The Climb #19 – You’re Not What-Iffing Far Enough: How to Beat Anxiety

I was watching another Ryan Holiday video the other day and it got me thinking about anxiety. I feel like most people think that anxiety comes from imagining the worst possible scenario.

But that’s not really where it comes from. Where it actually comes from is imagining the worst possible scenario and then stopping there. You just freeze on that one terrible frame and let it loop. Over and over and over again. It’s kind of like pausing a movie at the scariest scene and then calling it done.

What I’ve noticed is that the people who stay stuck in worrying about things the most, myself included sometimes, aren’t really thinking too much. They’re not thinking FAR enough.

They’ll say, “What if I lose my job?” And then that’s it. They just stop. They sit with that heaviness and it crushes them. All day long they walk around with just those two words looping in their head: what if.

But what I’ve learned is what if you keep going?

Okay, so you lose your job. Then what? You’d probably freak out for a day or two. Maybe even a week or two. But eventually you’d start calling people, right? You’d start updating your resume. By then you might even tell your wife. You’d finally figure out what you’re actually good at versus whatever it is you’ve been doing on autopilot for the last 15 or 20 years.

Maybe you’d find something temporary while you figured out your next move. Maybe you’d finally take that thing you’ve been thinking about and give it a real shot, because the safety net is gone now and there’s nothing left to protect.

I realize none of that’s fun. But none of it is the end of the world either.

The problem isn’t the what-if. The problem is just that you stopped at the first one.

I know this personally because I used to do it all the time. For most of my life, I’d get hit with a wave of worry about something – usually money or, more often, guilt about some decision I’d been putting off. And I’d just let that question sit there. Unanswered. And it would bleed into everything else and everyone else around me.

It never felt like I was avoiding the thought though. It felt like I was doing the responsible thing and facing it.

But I wasn’t. All I was doing was staring at the surface of the question and calling it examination.

The shift for me happened when I read Tim Ferriss’s idea of “Fear Setting” and it made me start following the what-if thread. Not because the answers were great, because I promise you…sometimes the honest answer to “then what?” is pretty f*cking uncomfortable.

But what you eventually realize is that uncomfortable and survivable are two very different things and when you walk yourself all the way to the end of the chain, most worst-case scenarios land somewhere in that survivable range.

And what most books or therapists won’t tell you about anxiety is that it’s not really a fear of the worst sh*t happening. What it actually is is a fear of that unknown space between here and there.

The only way to close that gap though is to walk through it, step by step, in your own head before it ever happens.

If you don’t believe me, try it. Next time something hits you with that wave of dread, don’t push it away and don’t distract yourself, but also don’t just sit and linger on it either. Follow it.

What if that happens? Okay, then what? And then what? And then what happens after that? Keep going until you run out of steps.

What you’re gonna find, almost every time, is that the end of that chain is nowhere near as bad as the middle part felt.

The reason this matters, especially for men, is because we were taught to be tough. Push through. Don’t overthink it. So when the worrying actually shows up? We either white-knuckle past it or we let it eat us alive in silence. We don’t work through it because nobody showed us how or even told us to for that matter.

And what I’m telling you right now isn’t therapy. All it is is a thinking tool. It’s just a way to use the same brain that’s scaring you to actually solve the problem it created. Instead of stopping at the fear, you let the fear take you somewhere.

Because somewhere is almost always better than standing still.

What you’ll find is that most of what we’re afraid of usually has an answer. Not a perfect one and probably not a comfortable one either. But an answer.

And an answer you don’t love is still miles better than a question that won’t stop circling your brain.

So I hope you can understand this: Chances are you’re not overthinking. You’re under-finishing.

Follow the thread all the way to the end because that’s where the weight starts to drop off your shoulders in a hurry. 

Trust me on this one.