Podcast Transcript | Ep. 33

Anxiety & Inaction

Anxiety & Inaction | Ep. 33

[00:00:00]

[00:00:44] Hello and welcome everyone. I'm your host, Brandon Ward back with another episode of order within. Episode number 33 today.

[00:00:56] Today's show is going to cover. Anxiety and inaction. I

[00:01:01] want to talk about. How we struggle without creation. How consumption is taking over. How there's all these rising levels of anxiety and the connection to consuming. We've got creation and balance. And then finally some examples. From cinema. That I think may be helpful. This is a little bit of a tougher example to share because it can manifest differently in each of us.

[00:01:31] But the. The basic idea. Around anxiety and inaction. It's something that I've noticed in myself. It's something that. My wife also has experienced. I notice it in friends and people that I'm close with as well. And what it is is ultimately the. Noticing how much our anxiety rises when we're inactive or we're idle for extended periods of time now resting and having a balanced life is super important. I'm not talking about toxic.

[00:02:04] Hustle culture. Where you're endlessly grinding. You're never taking time off. You're never recharging because recharging, resting. Is so important to, to sustain ourselves over the long run. It's the only way we can really. Sustain. Our efforts over time. So we do have to rest and recharge. That's

[00:02:25] what I'm talking about, but what I'm describing is periods of time where we're inactive or we're not expressing producing, building.

[00:02:33] Over certain periods of time. And it. Happened lately. I noticed it over the holidays. I took off like four days there where I wasn't doing much work relative to the podcast, to the SEO work that I've been doing, working on Ashley's blog. So there's a lot of things that we're working on together that we took time off around the holidays.

[00:02:55] Thursday was great. Thanksgiving was amazing. We had a friend over whose family. Uh, basically he's family. I've known him for most of my life. And we had a great day. We had a, we had a good time. We deep fried our first Turkey. But. I wasn't working and the lingering. Anxiety that was being created from the things that I know I have to do in the back of my mind. We're building.

[00:03:19] And each day Thursday was great. I wasn't experiencing it. I wasn't feeling it. I was just enjoying the moment. We were busy cooking and doing all those things. So I was very active. But each day after that, I noticed that my anxiety levels were rising until Monday came. I got back to work and then I felt a huge sense of relief. And I realized in those moments that.

[00:03:40] Being idle creates a lot of anxiety when there's a lot of things that we have on our plate to do. And how we, when we don't. Take action. And we ignore those things. It can easily get to a point to where our anxiety gets out of control and it's overwhelming us. And I was getting to that point. And so the change though is action can counter that.

[00:04:06] It's a. It seems like taking action, doing things, working, building, creating, handling our responsibilities, getting things done off of our to-do list. Reduces it, that's what I've found. And it's the thing is in the world that we live, there's so much to do every day, so much that we have to handle.

[00:04:27] So much that needs to be taken care of. When you have a family, when you have responsibilities. Life happens fast. So the list of things that need to get done. Can be large. And without action getting taken towards that list, that anxiety builds in the background, because we know in our mind, whether we're thinking about it consciously or aware of it or not,

[00:04:51] That need to do things. The things that we need to get done are lingering in our minds. So it creates anxiety. And. When we have extended periods of time, that's what I've noticed during holidays this seems to happen. So it's something that I've got to be mindful of, something that my wife and I have to be mindful of how we balance our energy.

[00:05:09] How we're ensuring that we are doing some things in those periods of time because resting and taking time off is really only enjoyable when we can truly. Let ourselves enjoy it being in the moment. And that often comes when we've taken care of a lot of the things that we need to get taken care of and managing ourselves and our energy and our responsibilities.

[00:05:31] And when we don't do that, it can create a lot of anxiety. Now there's a lot of reasons that we feel and experience anxiety. I think anxiety. Is a great indicator of where we are. It could be circumstantial, it could be internal anxiety that we feel with ourselves, the relationship that we have with ourselves. And this is the work that is.

[00:05:51] Self-mastery is you have to go into and explore. You have to uncover what is happening. It's not going to be the same for any one of us. It's going to be a mix of all these things, but we, we uncover those things when we. Take the time to bring awareness to it, to explore it. To understand ourselves and build that relationship within.

[00:06:12] And a lot of what's happening right now is that we are struggling without creation. There's not a in creation is a lot of things. It's not just creative work as I've talked about before. Creation is producing, building, doing things that in you don't have to be. Uh, business owner to, to have this apply.

