In general, the ability to diagnose — to notice a state of constant tension, both inner and outer, as well as a feeling of anxiety that exists around you, or a panic that seems to arise for no reason — is a very important quality.
It’s easy to spot cause-based things. For example, you were walking down the street, a car almost hit you — a sharp tension appears. Or you’re walking, and someone has been following you for ten blocks — anxiety arises. Or you see houses burning every day in Los Angeles, and there’s a feeling of anxiety that it might not stop. In other words, there are concrete reasons for anxiety to appear.
And there is anxiety and tension that arise without cause. When you begin to realize that there are worried thoughts that have no basis at all. Imagine: we’re sitting in a good, calm space, and I start worrying that the weather will be bad, even though there’s no forecast of bad weather. Or I worry that something will happen in the evening. What exactly — I don’t know. Or I start worrying about the kids at school. Or I worry: maybe my wife is behind the wheel right now and something happened to her. In other words, there’s worrying that doesn’t have a clearly expressed reason for worrying, but it does have a description, as in the examples above.
And sometimes there isn’t even a description. When a person says, “I’m anxious, I’m tense,” and to the question, “About what?” they answer, “I don’t know.” In that case a person is diagnosing anxiety as a certain quality, as a sum of psychophysical and emotional states they’re used to linking with anxiety. That’s what they call it. Sometimes the state is hard to name at all. Something is happening, someone asks, “What do you feel?” — and you can’t put it into words. Many people have lived through something like that: “I don’t know how to explain what’s happening to me.” These are different types of anxiety.
People often ask, “How is this different from stress?” The point is that having anxiety or tension doesn’t mean a person is in a state of stress. Stress is a state that lowers perception and makes a person unable to make the right decisions.
One of the most important descriptions of stress is a state in which a person is not in awareness and therefore not capable of making correct decisions. Because a person may feel bad, they may be in pain, they may feel anxious — but if they remain aware, that’s not stress.
I’m not the kind of person who formulates terms. You can always read terminology in textbooks, but it’s still about inner sensations and distinctions. And today we’re distinguishing these concepts not to pass an exam on “what is stress and what is anxiety,” but to learn to diagnose our own states and, as a result, their correct causes.
When there’s anxiety, and we say there are different types of it and different ways to diagnose it, the question arises — what to do about it?
The first thing that’s important to understand in working with anxiety (as with stress) is this: don’t look at how to remove the anxiety; look at the cause of its emergence. That’s fundamentally important.
As with stress, the primary task isn’t to “solve stress,” but to understand its cause. Understanding the cause allows you to act correctly and make decisions. When we talk about anxiety and tension — very abstract states and sensations — it’s important to look for the cause.
The cause of anxiety can vary. Sometimes it lies in your current physical state: you ate poorly, had food poisoning, a fever came on, or there was a recent conflict — and you’re in a light inner agitation. And sometimes anxiety has justification: for example, your child went alone to an unfamiliar place. A natural anxiety arises. But why does one parent worry and the other doesn’t? What’s the difference? One says: “Well, it’s obvious — what if something happens to him?” But “something” can happen at any moment. A rocket could hit right now. Theoretically — yes. An earthquake could occur — also theoretically. And the probability that it happens here might be even higher than somewhere 200 kilometers away.
💡The question is different: does a person live with this feeling of anxiety constantly or not? Does a person live with the worry that they’ll be fired, that people will think badly of them, that their spouse will leave, that the kids will grow up and stop talking to them? Are they inside that inner agitation or not?
There are people for whom such states arise often, and there are those for whom they never arise. For example, I have four children. Many parents live in anxiety: how will the child get into a university, how will they study. My wife and I don’t have that anxiety. Does that mean it will never arise? No. Maybe it will. But the fact remains: at the present moment, with the eldest at 14, we don’t have that worry. And there are people who worry about it even before the child is born. And quite often people don’t decide to have children exactly because of anxiety: “How will I provide for a child? Where will I get the money? First we need to save up, and then have a baby.” That’s a very common story — anxiety related to children.
Someone starts a business immediately. And someone says: “I won’t start a business until I’ve saved up money.” They save up — and only then decide to start. Or, for example, someone is told: “You can take care of your own things during the day.” And they answer: “I can’t. When I save up money — then I’ll do it.” Different approaches, different parameters.
Recently we were discussing: some say morning is the most productive time. Usually people say: since morning is productive — you must work then. But maybe the opposite: morning is a time to talk to your wife, spend it with your kids, take care of your health, personal development, or simply rest and replenish? So what should you do in the morning — is it necessary to work exactly in the most productive time? Maybe the opposite — work in a less productive time to give yourself a chance to recover? Otherwise it turns out you work in the productive time, you work in the “semi-productive” time, you also work at other times, and you rest when you’re already a “corpse.” You end up working so that later you can at least recover a little.
