Habits That Keep You Stuck in Fear and Anxiety. How to Overcome Anxiety

AVAlexander Volchek

Hello, everyone. My name is Alexander Volchek, and here on my YouTube channel, I talk about true personal development and expanding your potential. Are there habits in a person's life that can intensify anxiety? The most important thing that generally intensifies anxiety is not working with it at all in terms of understanding cause and effect. That's number one. Simply not doing that work intensifies anxiety tremendously, or can intensify it. More precisely, it doesn't just have the potential to intensify it—it intensifies it in any case. That's number one for everyone. So the first action is to start looking at the causes, rather than even trying to resolve the anxiety itself. Wanting to remove anxiety may not lead to its absence at all. You need to be very clear about that. I can try and want to change this anxiety as much as I like, but if I don't examine what is really causing it, I'll simply be addressing entirely different issues, as in the example of a cold house. I'm wrapping myself up while the door is open, right? All I needed to do was close the door. I'll simply be taking actions that are very often unnecessary. This happens a great deal. That's number one. Everything else depends very much on what kind of anxiety it is.

Is it anxiety in a relationship, or anxiety about being in a particular environment? What kind of anxiety is it? Of course, there is a deeper issue. On a deeper level, the question is whether a person wants to look at whether they themselves—their actions and behavior—are causing anxiety in other people. We very often deliberately do things that cause others anxiety. In business, whether you're the owner of a company or not, employees all feel that their managers deliberately cause anxiety, while managers often feel that employees cause it. I knew an enormous number of employees—I had thousands—who caused anxiety. Some employees caused anxiety in everyone around them at work. They generated it endlessly. So how much anxiety do you generate in your family, with your friends? What are you doing? Are you sending out anxiety or positivity? What are you doing? I was born and raised in a country, in a society, where people were constantly told, “Be on your guard. Stay in a state of anxiety.” There was always this sense that a problem could arise at any moment. There's a very good story about this. I remember my mother telling me something when I started living in my first rented apartment. It was in 2010, when we moved from Minsk to Moscow. She said, “You never know how long you'll be renting this apartment.”

“Any temporary apartment can become a permanent one, so treat it as permanent. Likewise, you can't know which anxiety-provoking event might last forever.” The question is: Did you need to worry about it? Someone says, “I want to quit smoking,” and spends three years trying to quit. They experience endless anxiety and apathy about it. Then they spend two months trying to quit, fail, and go back to smoking. I tell them, “Then why did you worry for all three years and those two months? You could have avoided worrying altogether and just kept smoking as before. Why worry? At least don't worry, then. Accept it. Simply approach it calmly and observe it, but don't worry, don't stress.” The person is stressed every day, worrying and worrying and worrying. Fundamentally, number one is at least to stop worrying about it and look at it. Someone knows they might have problems at work. They work for ten years, nobody fires them, but they spend all ten years worrying. Why did they worry? My grandmother died at ninety-two. She bought herself a suit to be buried in when she was seventy and worried every year.

I always heard it—at least once a year—that she was going to die. First of all, she brought stress into the lives of the people around her. She constantly told everyone she was going to die. That creates stress around her. Everyone gets stressed because of it; everyone thinks, “Well, this person is going to die.” Second, she herself was in a state of anxiety. Obviously, she was anxious and worried about it. This wasn't simply preparation. It was constantly saying it aloud, a kind of impulse and anxiety that kept occurring. It wasn't some inner sense, and it certainly wasn't intuition, because she was ready to die every year. And that isn't readiness. It's a false declaration of a particular fact. It's worry that isn't needed. There is also the opposite situation, where someone doesn't face the truth: when they really need to understand that they'll soon be fired and be concerned about it. But not in a way that creates stress for themselves, not in a way that makes things feel heavy. Instead, turn that concern into a state of observation, where you aren't fretting over it but living through it, where you simply start living through it, simply start being with it. First and foremost, you need to enter a state of living through and observing it, rather than trying to solve the problem of anxiety.

You've gone on vacation, but you need to work while you're away and you're worried about work. Enter that state: stop working and observe it. Simply live through it. You'll be shaking, walking around, feeling nervous. Just observe it. Don't try to get rid of the worry. Tell yourself, “Listen, this is an interesting time. I can live through this worry, and I will live through it. I'll observe this state.” That very act will already help you cope with this feeling and quality tremendously—cope with it tremendously.