[00:06:31] You most likely worked for someone there's things that need to get done. There's things that you have on your to-do list, organizing those things and knocking them off can potentially help relieve. That anxiety, but it's also an expression of who we are. We are doers. We are creators. We are builders, humans build. We create, we ideate.

[00:06:51] We are. Creators at the core of who we are. And without that creation, without that production in our life, without us doing things in our lives. We can become. Anxious messes. And it's the building and doing is paramount for our health. Doing and building creates balance, doing and creating allows us to express ourselves and allow that energy to move.

[00:07:16] What happens though, when we don't create, when we're not expressing, when we're not taking action, when we're not building in our lives, when we're not producing and that this is not. This isn't some societal thing that says, if you're not producing, you're not valuable. This is truly about your own internal experience. It has nothing to do with society.

[00:07:34] It's about your own experience and that's why I'm doing the show. I don't really care about society per se. It's more about the own relationship that we have with ourselves and what we do with it, how we manage it. How we make the most of it, how we leverage our potential, our creativity. And so coming back to that, this isn't being productive is individualistic, whatever that means for each of us, it's going to be unique to each of us, but we have to understand what our production is, the things that we need to do.

[00:08:04] And have it in front of us. This is why project management systems can be very helpful. Even if you just have notepads that you're taking down tasks on. I use click up personally to organize a lot of the tasks that I need to do. I also use like note pads and things to capture stuff in the moment and then transfer them over to ensure that I'm capturing these tasks that need to be taken care of because that's another thing that can cause.

[00:08:27] Lingering anxiety is when we're not getting all this stuff out of our head and putting it down somewhere, it creates anxiety. And these. When we're out of balance when we're not creating, particularly in, in extended periods of idle. Lack of activity. It definitely creates stress. And without movement of that creative energy, it creates anxiety and ultimately that creative energy, it.

[00:08:52] Within us wants to move out into the world. It's being called out into the world. It's urging us to share it, move it and build out into the world. And when we don't. That energy then gets stuck inside of us and it cycles around and it's not being expressed and therefore creates anxiety. Anxiety is like a relief mechanism for our inaction. Sometimes. Now, again,

[00:09:15] I'm not saying that this is the root cause of all anxiety. It's very different. There's a lot of things that cause anxiety, but this is something to note. About your own behaviors, your own experience and where you are. And if you find yourself feeling that way during periods of rest or extended periods of idleness.

[00:09:32] This may be an indicator that lack of action can create anxiety in you. And the other side of this, though. Is not only when we're taking time off or we're being maybe more idle than we normally are, but it's also that consumption is really taking over our lives. It's attempting to replace creation and that is very problematic for us as a species. Because again, we are creators.

[00:09:56] Consumption is necessary for us to live, to have the things that we need. We need food, we need water. We need clothes, shelter, experiences. There's all these things that go beyond. If you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It builds right off the basics and expands out into relationships, psychological needs, et cetera.

[00:10:16] But. We need to create, we need to produce, we need to build in whatever fashion that is related to us. If we are not. At the majority of our time is spent consuming. There's a high likelihood that we will be very anxious individuals. Because we've been misled in our society, in this culture that we live in within America.

[00:10:37] And this kind of global modern world. Is that consumption is the way buying things, shopping experiences, video games, porn, food, sex, dating, dating apps, all of these things, Netflix, endless consumption. There are an endless number of ways that we can take in materials and things that other people have created and we can consume. Now.

[00:11:02] That's a beautiful thing. It's a brilliant thing. Our world that we live in now. Is abundant, it's robust. It's so diverse and it's continuously expanding and growing, which is an incredible thing. But if we don't balance that consumption with our creation, with our production. Then we easily get out of whack out of sorts.

[00:11:24] And what it does. Because of this idea that we've been led to believe that consuming is really what fulfills us in reality it's producing, it's doing, it's creating, it's building that fulfills us. And then sharing those things with the world is what's fulfilling. And. Consuming is supporting that.

[00:11:44] Those efforts it's consumption is a supportive mechanism, not a main mechanism. Creation is the main stage. Consumption is a support. It's the activities behind the main stage. So when we're not creating. We're living in a consumption state, we're in a supportive role and it's natural that we're going to feel out of whack.

[00:12:05] And it also creates these vicious cycles of dependency because when we're stuck in a state of consumption, we are endlessly consuming those things around us and we need more and more and more and more. And when we don't feel well, when we feel anxious, when we feel off, when we feel sad or angry or frustrated or whatever it is, we simply consume more to try and ease those.