There’s a person who runs a company called Never Die — something like that. He’s involved in how to never die. And he constantly talks on Instagram about how to extend life. But essentially, he spends more time on extending life than he’ll ultimately be able to extend it. He spends half his life to prolong his life. So why spend half a day for the sake of then living that day? Why spend life trying to extend it? It’s better to live it right now. He simply doesn’t understand other interrelations that occur from the perspective of spiritual laws. In spiritual worlds there are described patterns: if a person wants to lengthen life, then on the one hand — they extend it, and on the other — they may bring on schizophrenia, dementia, or other mental disorders. A person becomes less receptive, grows dull earlier. That is, turning life in one direction, they twist it in another. Do they understand these interrelations? Are they not driving themselves into anxiety, stress, and worry by trying to avoid them?
When we talk about the causes of anxiety, we need to start seeking them. And it’s important to allow for the possibility that even if you’ve decided you know the cause, in fact you might not know it fully. Never finally settle on the first discovered cause, because modern people have a habit of inventing explanations for themselves.
The thing is, deep states of anxiety and worry often lie outside your consciousness. They may be rooted in family-line programs, in the specifics of upbringing, in heredity, in periods of life you don’t even remember, in fleeting events that weren’t diagnosed or realized. I won’t even get into causes of a spiritual or karmic order, because they certainly don’t lie within the field of awareness of your current life. And if a certain anxiety appears, it may be an anxiety that accompanies a person throughout life because their spiritual being generates that impulse. And if that impulse is being generated, you can do anything you want, but you can’t completely remove it.
Imagine you’re sitting in a cold room. You put in a gas heater, you turn on a hotplate, a fireplace, you put on warm socks — you do everything possible, but you still feel cold. There’s a draft, just as there was. You can’t move anymore; your whole life is limited to attempts to get warm, and still it’s chilly. But it turns out you simply needed to close the door. Just close the door. The first action — close the door. Didn’t close the door — you’ll get an endless generation of causes.
When we talk about global and deep causes, getting close to them is often very difficult. The “door” is a clear example, but there are causes so hard to realize that it becomes practically impossible. Moreover, not all causes can be changed.
The first thing a person needs to do is realize and accept that the causes can be much deeper than they seem. But people don’t want to accept that: “No-no-no, better explain everything to me with the door example! Don’t talk about spiritual worlds. I want to see everything, understand everything, figure everything out.” Even if you do figure out some cause, there’s a high probability that, removing one anxiety, you’ll generate fifteen others — from different sides, as processes that get triggered further, as next steps you can’t get rid of until the end of life.
It’s like this example: a person entered a happy relationship with their other half. You got married, a happy marriage, a wonderful person — and ten years later they die. You looked for them for a long time, worried, found them — and when they died, you fell into an anxiety ten thousand times stronger than what you had before. And people often say: “It would have been better if I had never known them. Better if I hadn’t started this relationship. Better if I had never met this person.” Because when you don’t know — there’s no problem.
My wife and I were in Austin, Texas, and we went to the Christmas film It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). We were in an old theater built in 1920 or maybe 1917, maybe even 1950 — it doesn’t really matter. And there was exactly that example of a person talking to an angel, saying it would have been better if none of this had happened. “Still thinking about killing yourself? You think that’ll make everyone happy?” — “I don’t know… Maybe I shouldn’t have been born.” — “What?!” — “Why was I even born?” And then they show him what would happen if he hadn’t been born. They show him a world without him — it’s not tied to a host of problems, but different things happen. And then the person says: “Send me back, with all my problems. Let them be; I just want to be there.” The very fact of being in life is the needed state. That’s the essence — life itself is necessary.
A huge number of relationships between men and women never happen because many are afraid of loss. My mother, for example, says: “I really like dogs, but I won’t get a dog — I remember how hard it was when the previous one got sick and died.” Or: “I won’t get to know a guy — with the previous three it ended badly, and I suffered afterward. I don’t want to suffer again.” A person is afraid of repeated pain, afraid of consequences, even though they often can’t and don’t understand how those consequences arise.
But my example wasn’t about fear of consequences — that’s a separate topic; we’ll analyze it later. I was talking about the fact that when working with anxiety and its causes, you need to understand that there are effects. This is what allows you to work deeply with the experience of anxiety — not just to go searching for causes, but also to understand the consequences that may occur when you work with those causes. You need to understand what you’re going to change and what will actually happen.
