#10 Unraveling Anxiety: Transforming Procrastination and Emotional Challenges into Growth Opportunities

What if understanding the source of your anxiety could unlock a more productive, fulfilling life? Join me on this journey as we unravel the often paralyzing grip of anxiety and procrastination, and their unproductive sidekicks like excessive drinking or binge-watching. By delving into my personal strategies, learn how accountability and a change of scenery can offer new perspectives and break these cycles. Discover the empowering shift that occurs when we confront our fears with logic rather than letting them control our actions—whether it's summoning the courage to ask someone out, starting a new project, or tackling that daunting conversation.

In a heartfelt exploration, we also delve into the intricate dance between our emotions and memories. Reflect on how tracing back the origins of your feelings to a specific moment or memory can reveal profound insights. Even when solutions aren't immediately clear, acknowledging the source can be a pivotal step towards growth. Music's evocative power plays a key role, serving as a poignant reminder of our emotional experiences. So, tune in to explore the depths of your emotions, understand their origins, and transform how you relate to them for personal growth and healthier relationships.

Eric's Podcast. 

Chapters

• 0:34 Dealing With Anxiety and Procrastination
• 16:18 Understanding and Addressing Emotional Triggers

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:34

Hello, welcome to another episode of the Eric's Podcast. I'm your host, eric. Today we're going to talk about what do you do when you feel anxious or you have this anxiety, feeling that you're missing something and you maybe don't know what to do about it. Or maybe that's just the way you feel all the time and it's really easy at least for me, for when I feel this way. For when I feel this way, it's easy for me to kind of drift into drinking too much or binge-watching shows and kind of drifting into this behavior of laziness I guess you could call it to where I maybe just wait, I'm just pushing it to the side, hoping that the anxious part of it or whatever will just deal with itself. Or maybe I can avoid it, and that doesn't work. It doesn't work. It doesn't work long term either, and it can really be anything.

Speaker 1: 2:08

But I know for me, whatever that thing is that I'm trying to avoid doing, I need to figure out why. Why am I avoiding it? I make sense about it, and the longer that I go avoiding talking or doing whatever the thing is, the more anxious and the farther and farther I can drift into these kind of behavior patterns. And so how do you get out of it? How do you get out of the pattern or how do you know you're in it? And that's kind of more of a personal question, because you kind of have to feel it and address it within yourself. For me, one of the ways that I can get out that I've found to get out of it is to talk to somebody. Let them know, talk to somebody about whatever the thing is you're trying to avoid and you're not asking for advice, you're just saying, hey, I need to tell you this, I'm avoiding this, I'm anxious about this thing. And if you want, you could ask what do you think I should do? And that's good, that's fine, and that's a. That's fine and that's a step. It helps Because now a person knows and now that person can hold you accountable, and that can help sometimes, and sometimes it doesn't really help. Other things that help me is to remove myself from the situation or try to remove myself from the environment and go somewhere else, change my environment like, I don't know, go to Starbucks or go to a bar and not drink, but, you know, maybe have a drink. I don't know, go to Starbucks or go to a bar and not drink, but maybe have a drink, I don't know, and just to think about the thing, or to do the thing that you're trying to do and that can help.

Speaker 1: 4:59

I think everybody has dealt with some version or another where you don't want to address whatever it is, and eventually you have to anyway because your time is just going to run out and then you don't have any control over when that happens and so. But for some reason it's easy to get caught up in the just pushing it to a side and keep kicking it down the road and kicking it down the road when it just needs to be addressed and just needs to be done, and it's easy for me to make up a lot of different excuses on why something doesn't need to be done. Oh, this has to be first. Oh, this needs to go this way, this needs to be this way, this needs to be this way. Or maybe I'm avoiding conflict, maybe I'm not pushing a subject because I'm avoiding an argument, or I'm avoiding a discussion that I really don't want to have right now. But it needs to happen. Stuff needs to change, things need to be picked up, and it's important because other people might be suffering, because I'm avoiding something that's uncomfortable, and so it's important to make sure that if you're avoiding something, make sure that there's a logical reasoning behind it. It's not because of your laziness, because you're too afraid to do what you need to do. You're making a strategic, logical decision on why you are not pursuing doing that, going to have an argument over something that doesn't make sense. If I need to bring something up that it's important and the risk is having an argument over it, then that is the risk, but it's more important to talk about it than to avoid it altogether. And that's a lot of different things in life. You know that's asking that girl out, that's launching a product or an app or a game, or writing that book, publishing a song or an album, going in front of a stage full of people and talking, doing a podcast.

