How To Deal With Anxiety

As the nurses prepared me for surgery, they hooked me up to a heart rate monitor. They seemed puzzled as they checked my readings and double-checked the machine. "Your resting heart rate is 36 beats per minute!" one of them exclaimed.

I couldn't help but smile, thinking about how the physical demands of soccer have trained my heart to beat at a slower pace than average. This happened every time I underwent surgery, all of them ironically caused by playing soccer.

"Just like a low resting heart rate is the byproduct of intense exercise,” entrepreneur and investor Naval Ravikant said, “low anxiety is the byproduct of intense self-examination."

When you intensely examine yourself, you understand that you are not your mind. Your mind is your tool. You are the consciousness observing the mind and can use it to your advantage. Anyone who has meditated for a while can prove this. You see your thoughts and emotions pass; you are the awareness observing them come and go. You are not them.

So, how can you discard anxiety?