[00:12:26] Feelings to subside those feelings, but that actually creates more of them because we're not addressing the root issue, which is our feelings are not going to be. Handled through consumption, they will be challenged and changed through creation through our production through movement of energy by us taking action.

[00:12:46] Is how we make those changes. That's how we shift that balance. And that's how we break that cycle. But it's a very addictive cycle. When we're in that consumption state, we're not creating and the world is encouraging it everywhere. I mean, there are endless traps to fall into, around consumption and just get lost in forever. I mean, if you.

[00:13:07] If you're living and working in, uh, at a job that you don't like, you're not very fulfilled by, you're not enjoying the work itself, but then you come home in the evening. And the only thing you can do is decompress through shows, video games, porn, whatever it may be. It's a cycle that just continues to build you feel worse and worse over time, and you get further away from your creation, your expression. So the counter to all that is to start exploring.

[00:13:33] These creative components, because when we live this way, When we consume like this, it's a very passive approach. It's a passive approach to life. Creating production doing is active. Consumption is taking in. It's sitting back, it's waiting. It's observing. It's watching. It's not participating. That's the difference we need to participate. We are made to be in the arena.

[00:13:58] That's what we're designed for and when we're not, it creates massive problems for us. And that's where a lot of these rising anxiety levels come into play. And when you look at. Social media. Video games, porn, I know I bring a lot of this stuff up, but that rising levels of consumption. You correlate that to anxiety. It's not.

[00:14:20] It's right there in front of us. This is a real thing. It's no wonder that so many of us are anxious, depressed. And isolated because we're living these consumption centric lives that are void. Of meaning and fulfillment through our creation. Creation is where we find our fulfillment. It's where we come into our full being as humans. And we express ourselves in whatever form that may be self-expression has endless forms. And it's not, again, not limited to creative, artistic stuff. It's everywhere. It can be applied in any realm of existence.

[00:14:58] And it's important that it is because all areas of life are evolving and growing and. Having people who are focused on certain areas like that allow life to evolve and grow. So whatever that impetus is, whatever that pool may be for you.

[00:15:14] Is it's important to follow it, to explore it, to allow it, to get into the world because ultimately that expression allows us to live more of an active life. And counter these rising anxiety levels that are tied to consumption.

[00:15:30] Because you'll notice. The more we consume, the less we create, the more anxious we're going to feel. It's very prominent. And I notice it in my friends. I notice it in just about anyone. I have a lot of connections that I've made on Twitter recently, who are a lot of content creators focusing on different things. They also experienced these things when they notice that they're not active or being creative or doing their work.

[00:15:54] That they're drawn to do they feel anxious? So these factors are tied together and the more we consume, the less we create, the more anxious we become and our energy, the way we feel is going to be an indicator for our lifestyle. So if we're noticing that we should make. Note of it, observe it and see where things are happening the most. And start to make small changes start to make small shifts.

[00:16:19] Instead of doing. You know, maybe instead of doing a certain consumption activity, we replaced that with a creative activity. That's one way to easily shift the balance and start to make the change. It's to take 30 minutes to an hour of what you would usually spend consuming some sort of content or information or whatever it may be.

[00:16:39] And produce in that time period instead. Just start small. That's the beautiful thing about it. Our energy will be an indicator and will help us. Lead into living a more balanced life. And to me and what we're learning, this is not just my opinion, but there's a lot of incredible science around. Our brains psychology. All these factors are coming together to show us that this is actually the formula for fulfillment.

[00:17:09] That creating and being productive is actually a very viable path. For. Living our best lives and it's validated by the science that's being shown. Which is incredible. Like we're learning how our brain operates. We're learning how our bodies operate, what they respond to. The cycles that they get into the hormones and how our brain operates, how it influences our bodies, our experiences, all of these things are being revealed to us. And it's core. It's connecting back to the creative aspect, expressing ourselves.

[00:17:44] We'll bring relief often to these anxious feelings. It won't always be the solution, right? Like it takes time. This is just a piece of this. A lot of us don't have great relationships with ourselves. And there's things that are lingering from our past, from our childhoods that we have not yet acknowledged.

[00:18:03] And it's still affecting us today. So those things are real. That stuff's still must be addressed. We must create that relationship with ourselves and explore the feelings that we have within, but. There is absolutely connection too, to this anxiety and our lack of action. And by creating and taking action, we can often experience relief, even if it's just temporary in those moments.