Speaker 1: 8:12

If you're not doing something because you're afraid, if you're not doing something because you're afraid, then make sure that that fear is logical and makes sense. You know you're getting. If you've ever gone to Grand Canyon and you're standing on the edge of the cliff, well, there could be some fear there that you might slip and fall, and that is a logical reasoning because it makes sense. You get to get too close. There is a probability, a chance that you could slip and fall. And I'm not saying that's bad to be afraid. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying make sure that you know why, like what is driving the fear. Why is that what's fearful?

Speaker 1: 9:25

And if it's because you're afraid of the, if it's a person and you're afraid that that person might break the relationship off or see you differently, then you have to ask yourself is that the same as being afraid of the cliff that I might die? Die, or is it something? Is that am I being? Am I afraid of that because I don't trust that person? And the outcome is going to be this, because that's how we take. It's common, at least for me, at least for me to take outcomes that I think are going to happen and I put that over, whatever the thing is and it's the same for any type of emotion or feeling, like anxiety or depression. At least for me it is, and I need to figure out why. Why is this happening? Why do I feel this way? What is preventing me from finishing something? What is preventing me from addressing an issue? And issues need to be addressed. You have to be able to trust each other and you have to be able to trust yourself too.

Speaker 1: 11:20

So, trying to get out of the feeling of anxiety, trying to get out of the feeling of depression and all that, there's plenty of temporary things that can be done, like going out and hiking or walking or running or going to the gym. But what really has to be addressed here is what is the root cause of it? What's causing this? And I'm not talking about the anxiety, depression type thing that can come with after you do a day or a night on the town, drinking or whatever, because there is such a thing as a hangover type of depression type thing and that can be directly related to the drinking. But there's other things that could be causing anxiety. It could be a relationship, it could be the lack of doing something, that you have maybe have not done something and avoided it. It could also be fear, fear of an outcome.

Speaker 1: 13:06

Another great thing to do at least that I do is pray and listen and wait. If you know your day is already, if you've already given up on the day and said, okay, today is not the day, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to stop trying to push it. That is a choice, you know. That's a choice that I've made before, and then I'll go into the next day and maybe I do feel a little better and I get back up on the horse, or maybe I'll do the same thing over again. But in reality, what I should do is figure out what the root issue is and and address that and once addressing that, then come back and try again. Figure out what it is and it could be multiple things too. Figure out what it is, and it could be multiple things too.

Speaker 1: 14:30

So if you're going through something like that, where you have all this anxiety and you feel like everything's falling through the cracks, figure out what the thing is, what is causing the anxiety, and once you can address that and you know what it is that's causing that anxiety, then you can then figure out a way to remove that thing or get away from it or change it. But if you don't even know what it is, then the only thing that can be done is remedy in it, and that will work, but it will continually still be there until it's addressed. So it's better just to take a day or take some time, figure out what it is and address it and, you know, maybe it's something that you have to let go of. Maybe it's something you have to forgive yourself for, maybe it's. It could be a lot of different things. It doesn't have to be a physical thing. It could be like an emotional thing thing.

Speaker 1: 16:18

So if you want to take a few minutes after the show and just think, hmm, where is this feeling coming from? Where is this connecting to in your mind, and maybe, at least for me, sometimes I'll close my eyes and I'll try to picture, I'll try to embrace the feeling and try to picture where. How is that? Is there a memory or something this is attached to? Is this a task that this is attached to in my mind? What is attached to this feeling? Why is this being generated? Where is this coming from? And almost always it's a memory, or it's something that I did or something that I didn't do or something that I need to do but I've been avoiding to do. And it's pretty instant. Well, instant once you get kind of focused on what that feeling is attached to. And it's not like this isn't a new thing.

Speaker 1: 17:28

We have feelings attached to lots of different things. You listen to your favorite song, that you listen with a girl or whatever, and you haven't listened to that song before yet until then, and then you instantly remember and can feel the feelings that you and that girl had when you first listened to that song. So you can attach it. You've attached it to that song, so you know that that song is generating your response is the feeling that you felt while you were listening to that song with the person you were listening with and what you felt with that person, and that's attached to now, to that. So and that's another thing Maybe it is, maybe it's maybe put on some like kicker music and get back up on the horse.

Speaker 1: 18:31

I do that sometimes too, but I still, again, need to identify what it is and then address it, bring it into light, say, hey, I know, I see you're there, I see you there, I know you're there, I haven you there, I know you're there. I haven't figured out yet how I'm going to deal with you, but I have identified what it is and I know that this is what's causing this. I need to figure out the best way to deal with you. So I would encourage you to do that. Hopefully, this was helpful and if you have any questions or need anything, feel free to send me a message. And yeah, if you have anything that you want to see in a future show or want to talk about or want me to talk about, then send me a message and I'll see what I can do and we'll see if we can include it into future shows. But, yeah, so I hope this was helpful and useful and I'll catch you guys in the next one.