We all get “anxiety,” right? Interview comes up, a promising second date, or maybe it’s the dentist’s office. Just like any other emotion it has a real purpose – anxiety’s being partially “You need to put your attention here now.” Just like how fear is motivating or laughing supresses the release of stress hormones.
And just like almost anything, too much of one emotion can get the best of you. Heartbreak? Exhaustion? Sorrow? Gluttony? Pride? Wrath?…
Seemingly unrelated, modern media has become a barbell mentality – Do you lean way left or do you lean way right. When was the last time CNN made a legitimate point on a potential benefit of a right-leaning theory? Fox News – to the left. The answer is always somewhere in the middle but we don’t want to admit that because it hurts our ego and we think it hurts our credibility.
No, it enhances it. A goal of TimeToSchein is to use contrarian thinking to limit our subconscious biases and help shift thought back toward a bell curve mentality.
Because fear drives the barbell and fear drives your attention.
And Fear:Anxiety::Peanut Butter:Jelly.
The cultural significance of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World (live)” was amplified by the time of its release: 1967 – President’s assassination still fresh in America’s mind, Vietnam War internal strife, only a few years removed from the Cuban Missle Crisis.
It didn’t matter whether you were a hippie or a cop. There was a national overload of anxiety. Both sides would have agreed, “Yeah we can use a bit of a cease fire.”
What a wonderful world.
There are countless reasons why you can dislike Obama or still hate the ideologies either George Bush brought to the White House.
But I’m anti-anxiety. America’s levels are too high at least partially due to the immediate access we have to global information paired with the connection negativity and fear has to clicks and attention.
When I started this article, I intended to connect this to how Aaron Judge’s calm and stability is disproportionately more beneficial to the New York Yankees than it would to the average-market team. Even if he goes 0-9, 6K and the Yankees get swept, there’s a signal to the fact quiet leaders succeed at a higher rate in high-anxiety New York City. Derek Jeter, Joe Torre, and yes, Eli Manning. That was to be paralleled with how America would disproportionately benefit from, right now, a low-anxiety leader.
Personally, I struggle with the fresh baked fear and anxiety modern news and my President’s unpredictability tend to throw at me on a daily basis. The only thing that helps me is to talk it out.
Because what we have is a high-anxiety leader. And you can’t predict the waves, but you can learn how to surf.
So this article isn’t about how Aaron Judge will be fine. And how his misleading strikeouts in this ALCS have come on pitches gravely low considering his 6’7″ frame. Or how our President is X-adjective.
This article is instead my personal attempt to limit the anxiety my president tends to throw at me on a daily basis. And maybe conscious attempts to see a wonderful world can help. We still have hamburgers and ice cream, we don’t have to worry about polio, we have a GPS on our computer-phones, and we know the eclipse is not God’s attempt at punishment. As much as I’d love to connect our president to the hurricanes and wildfires, there’s science now.
So in 2017, the year of anxiety, what is the value of negating or limiting the overloaded emotions with which a person, team, or country are dealing?
To me, that’s for the leader to decide.
The Shooter – Steve Novak
Time to Schein 