[00:18:26] It becomes a tool for us to create, produce and find fulfillment while relieving that anxious cycle. Being productive. Flat out makes us feel better about ourselves. And again, it's not from a society perspective, but just sitting down and doing something, building things, creating things, producing something, and then reflecting on what you did is a very enjoyable and fulfilling experience.

[00:18:53] So it helps us. We feel good about it. It's uplifting. It's encouraging. It's a great way to build. Our self-esteem being useful and productive is an incredible way to build our self-esteem. We feel good about ourselves. It makes us feel good about who we are and what we've done. Having a child has really taught me this because you can see the.

[00:19:18] Underpinnings of humanity. The curious nature of exploring everything. Children will show you that. That's our nature. It gets snuffed out as we get older, but our nature is curious, exploring, testing, checking things out. Seeing how things work. Children love to explore and play. And build and put things in things and test things out, hide stuff, find it like that's the nature of who we are. That's inherent to humans.

[00:19:50] They are happiest. Like my child is happiest when she's engaged in activities. We find fulfillment when we are engaged and we are made to be engaged. We're not made to be. Passive. We're here to live deep. And live actively and live engaged with life. That's where our fulfillment comes from and that's where our self-esteem can be built from. When we live an engaged life. When we create, we build, we use our skills in ways that can help us, that can help others, and that can provide value to the world.

[00:20:25] And hopefully we're being rewarded for that too, in terms of monetary payouts, that's the beautiful thing about work. It doesn't have to be the entirety of our life, but it absolutely is. Important and can bring a ton of value to our existence. That's the aim. Aligning our work, the way we earn money with things that are valuable to us, things that align with our values and who we are and the life we want to live. That's the beautiful part about it is it allows us to create a life and support who we are and what we believe in through creation production and leveraging useful skills.

[00:21:01] And if we don't have those skills, we learn because we can literally learn to do almost anything in the world today. You can get online and learn just about anything today. It's incredible. We just have to be willing to. Participate. To take action to commit to the path, to understand that growing and learning is a lifelong journey that we master things over our lifetime and beyond that, and that's.

[00:21:28] The beauty of it. That is the beauty of participating in life instead of being passive.

[00:21:37] In time. As we become more active in our life, we participate in our existence. More. We participate in life. We become more fulfilled. It's a process. It compounds on one another. Which is where we're going. That's where we're aiming to go is actively participating in our life and influencing the experiences that we have. We are creators. We are infinite beings of creation. We are children of God.

[00:22:01] We can do anything in this world. The world has so much potential. We're in this world to make an unlock that potential. And that's the beautiful thing about it. And it's that happens. Through our creation through our expression, through our action. And so that's what allows us to participate and.

[00:22:22] Take away to to massage some of that anxiety and work against it through actions. So if these are things that you're feeling you can help to relieve some of the tension, some of that pain by taking action. All right. So a few examples. And then I'm going to wrap the episode here. This is a little I don't know. These will resonate as much. This was a little, I had a hard time thinking about some of the.

[00:22:46] Some of the concepts in here and how they may apply and some movies. But I think this is something that a lot of us are going to be able to relate to without the examples, but the examples are fun regardless. So the first example would be Owen Wilson's character in wedding Crashers. John Beckwith.

[00:23:03] Now, if you haven't seen that, it's a fun movie. They they basically crash weddings. They go and they make up these stories, him and Vince Vaughn and they are womanizers. It's not the They have there's lessons in there obviously. And they end up meeting. Their spouses or partners that they really want to be with so that, ultimately it's funny, men.

[00:23:22] Womanizing and all that it's really at the end of the day, most men are trying to find their one though. I know when I was, that's what I was doing, I was trying to find my one. So womanizing. And is often the path to finding the person that we connect most with. But anyway, the movie goes through this incredible journey. They're having all this fun. He meets Claire.

[00:23:40] His love interest in the movie. And they. They, he can't be with her because of she's with another guy there, but he's kind of a Dick. And so they're engaged and she's not happy with them, blah, blah, blah. So all that kind of stuff, you have to watch the movie to see all of it. But at the end of it he ends up getting into this point at the very end of the movie, the latter part of the movie, where he's in a bad place, he's in a dark place.

[00:24:04] He's depressed, he's sad. And he's not doing the things that he used to do. He's doing these solo crashes. He's very depressed. He's staying at home. He's watching a bunch of TV. He's. Eating ice cream all the time. He's very angry. A lot of inaction. And you can tell that the anxiety, the depression, it's all seeping in, he's also heartbroken. So that's, it's influencing him, right? Like that heartbreak is really hitting him hard, but he's at his worst when he's not living his life as he does.

