Take a moment to look back at the past year. This article is for you if you are unhappy with the progress you have made.

Anxiety

Anxiety is a natural feeling for humans. It’s the shortness of breath or the tight feeling in your throat and chest.

Anxiety is the catalyst to overthinking and vice versa. These both happen when the future can be changed with extraneous factors and is uncertain. This again, is normal however we should work through our life to get used to the right amount of anxiety. Why? I’m glad you asked!

Although anxiety is viewed as a negative emotion, like everything in life, the poison lies in the dosage. If you feel no anxiety at all you are not performing any change or risk in your life and therefore not pushing yourself to be productive. If you are too anxious there is too much uncertainty and you won’t be able to do anything due to it. The right amount of anxiety will help you perform your best whilst staying composed.

A lot of people don’t view it this way, when you get anxious you will stop or distance yourself from the source; for example when you got an interview, it went poorly and you felt so anxious you couldn’t sleep, you will most likely try not to repeat the same path. Again, I cannot reiterate this enough, this is just our brain doing basic pattern recognition and making it less likely we will try again.

Your homework for this is: do one task that is outside of your control and comfort zone. Compliment a random person on the street, try some new food you’re not sure if you’d like or even text whoever you haven’t spoke to in a while to catch up.

Commitment

Commitment is scary, we can all agree on this. Thinking that you will be stuck with something you hate or lose a thing you love. The issue stands where you picture a poor ending for something that has just started or in some cases, hasn’t started at all!

The best way I had this explained is in poker terms;

If you fold every hand before the river, you won’t be able to play a good hand.

For the people that don’t understand, you cannot go into everything thinking it will fail before it starts as for when you get the amazing opportunity you would be starting with a beginner’s mindset and failing something that you longed for.

You cannot prevent this fear. I don’t want you to think that some people have this ability to just not be scared of committing to something or starting something new, because that is just not the case. You just have to start new commitments that you aren’t confident in and see how it plays out.

Your homework for this is: start a months long membership in something and make the most of it, whether this is a gym, an indoor skatepark or even an online course, try it, give it your all and even if it fails you have still learnt something.

Routine

One thing that I see so commonly is people refusing to change their routine, they acknowledge their routine is bad but they plain refuse to change it. The most common instance of this, that I have done as well as many people I know, is getting home to relax by playing games for the rest of the day.

Firstly I’d like to confirm; yes, you finished work and you should relax, however spending 4 hours every evening on playing games adds up very quickly. Doing this for a week is already 28 hours, an entire day, doing this for a month is 120 hours which is enough time to complete an entire certification.

I’m not saying you should spend your time after work GRINDING and HUSTLING. That’s dumb and leads to burn out, you deserve to rest. However, I am saying that you can cut that in half and work on a project, course or read a book. These are all things that will enrich your future and can be fun if catered to yourself.

What I mean by that is for example, I enjoy playing games with friends but it is not for the game aspect, it’s for the jokes I have with them. Often what I will do instead is call the group chat and do some work while talking to them. Another example is how I cannot read a book in silence so I put on some digestive music with no lyrics, this helps me not get lost in my thoughts.

Your homework for this is: start a new hobby that involves enriching your current life, even if you have to lose some time on some hobbies you enjoy already. Start reading a book and spend 10 minutes in the morning and evening reading it alternatively start a project with one of your friends and take it not really seriously, so you can still have some fun.

Self-confidence

This point has no way of fixing. No-one can help you feel better about yourself. You have to acknowledge what you dislike about your character and what you will do to fix it.

For example, about a year ago I decided that I don’t feel good about myself in more aspects than one; I was skinny weighing 58 Kilograms (127 LBS), I was only playing games in my free time and I was eating frozen pizzas 7 days a week.

With this I decided to start going gym and eating more to put on weight, I decided to work for a charity, start reading in my free time and lastly I hand cook every meal now even if it’s just pasta with beef and cheese.

This takes a lot of discipline so I need you to realise one key thing, and that is that most of your change will happen when you really don’t want to do something. If you have been going gym and decide I don’t really feel like going today, this is a great way to not go for 3 weeks without realising. You can ask anyone that went gym and they will tell you that if you stop going for a few days often results in the hiatus lasting more than 2 weeks.

The homework for this is: grab a piece of paper and let yourself be vulnerable. Write 3 things you hate about your current self, and how you can change them. Pin this piece of paper to a thing you often view; fridge, computer or even mirror. This can help you remember your goal and make it ever so slightly easier to achieve it.

TL;DR

All in all, you have to realise that change is difficult. Anxiety is normal and truly the only way to improve it is leaving your comfort zone more often. It is not meant to be easy for anyone and you have to make sacrifices that on the surface look like it will make you feel worse. You have to give new habits a shot even if you aren’t confident in them. No-one can help your self-confidence, you need to highlight what you dislike and work on that.

Yours Truly,

Szymon