A person wants to change their attitude toward others. They change it — and suddenly realize that their wife turned out to be a very bad person, and they can no longer live with her. Because by changing their attitude toward people, they saw a truth they hadn’t noticed before. Or they realize they can no longer communicate with their parents, because they understood that the parents used them their whole life. On the one hand, they were growing, becoming kinder and broader in perception. And as soon as they started seeing more broadly, they realized: these relationships are not real, and they can no longer remain in them.
💡Work with anxiety and worry is primarily connected with the changes and consequences that will occur afterward. You might ask: “So, Alexander, does that mean it’s better not to work with anxiety, not to touch it?” Of course you need to work with it. That’s a correct and natural step in a person’s development. But it’s important to understand that there are absolutely different consequences, and you won’t be able to foresee them all.
Everyone wants to ask: “So how do you find the cause? How do you find the effect?” The cause of anxiety can truly be understood and realized only by you, even if someone on the outside points to it. People can repeat that cause to you 50,000 times — you won’t hear it until you see it yourself. The main thing is to know that you need to look and to question the first answers that appear. Dig deeper, try to understand more.
I know a great many people — probably most are like this. You ask: “Why are you anxious right now?” — “Well, it’s clear why. A cockroach ran by.” You say: “No, no, there’s something deeper.” And the person answers: “Oh, enough with your depths. A cockroach ran by, that’s all.” That approach won’t help you move forward. Only digging deeper helps. That doesn’t mean endlessly digging in yourself — because the number of anxieties, worries, and events is endless. You can’t just cancel the feeling of anxiety. You can’t say: “Okay, that’s it, my name is Alexander Volchek, and I no longer have anxiety and worries.” This isn’t an exam you can pass. Anxiety and worry will disappear only when you die. Then — yes, there will be no human anxiety and worries. Until that moment they will always be there.
This is one of the fundamental rules you need to accept. One of the rules of anxiety: from the point of view of a person’s development and scaling, there will always be states in which they experience anxiety. You don’t need to be afraid of anxiety.
This is one of the differences between anxiety and stress. Stress can be a consequence of anxiety, but anxiety can exist without stress. You can simply feel that there’s a certain state of anxiety, a certain worry. The causes can vary: you feel that some bad events will happen in the world tomorrow; you feel the weather will change and the body reacts. It’s scientifically proven: if your head hurts — check the pressure; maybe there’ll be a weather change. But I suggest looking deeper. Each person is constantly diagnosing an enormous number of processes. Even when you watch a video, the words affect you only about 20%, and 80% is everything else: characteristics, states, energies.
Therefore, when talking about the causes of anxiety, you need to understand: they lie not only in specific events, but also in your state of perceiving space, in what you actually feel and perceive.
There’s a big difference between knowing there’s a snake under the shelf and seeing the snake. There’s a big difference between knowing there’s a tiger down there and he can jump up — and simply allowing for the possibility that a tiger is there. That’s a huge difference. Do you know about the snake or not? Do you know about the tiger or not? Do you know that there’ll be a divorce in a year or not? That you’ll be fired in a year or not? Do you know that your income will never grow? Or, conversely, do you know that it will grow in any case, even if you don’t work at all, you’ll just open the door one day and there’s an infinite gold bar lying there? Do you know you’ll die in a year or not? All of this is a huge difference.
💡And this knowing is very strongly tied to diagnosis and perception. It isn’t necessarily a thinking process. More precisely, in most cases it isn’t a thinking process at all, but a huge number of different sensations you have to learn. These are separate practices, separate states you need to live through.
Case analysis
Let’s consider what to do if a person goes to bed in the evening thinking about work. They wake up in the morning — anxiety about their health. They go on vacation — they think about work. They rest — they think about how their husband or wife is doing, what they’ll think of how they’re resting. And all the time — anxiety. The child left — anxiety. Went to school — anxiety. Every day anxiety. What to do with that?
First — find the cause. Let’s return once more to the simple: there is always a cause.
For example: “I went on vacation and I’m worried about work.” What’s the cause? Clear. Because I won’t get a bonus. Or because the company won’t achieve its result — and I’ll be fired. Or the boss is against vacations. Or I didn’t approve the vacation. Or colleagues will think badly of me. Or I want to show my husband, wife, or friends that I’m such a workaholic — and so I keep working. These are all possible causes. But it also happens that the cause is somewhere completely different, not even conscious. You tell yourself: “I don’t want any of that! But for some reason I still worry about this job. What’s wrong with me?”
