Stop Anxiety
Many of those I care about have anxiety. I have not felt anxiety for years, so I thought telling my story might help others cope with anxiety. I’ll try to explain what changed my life and suggest what may help you.
I think anxiety comes from giving too much importance to the future. We wring our hands over whether some future event will happen or not happen. Or we wring our hands over whether we are safe, whether we are healthy, whether we are financially secure, whether we are loved or liked, and whether we will die.
Do you see that except for death, everything above is written in the present? But in fact, these are concerns about the future. We confuse these future unknowns, mistakenly thinking of them as though they are unknowns in the present, but in the present they are known. We are not dead. We are either healthy or not, loved or liked or not, safe or not, and on and on. In fact, if we take an inventory of how we are at this moment, for most of us, all is well, for the moment.
How we are at this moment may fill us with joy or sadness, and these are real feelings (assuming they are accurately perceived). We are living life in this moment. Life is filled with real events. If my arm hurts at this moment from an injury, I may feel pain. Unless it’s all in my head, I really feel pain now. But if I worry that my arm will still hurt tomorrow, I may feel anxiety about the pain I may experience tomorrow. The pain I feel now is real; concern about future pain, which is the source of anxiety, is not.
Anxiety is about future fears we give life as though they are real and in the present. So how did I overcome anxiety?
Embrace The Fact That You Are Going To Die
I don’t think I’ve ever feared death, but I know many of those I care about do fear death—and think about dying. If you fear death, you may have anxiety over whether you may have an illness, or whether you may have a heart attack, or you may worry that you may die in an accident or in your sleep. If these things happen, they are real. In the future, they are not. You may be overweight and be at risk of many bad things, so you can get to work today to lose weight to reduce your risks, but worrying about dying tomorrow owing to your weight is worrying about an illusion. You’ve heard of “death and taxes.” They are the two things you can’t avoid. If you make money, you pay taxes. If you breathe you will die. No one fears taxes. You may dislike taxes, but you don’t fear them, so why fear death? It’s guaranteed. For example, no one walking on the planet today, will be walking on the planet in 150 years. No one. It’s a fact. So why worry that you are going to die? You are going to die. Relax. Embrace that thought. Your life will be better, and your anxiety will be less. You are going to die. I’m motivated by that knowledge. Whether you believe in God or not, it’s a good argument for making today worthwhile because it may be your last day on Earth. Don’t waste today. Simple as that. But don’t worry that today may be your last day. Don’t stress about it. Who cares? When you go, you will have no regrets because you will be dead. There is nothing to fear. Play the game until the buzzer rings, and don’t try to predict when that buzzer will ring. If there is a clock counting down, you can’t see it. Enjoy the game. Worrying that the buzzer will ring is a waste of energy.
Follow Your Moral Compass
I think anxiety also comes from ignoring your moral compass. If you know you did something that deviates from the course you walk when you are following your moral compass, you may feel anxiety at the possibility of getting caught, or anxiety because you know what you did was wrong, and perhaps you are having trouble living with that fact. Getting caught may not lead to prison, but it may lead to the disappointment of those you care about, compromise your standing in your community, or lead to some unpleasant administrative outcome. Your conscience may speak to you for the rest of your life, and that may cause anxiety.
Of course, the easy answer is, “follow your moral compass.” Nothing is important enough to justify leaving the path that follows your moral compass. Your life is precious and brief. Why would you care about an outcome so much that you would violate your own ethics? My advice is to be brave. Be ready to lose everything, because there is no anxiety in living life according to the rules you know are right, but there is anxiety in doing what you know is wrong.
I speak from experience. I entered law school in 1981. In my first year of law school, I cheated on a constitutional law exam. It was a take-home and open-book exam, but we were not allowed to use commercial outlines.* I did use a commercial outline in answering questions on the test, and did pretty well on the final exam. I assume I had anxiety over having done what I knew was wrong, but fear of failure propelled me forward. Over the years, I buried that memory deep in the recesses of my brain. I’m certain that five years later, I could have passed a polygraph on that fact, because I buried it so deep, I did not remember what I had done.
