The Best Way to Combat Anxiety: A Guide for the Exhausted

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Recently, I had a conversation with a friend. She told me that she was really anxious. Her work and life were in a complete mess. The workplace is highly competitive. She spent a year preparing for the part-time postgraduate entrance exam, but unfortunately, her grades were not satisfactory. Moreover, the project she took over from a departing colleague kept having problems, forcing her to work overtime frequently.

Anxiety is everywhere. A survey of 2,000 adults once found that 72% of people think life is becoming more and more anxiety-ridden. This feeling of anxiety is like an invisible hand, tightly gripping your throat and making it hard for you to breathe.

Excessive anxiety can truly undermine your life. However, as the saying goes, "There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." Therefore, you need to learn to heal yourself and not let anxiety consume you. Here are five suggestions that I hope will be helpful to you if you are struggling with anxiety.

1. Lower Your Standards and Accept Imperfection

Some people's anxiety stems from having overly high expectations of themselves and their teams. You may wish that every project of the team is flawless and every member performs outstandingly. But in reality, perfection does not exist.

Take the team I led before as an example. At first, I had extremely high requirements for them. As a result, the project progress was constantly delayed, and team members were under huge pressure. Later, I adjusted my mindset. I began to accept some minor flaws and focused on key issues. Surprisingly, the team's efficiency increased, and members became more proactive.

Remember, accepting imperfection is the key to better pursuing excellence. As Socrates said, "By desiring little, a man comes near to the gods." This means that when we are not overly demanding and can embrace the small flaws in life, we are more likely to find inner peace and move forward steadily. We don't have to strive for an unattainable perfection that only brings us stress and disappointment. Instead, we can focus on making progress in the most important aspects, which will lead to greater achievements in the long run.

2. Specify the Causes of Anxiety and Find the Optimal Solution

Have you ever noticed that our anxiety often amounts to unfounded worry? You might worry about what if the big project you took over is delayed? What if the new client you contacted is difficult to deal with?

However, when you calm down, you'll find that many things are not as terrifying as you thought. Often, it's because you've exaggerated and over-complicated the problems that make you feel anxious.

For instance, I was once in charge of a large-scale marketing campaign. At the beginning, I was extremely anxious, worrying about insufficient budgets and poor results. Later, I broke down the campaign into several small tasks, such as market research, plan formulation, and implementation. By dealing with each task one by one, not only did the event go smoothly, but it also achieved better than expected results.

When you try to specify the causes of your anxiety, you'll discover that there are corresponding solutions for many things. When our feet step on a concrete path and we move forward step by step, there is no more anxiety. This emphasizes the importance of taking practical actions. When we face our fears and break down complex problems into manageable parts, we gain a sense of control over the situation, and anxiety naturally subsides.

3. Change Your Perspective on Problems and Avoid Mental Ruts

From a low-dimensional perspective, we are often easily misled by appearances and fall into mental ruts. For example, in the era of carriages and horses, people kept looking for faster horses to achieve greater speed, but they never thought about breaking through the limitations of carriages. In many cases, anxiety is caused by our narrow-minded view of problems. The " Selected Works of Mao Zedong" provides us with different answers:

Global Perspective

When solving problems, we need to break free from local thinking. Instead of focusing only on the immediate and specific issues, we should consider the overall situation. This allows us to see the big picture and understand how each part of the problem is interconnected. For example, in a business negotiation, instead of just focusing on the price, we can consider other aspects such as long-term cooperation, market share, and brand image. By taking a global perspective, we can find more comprehensive and beneficial solutions, reducing unnecessary anxiety.

Cross-border Learning

By learning across different fields, we can obtain new perspectives and methods. Different disciplines and industries have their own unique ways of thinking. For example, learning from the field of art can bring creativity to a business project, while learning from psychology can help us better understand customer needs in marketing. This cross-border learning enriches our knowledge and broadens our horizons, enabling us to approach problems from multiple angles and avoid being stuck in a single-track way of thinking.

Practical Accumulation

Through continuous practice, we can accumulate experience and enhance our cognitive dimensions. Every time we engage in practical activities, we face real-world challenges. These challenges force us to think, adapt, and grow. For example, a novice programmer will gain more insights and skills by working on actual projects. The experience accumulated from practice helps us better understand the nature of problems and develop more effective problem-solving strategies.

When I was in charge of a project independently for the first time, it was delayed due to various reasons, and I was so anxious that I couldn't sleep. My supervisor at that time told me that I didn't need to be constantly anxious about the delay. Instead, I should quickly find the root cause and push the project forward. This taught me that it's often our perception of things that causes anxiety. When we change our perspective, we can better deal with the situation.

4. Insist on Appropriate Exercise: Get Out and Move

In the book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, it is mentioned that "Physical exercise is a way to reduce chronic anxiety. It can reduce the incidence of anxiety symptoms by more than 50%.

When you feel anxious, the worst thing to do is to lock yourself up. Instead, get out and move. You'll find that the world is actually beautiful. You can take a walk in the park and breathe in the fresh air, or go to the gym and work up a sweat. A friend of mine likes to go mountain climbing whenever he feels anxious. He said that standing on the mountaintop and looking at the distant scenery makes all his anxiety disappear.

Exercise not only has physical benefits but also has a profound impact on our mental state. When we exercise, our body releases endorphins, which are natural mood boosters. It helps to relax our muscles, relieve stress, and improve our sleep quality. Moreover, being outdoors and engaging in physical activities allows us to shift our attention away from the sources of anxiety and focus on the present moment, such as the beauty of nature or the rhythm of our own movements. This mindfulness-like state can effectively reduce anxiety. So, when anxiety strikes, get out and move to relax both your body and mind.

5. Establish an "Anxiety Buffer Zone"

In addition to the above methods, I would like to share a personal tip with you: establishing an "anxiety buffer zone". Simply put, we need to set aside some time and space for ourselves to deal with potential problems.

Take myself as a project manager as an example. I usually set aside a one-week buffer time for each project to handle possible emergencies. This way, even if problems arise, I won't feel stressed and anxious because of the project's deadline. At the same time, I can work with team members to develop contingency plans and prepare in advance.

This "anxiety buffer zone" gives us a sense of security. It allows us to face unexpected situations with a more stable state of mind. We know that we have a backup plan and extra time, so we don't have to panic immediately when problems occur. It also helps to improve our ability to solve problems. With a calmer mind, we can analyze the situation more rationally and come up with better solutions.

Perhaps life is about constantly growing in anxiety, learning to make peace with it, and finally overcoming it. When facing anxious emotions, simply fighting against them will only make things worse. We need to find suitable ways to solve them. I sincerely hope that these methods can truly help you. By applying these strategies, we can gradually regain control of our lives, reduce the negative impact of anxiety, and move towards a more peaceful and fulfilling future.