The thing is, working with anxiety — for example, anxiety on vacation — requires an understanding of the very principle of rest. I personally have never had anxiety on vacation. Why? Because I don’t link rest with “vacation.” For me it’s important to be in a state of rest daily, not to wait for a calendar vacation to rest. When I leave, it isn’t something unique. If I want — I work; if I don’t want — I don’t. It’s simply a shift of focus. I know that during the day you need to rest. And if I know that, then I’m prepared for the state of rest — I don’t think about work, because every day I’m learning not to think about work. If I’m walking with my kids — that means being with the kids, and not thinking about work. Why think about a bonus if you’re walking with your child? If on vacation you think about a bonus, then do you also walk with your child for the sake of a bonus? No. You can unfold the picture differently: “I don’t care whether to worry or not. I simply want to be with my kids because that matters for my development and for their happiness. I want to be here and now.” In this situation the bonus has nothing to do with it.
When a person falls into such states, they often can’t connect the pieces: “So, I need to get a bonus — that means I have to work. But I want to be with my child — how do I combine this?” And so they’re already analyzing: “I simply want to be with my child. I want to spend time with them for their sake, not for mine.” And it’s important to sort this out, because often it’s precisely being with the child that causes stress, and as a consequence — panic about work. Everything is interrelated, and it’s important to look a bit wider.
There are people who can’t rest not because they worry about work. They work until night not for the company’s sake, but because that’s their way of living. I’ve often observed: in my businesses, the financial girls would often stay at work until 10–11 p.m. I kept driving them out: “Go home!” But they didn’t leave. Why? Because work is their only life. And at some point you understand — this isn’t about a bonus, not about the boss. It’s simply a way of life.
And when a person goes on vacation, it suddenly turns out that rest is also a stress. Because they don’t know how to rest. People often tell me: “On vacation I think about work all the time,” especially entrepreneurs and freelancers. But the reasons are different for everyone. Some don’t rest because they simply don’t know how to rest at all. They have no other life — only work. Others — because they’re afraid of not earning, afraid of becoming bankrupt, afraid of not being able to buy something for themselves. Someone — because they won’t be able to pay for their child’s school. Someone — because they won’t be able to buy a Chanel bag. And here’s the funny thing — it’s the same story. The desire to save up for a Chanel bag and the desire to pay for a child’s school are the same logic, just different levels and contexts. Some don’t rest because “the husband is on a business trip, working, calls are coming in,” and it’s like, “how can I rest?”
I know many women who work not because they want to, but because society or the husband demands it. The husband says: “You must work.” The husband doesn’t create the confidence that it’s possible not to work. I have a close friend who says: “If I could, I would never do anything in my life at all.” And such people develop stress. But my wife — she has no stress. She says: “I don’t want to work.” Period. I ask: “But what about a profession, self-realization?” She answers: “What? I don’t need it. I have no worries about that.” And others — they do.
💡It’s important to grasp: there are people without worries. There are entrepreneurs who easily go on vacation, just flick a switch — everything’s closed, vacation. It seems like everything in their business is fine. But not necessarily. I’m an example that even if there are problems in the business, I can leave and turn off the phone. Because business is always problems. There are problems in any business. But for some people those problems trigger anxiety, and for others — they don’t. Here are two partners: both have the same business, income, structure. One feels that everything is bad, the other — that everything is fine. And the question arises: if there’s always a problem, does that mean the whole of life is a problem?
We’re approaching an important point: anxiety and worry are often connected with causes a person can’t realize. Some people worry about money while earning 100 dollars a month. Others — while having 5 billion in the bank. Some don’t worry while earning the same 100 dollars, with no savings. Others don’t worry while having millions. But there are also those who worry precisely because they do have money. And so a person violates their inner logic: “Once I earn a million, I’ll move to Thailand.” They’ve already invented that happiness is there, that the cause of unhappiness is here. They say: “Once I earn — I’ll have the opportunity to be happy.” And then they earn — and invent a new cause. They take a lot of false steps because they don’t see the true cause.
And here is the key question: why did this worry arise? Why did the anxiety appear? What is it connected with? It’s important to remember: anxiety is an interesting state. Sometimes it’s hard to diagnose because thoughts can be anxious — or not.
For example, you feel: “A bad event will happen tomorrow. Someone will die.” For one person that will trigger anxiety and stress. For another — no, just the knowledge that it will be so. Many people can sense things without falling into anxiety. And others — notice only what drives them into anxiousness. And this is what you need to learn — to notice the difference, to understand where there’s anxiety and where there’s simply knowing.