of what pressurizes the system and motivates us to optimize these tradeoffs as completely as possible. The premises:
🌟 The present moment is the Realm of Action. We all take actions at every moment. WE CAN’T AVOID TAKING ACTIONS. And all actions have results.
🌟 Leadership is the art of optimizing tradeoffs. There are no perfect decisions, ever. Leaders constantly evaluate their imperfect actions, influence, and intended results in numerous spheres.
🌟 Leaders can’t ever be sure they are taking the optimal actions to create the outcomes they desire. We all seek advice and counsel to this end, but it’s never a guarantee. We often don’t know whom to trust with this for many nuanced reasons.
🌟 Obsessing about strategy (the frameworks that guide our actions) intensifies the anxiety and tends to limit our effectiveness, largely because we are often not at peace with point number 3.
🌟 If your purpose is strong, the strategy flows with with less effort and anxiety. Notice I don’t say NONE because, as I said, anxiety pressurizes the system beneficially and, as Kierkegaard said, there is no freedom without anxiety. Notice I also don’t say strategy is more effective this way. We can’t ever be sure. But with LESS anxiety it is almost assured that your actions will be more authentic and effective, and the self-punishment of anxiety has greatly diminishing returns after a certain point.
So, what did I choose? I took the walk first. And now I’m sitting in Dunkin’ Donuts writing this. Selecting the coffee shop was fraught another choice, BTW, with its own anxieties, tied to questions of economics, community involvement, societal values, optimizing my productive time through anonymity, etc. Our brains are these crazily complex, imperfectly-operating outcome-optimizing organic computers. And we have self-awareness of all this. Of course we’re anxious! Absurd. But magical. Here we are, against our will, but responsible for our outcomes, and owning it. That’s why we’re leaders. It can really be as simple as that.
Sorry, I digress. Nature walk first, write second. This work I do is challenging for many strange reasons, but I can’t stop, so I surmise it’s my purpose. If your purpose is strong, the strategy will meet you, and I assert that you don’t need to worry about it as much as you likely do. But you should at least worry about it a little, because you don’t want the anxiety to leave entirely. You want to optimize anxiety, like everything else.
The walk helped me to structure this essay better, and realize I was writing my own little treatise about the absurd existence we lead in the freest, most prosperous time and society in the history of the world. The anxiety of freedom. Kierkegaard saw this in 1844 and likely had little concept of the scale at which Western Civilization would be collectively dealing with this mere centuries hence.
It worked out, because it has to. A made the imperfect choice, and here we are. No going back, so it’s fruitless to be anxious about the past.
Your processor will struggle, but you will be healthier if you anticipate and become aware of it. And that’s what my conversations ultimately help people do. Would you like that in your life? My clients like having it in their life. Let’s have the first conversation: https://calendly.com/aaronjmarx/30min