Thirteen years later, at work, my law practice had taken off; at home, I had the American dream; and I was deposing a human resources manager in a discrimination case against a big company. I caught her lying, and I remember thinking how weak she was—willing to lie under oath to preserve her job at the expense of my client who was a victim of sexual harassment. She knew what was right and chose to do what was wrong to keep her expensive car and her expensive house. I was filled with contempt and righteous indignation. Soon after that, the memory of my having cheated on the law school exam came flooding back into my brain—perhaps my subconscious rejected my outrage as hypocritical. I was horrified by my actions all those years ago, and with the realization that I was no better than the lying witness.
I had to decide what to do. I love being a trial lawyer. I represent good people in good fights against big money and power. I can’t think of any job I’d rather have. I could keep this new “old” information to myself, and silently live with my hypocrisy, or I could turn myself in, and face the possibility that I would be disbarred and prohibited from doing what I love, not to mention the financial impact of losing my profession. I had to decide what to weigh in the mix. I found that I felt anxiety about living with the hypocrisy, but after a time, and some deep breaths, I embraced the idea that I cheated and needed to atone. I cheated myself, my family, the faculty, the students, and the Washington State Bar Association (“WSBA”). I decided to turn myself in.
I wrote a letter to my law school explaining what I had done, and I sent a copy to the WSBA. I received a letter back from the faculty disciplinary committee directing me to come and defend my actions. In the weeks that followed, I felt tremendous anxiety when I tried to predict the future actions of the committee. Would I be disbarred? Would the committee revoke my diploma? Would I suffer a lesser penalty? Then I realized that in the present, my life was perfect. I was loved by my wife and my children. My job was going great, the smells of the Earth were invigorating, and the sky and the trees were beautiful. I had placed my future in the hands of others. I could not predict my future, so why wring my hands over something I could not control? I found peace in the present, and then in each day, and in each week leading up to my meeting with the committee. I abandoned any effort to predict my future, and lived in the moment. I had no anxiety.
I attended the meeting and felt no anxiety. I openly stated what I had done, and my regrets. My professor was still there, and he stated that he did not think that my use of a commercial outline could have helped much with his exam, and may have hurt the quality of my answers. The committee was compassionate. They did not revoke my diploma. Instead, the committee directed me to attend some law school ethics classes, and explain to the students what I had done, and what I had learned. The WSBA did not order my disbarment. They also acted with compassion, and found that no further action was required beyond what my law school had directed. As required, I appeared at ethics classes at the University of Washington and freely spoke about my actions and what I had learned.
From that experience I learned that nothing about the future should be feared. It will be what it will be. I also learned that a moral compass is a gift that makes decision-making easy. I have not felt anxiety since then. I do not worry about my health, or whether I’ll be loved tomorrow, or whether my law firm will prosper. When I take a case to trial, I do not worry about outcome. I try to win each moment, knowing that if I win enough moments, I’ll win the trial. I feel no anxiety—only whatever emotion I feel in response to real things happening at each moment. The future does not control me. It does not even impact me.
Accept That Life Is The Ticket That Lets You Ride The Train That Is This Earth, And Accept That You Have No Control Over Where That Train Is Going
Did you know that the earth revolves on its axis at about 1000 miles per hour at the equator, that the Earth revolves around the sun at about 67,000 miles per hour; that the sun revolves around the galaxy at about 483,000 miles per hour; that our galaxy is moving through space at about 1.3 million miles per hour; that there are about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy; and there are at least 176 billion galaxies in the universe? We cannot feel or see any of this. If we could, we would be clinging to the ground for dear life. I say this to emphasize the importance of perspective. We live less than 100 years in a universe that is bigger than we can perceive, on a planet that is spinning like a top while zooming through space. Yet we tend to think that we are the center of it all.
My understanding of all this implicates God, but one need not believe in God to gain a perspective that will relieve anxiety. In my view, God gives us a little sliver of time to be corporeal and to live in a world that allows us to feel, and to love, and to touch, and to see, and to smell. We should not waste that great gift by worrying about the future. The future is not in our hands. Even without God in the equation, the actions of the universe should give everyone the perspective needed to see that, given our limited time here, opportunities in the present may be lost to a preoccupation with the future. Enjoy this wonderful ride, and live every moment in the present. If you do, you will be free and live without anxiety.
Jack Sheridan
January 2016
*Private companies publish outlines of law school courses, which track individual law school class curriculums like Constitutional Law, Contracts, Family Law, Wills, Torts, etc.