I become overwhelmed very easily. It doesn’t help that I often start from a place where I feel that I won’t be able to do something. It can be a fairly simple thing—trying to find my way to somewhere while driving in a strange city or getting my work done on a tight deadline. It might be the book I’ve always wanted to write. I know I could write the book but could I find a publisher or would I have to publish it myself? Oh, don’t know how to do that so I won’t even start writing it. Or I’ll start and the worries will intervene and I’ll leave the project half finished.
It might be going for a job that I have the qualifications for but wonder if I really would be able to do it. How is it other people much less skilled than I can find such confidence to exude, to the point of actually lying about their abilities? I always have at least a low grade anxiety and am often quite paralysed by the thought that there is something I can’t do. If I plan to start a project, I always feel I need to know how to do everything that it will entail before I actually begin. This is not only stupid, it’s dangerous. It uses up that first wonderful flush of enthusiasm, it stymies momentum before it gets even started and it drains confidence.
I start from an I-can’t-do-this position instead of looking forward to learning new skills and overcoming difficulties. And yet, here I am with this website—albeit a simple one—that I knew I would never be able to accomplish. I’ve got a degree I knew I wasn’t smart enough to get. But my life is littered with so many missed opportunities because I let this attitude get in my way. As I get older I realise I have limited myself my entire life. The time that has gone, I will never get back. So I need to address this anxiety, this feeling that I’m never quite good enough, before too much more lifetime goes by. One way is to be prepared to ask for help, something I’ve never been comfortable doing. The other is to analyse what is actually paralysing me and to work, as a little project in itself, on the skills that I need for that particular thing. Instead of sitting worrying about it, I can catapult myself through that obstacle when I come to it because I have been chawing away at it in the background. A bit like what anxiety does to me.
I’ve had some wonderful successes and am quite happy to do things that other people fear, but I can’t transfer the confidence and I have never, ever ridden on the back of any accomplishment to give me a headstart to the next one. I always start again in the same dreary place.
How does this relate to good health? When we’re coming from a place that’s way behind, we need momentum. We need little successes that can urge us on. We have to start even without all the information we might think we require, to be pragmatic that there will be obstacles and to have a simple attitude that we use to work through challenges.
What if I absolutely refused to let that anxiety eat away under the surface, unnamed and the more powerful because of it? I’m not talking about therapy here. What if I had a couple of questions that I could ask to winkle that anxiety out from under its rock into the bright light of day so I could really look hard at it and see if it is the monster I fear? How much power would it have over me then?
I think the secret is in the ‘now’—and only considering the obstacles when (or even if) they present themselves. We can plan all we like, but in the last analysis if our plans don’t inspire action they are worth nothing to us anyway.
So, here’s an idea on making it so simple that it’s almost impossible to fail. Acknowledge the obstacle or the possibility that there might be an obstacle. Put it in its place. Do the next thing at hand. I could word it something like this: Yes, that could be a challenge, but it’s for my future self. What is the one action I can do to progress this right now? I’ll do that.