Get wiser

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There’s an ancient proverb that goes something like this: Worrying means you suffer twice.
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I just googled it to be sure, and apparently a character in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them said that, although I’m pretty sure it’s older than that.
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My friend Ryan Holiday, in his excellent newsletter, attributes this gem to his boy Seneca: “A man who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary.”
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But I came across this idea years ago in a book about Buddhism, so it probably even predates the Stoics.

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"Nobody cares where it comes from, Jordan, just tell us why we should care." Ok, fine: For thousands of years, super enlightened folks have been talking about how worrying — and anxiety more broadly — creates unnecessary pain.
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If the things we worry about ever come to pass, then we’ll experience some pain when that time comes and we’ll experience pain by thinking about it in advance.

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Although I find that the things I worry about rarely come to pass at all. (Hmm... maybe worrying is actually great prevention?)
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And, if they do come to pass, they usually don’t play out the way I thought they would.

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And even when they do, they hurt far less than I anticipated.

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In other words, the worrying is often the worst part.

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In many cases, the majority of mental-emotional suffering is created not by events themselves, but by our thinking about them in advance.

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Ryan Holiday calls anxiety a thief.

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It steals time, attention, energy.
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I would go one step further and say that anxiety isn’t just a thief.
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It’s also a debt collector.
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A time-traveling debt-collector.
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It forces you to make payments on experiences that haven’t even happened yet.
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The “payments” come in the form of your negative thoughts, your anxious feelings, your preoccupation, your physical health, and all the other things you could be doing with that time and energy.
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Oh, and you can never pay off the principal. In fact, for many of us, we keep making these payments on negative experiences even after they’re over, by continuing to ruminate on them!

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Imagine paying for a mortgage on a house, except you haven’t even bought it yet, and you aren’t allowed to live in it until some vague date in the future. Or maybe never at all.
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That’s what anxiety does. To me, anyway.
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And I’m determined to reduce that form of suffering as much as possible — the suffering that causes me to suffer twice.

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The first step is knowing when it’s time to suffer.

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And that begins by asking yourself: Is it really the moment yet?​
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98% of the time the answer is no.

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(And by the way, these stats are based on my 'very rigorous original research' as a Ph.D. in Mild to Moderate Anxiety. Please don’t quibble with them.)
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If you’re sitting in the ER with a broken leg, if you’re standing on the sidewalk watching your car be repossessed, if you’re in the back of a taxi being kidnapped (as I was) — then you can be sure you’re in the 2% of cases where it’s actually time to worry.
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Although something interesting happens in those cases.
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You don’t worry as much as you thought you would. Sometimes you don’t worry at all.
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Because the time for worrying — which is by definition about the future — has passed.

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All you can do is either surrender to the situation or do something about it.
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Which is basically incompatible with anxiety.
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The second step is to opt out of being a time-traveling victim.​
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That begins by recognizing worry as a thought that wants to take something from you.

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You don’t need to deny it, fight it or banish it. That never works anyway.
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You can just allow the worry to be, and say: Thanks, but no thanks. Not interested in paying interest on the future. If this horrible thing happens, I’ll gladly suffer then.

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I’m not saying that that alone will make your anxiety go away.
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But it could diminish it significantly.
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Because it’ll change your relationship with it.

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The third step is to translate your worry into something useful.​
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Most worrying is totally unproductive. It’s thinking that runs rampant.

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But you can do something with that anxiety.

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If you’re worried about breaking a limb and ending up in the ER, you can drive below the speed limit, take more precautions when you ride a bike, or look for better insurance.
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If you’re worried about losing your house, you can start saving money for a rainy day now, think about downgrading to a smaller home, or invest in your relationships.

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If you’re worried about being kidnapped, you can learn what to do if you’re abducted, make safer travel plans, or avoid certain places.
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In other words, you can apply your anxiety, rather than just being drained by it. When you do, it hurts far less.

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That’s how you can turn worry from a thief into a teacher, from a debt collector into an asset manager.
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And avoid suffering more than you absolutely have to along the way — if you even have to suffer at all.

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And if you’re interested in hearing how this idea played out in a listener’s life…

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Check out episode #689, where we took a question from a listener who couldn’t help but obsess over the worst possible outcomes while traveling.
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In that segment, we talked about the difference between responsible preparation and chronic anxiety, and when productive forward-thinking tips over into something more destructive.
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It was a great case study in how to avoid suffering twice — and how to capitalize on anxiety, rather than being dominated by it.
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Have you found this principle to be true in your world? Struggling to make use of it?

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Hit reply and tell me about it. I’m all ears!

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On the show this past week

​1071: Mike Feldstein | The Hidden Crisis of Indoor Air Pollution​

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​1072: Past Regrets Foster Clear and Present Threats | Feedback Friday​

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​1073: Fluoride | Skeptical Sunday​

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