Category: Email Archives

Why do we have a fight-or-flight response when there is no physical danger?

It’s just a musical performance. How bad could it possibly get?

Yeah, I get that it’s confusing when you understand logically that nothing horrible is likely to happen, and still there’s a deep anxiety response.

Shouldn’t you just be able to talk yourself out of it?

Why can’t you just take a look at the evidence, and see how unlikely it is that your friends and family are going to kill you?

Haha 

If you think it’s so easy, try it.

As far as I’m concerned, you don’t believe it’s safe. You do believe you will die. That’s exactly why you have the anxiety response. You are anticipating physical danger. 

Don’t believe me? Try it.

“Try what, Michael?”

Ah, that’s the part you’re missing.

Here’s where you’re wrong:

• You think it’s possible to talk yourself out of the anxiety.
• You think the anxiety is a bad thing.
• You think it’s possible to eliminate the anxiety.

Yeah, I don’t look at any of it this way. Sorry 

The problem is that you’re too attached to your stories. Not that you have too much anxiety.

The solution will involve figuring out how to detach from your stories. Not how to diminish your anxiety.

If you still think anxiety is a bad thing, all I can do is challenge you to experience some anxiety deliberately and notice how it’s really not that bad. Like, it’s kind of a joke. Seriously.

That’s the monster you’re so scared of? 

I wish I had your problems.

—Michael

Several years ago, I was doing a solo piano recital. Not a high-stakes thing (just my friends and family in the audience), but super-stressful for me.

Horrible stage fright, negative thinking, low self-esteem, worrying about how I might screw it up.

I was sitting backstage, waiting to go on. I had maybe 15 minutes before showtime. Playing every negative scenario in my head.

I was going to play the music from memory. That’s hard. Especially the Bach Partita. This is very complex music. One tiny mistake and it would throw the whole thing off.

And, the printed programs were all messed up (I knew that was going to happen). I had wanted to print them myself, but the music school insisted that they print them, on their special paper. I thought they were just going to print the PDF I sent them, but no, they re-typed the whole thing. Tons of typos. A total disaster.

I was so incredibly angry with them, and this made it even harder to focus.

I had been meditating for a while without having a clue what it was about. 5 minutes a day, sometimes. Then skip a few weeks or months. Then go back to it.

I loved the idea of meditating. I love learning new skills. Being good at things.

So, backstage, I was trying to meditate. I don’t even know what I was doing. I just knew that meditation was supposed to help me.

I can’t say it did much for me. The recital sucked, in my honest opinion.

That’s how it went for years. I had a ton of anxiety, negative stories in my head, etc. I knew meditation was supposed to help you deal with negative thinking. With stress. With anxiety. It was supposed to be good, and I wanted to do it, but I didn’t really get it.

It didn’t make sense. How was I supposed to apply it in my daily life? Sure, I could sorta stay calm while meditating. But as soon as I stopped meditating, then what? And, I wasn’t even always calm while meditating. Sitting for 5 minutes was a long time. I got restless and antsy.

It’s hard to commit to a regular meditation practice when you don’t even see how it’s helping you. When you don’t feel it.

That changed at one point. I was practicing singing, and it suddenly became clear. I was extremely frustrated one moment, and then the next moment, I had a different relationship with my negative thinking.

I saw how meditation works to give you distance from your thoughts. How it helps with stress, anxiety, low self-esteem, and negative stories in your mind.

And, yeah. It’s counter-intuitive.

But, that’s what you need. Distance from your thoughts.

You don’t need to eliminate the thoughts. You don’t need to change them. You need distance. You need radical acceptance of your thoughts.

This is what meditation can teach you, and how it can help you.

—Michael

I don’t know if you have a regular meditation practice.

Either you do, or you don’t.

If you do, fine. I’ll get to you later.

If you don’t, I want you to meditate. Today. Before the day is over.

I want you to sit down for at least 5 minutes, and just pay attention to whatever happens. There’s no wrong way to do it. If you set a timer for 5 minutes, and sit until the timer goes off, good, you’re done.

I’m serious.

I want you to do this.

You should do this. If you don’t take my advice seriously, what are you even doing here?

If you are just going to read this, roll your eyes, and scroll on to the next email, you’re wasting my time and your own time.

You have to do stuff. You can’t just read about stuff.

So, do it. Sometime before you go to sleep tonight. Or get lost.

If you have a meditation practice already, then I challenge you to sit without moving. Just once. The next time you are meditating, when you have an urge to move, resist that urge, and think “I’m doing this for Michael.” That’s it. Then, you can go back to meditating normally. I just want you to do that one thing for me.

Thanks for reading.

—Michael