[00:24:33] And in that period. He.

[00:24:37] He finally gets out of it. His friend. Vince Vaughn's character comes and shakes him out of it eventually. And he like realizes that that's not the life you want to live. He doesn't want to live that way. And he starts taking action and he gets back to himself and the movie concludes in a beautiful, fun way. But.

[00:24:54] It's when we lack action, these things happen often and they can happen often. So it's moving. From inaction to action allows us to get ourselves out of tough situations. And I think that's a prime example of where he was living a good life. He fell into a dark place. His heart was broken. He was living a very inactive, passive life. And then he got great advice from his friend. He finally got knocked out of it.

[00:25:17] He took action and his life started turning around. That's the ultimate aim here is to turn things around based on where we are. And so that's a fun movie. It's one of my favorite movies. It's an enjoyable one. The next one up is Aaron Johnson, his character in kickass. Dave

[00:25:38] I think it is. It's been a while since I've watched that movie, but it's a, it's another good film as well.

[00:25:44] His character in the movies and nerdy guy, he gets bullied a lot. He's not happy. He's very anxious and insecure. And ultimately he ends up becoming a kind of a vigilante character called kick-ass, where he goes around and actually tries to do good. So instead of feeling anxious and depressed and sad and a loser or whatever, he actually creates a superhero character for himself. Now there's a lot of cool stuff that happens in this movie.

[00:26:10] Um, but you can see over time he builds confidence and. Security in himself through action by becoming this person by becoming this. Superhero like character. Now I'm not saying we go out and become vigilantes. And start fighting crime. But the piece here to look at is. Action and how he changes through action. He takes action by becoming this different persona and it changes his life. It transforms his life from a nerdy insecure guy into a strong, confident guy.

[00:26:41] And you can do that through action. It's just, again. When we are stuck in these inactive, passive states feeling sorry for ourselves. We can create this very anxious, depressed state. And so by creating, by producing, by taking the action by becoming kick-ass, he enables himself to transform through action and become a more full version of himself. Again, fun movie. I recommended it's a good.

[00:27:09] It's a good zero to hero kind of story. A lot of interesting thing happens in a lot of good fight scenes, too. A lot of F bombs though. So if you're sensitive that maybe be a weary. All right. And then the last one here is going to be from the boys. Uh, Jack Quaid's character Huey Campbell. Now, if you haven't seen the boys, it's a very good show. I think it's it's the antihero.

[00:27:29] Really the characters there's heroes in the show, but they're basically exemplifies what happens when the worst of humanity has given all this power. Uh, which there's a lot of lessons in there deeper, but Huey is a nerdy kind of soft spoken guy, very insecure and anxious a lot throughout the whole show.

[00:27:47] But one thing that he does do is he takes action a lot. Like he actually moves and does things and tries to help. And he counters his anxiety, his worry, his fear through action. And I think he's an interesting character because he does evolve throughout the show, but he stays true to his core values for the majority of it, which I think is important because ultimately.

[00:28:11] Though we need to take action and we have to, we can make big changes in our lives. We want to stay true to the core of who we are and ensure that we're upholding our values. We don't want to sacrifice our values. Just for the sake of action and making change. And I think he does a pretty good job at that throughout the show of staying true to who he is. But countering his anxious, fearful state.

[00:28:31] Through action. And he does a lot of crazy stuff. The last season, it gets pretty wild with the things that they're doing there. So I would encourage you to check out the show if you haven't seen it, but his action you'll see it take place. Like he really. Uh, counters his fearful. Loads some state by just doing a bunch of stuff, trying to make things happen, making change, like getting after it, which I respect. I respect people that get after it. So I think that's a another good example here of showing how, when we get out of our way, we take action, we can counter that anxious, fearful state that we sometimes find ourselves in.

[00:29:07] All right, Joe. That's all I got for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed the show. I'll be back next week. Can't believe we are in December already. Which is wild. 2022 is about to conclude best time of the year though, for me. Anyway, I love this time of the year. It's a magical time of the year. Hopefully you are having a good time.

[00:29:25] In a good place with you, your friends, your family, wherever you may find yourself. And I will catch you next time. So until next time y'all.

[00:29:33] Thank you for listening to Order Within. If you found the episode helpful, please consider sharing, rating and subscribing. New episodes will be released every Thursday at 11:00 AM Eastern Standard time. Until next time y'all.