71 Boundaries, exposure therapy, and procrastination
No. 71 – 14 Apr 2024
Welcome to the 71st edition of the True Progress Newsletter, a weekly newsletter on mastering fear and anxiety for optimal performance.
If you’d like to share this newsletter issue via text, social media, or email, just click here, then copy and paste the link from your web browser.
Article
The effects of fearing other people's opinions (FOPO):
"FOPO is a type of fear that we learn from past experiences.
It causes you to obsess over your thoughts and feelings of other people. It ruminates in your mind and takes up mental real estate.
It causes us to play it safe because we fear what may happen if we make a mistake or get criticized.
It causes us to surrender our viewpoint and be agreeable.
We don’t raise our hand and speak up.
We bite our tongue.
We look to please instead of living out our authentic selves.
We externalize our self-esteem and self-worth. If people approve of us, we’re good. If they don’t, it’s a bad day.
We live out other people’s dreams instead of following our true path.
We limit our beliefs, saying things like, “I’m not good enough” or “I could never do that.”
You have a general fear of being disliked.
You’re exhausted from worrying about other people’s judgment of you."
How to free yourself from it?
— Read more
Quote
Gratitude is the gateway to positive emotions. Positive emotions give hope. Hope is a key ingredient in staying optimistic and resilient.
"Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings."
— William Arthur Ward
Insight
Putting yourself in the environment in which you want to improve a skill is a key accelerated learning technique.
Psychologists call it exposure therapy. This happens to be an optimal way to manage the causes of your anxiety. Over time, with the right frameworks and emotion regulation strategies, we learn to be comfortable in the uncomfortable.
Here's the kicker: it has to be scheduled so that you build momentum.
Emotion Signpost
Neuroscience and brain-imaging research shows that properly naming an emotion is critical to managing and taming it.
It's key to decreasing fear and anxiety, becomes a pause for reflection, and increases understanding of yourself and others.
Here are 2 to explore:
Pessimistic
Definition | Tending to see the worst aspect of things or believe that the worst will happen.
Example | He was pessimistic about the chances that he would succeed.
Origin | Late 18th century: from Latin pessimus ‘worst’, on the pattern of optimism.
Idealistic
Definition | Believing that very good things can be achieved, often when this does not seem likely to other people.
Example | He supports a number of idealistic causes.
Origin | From the Ancient Greek idea (ἰδέα) from idein (ἰδεῖν), meaning "to see".
Question
When we're procrastinating, we do things that replace what we're supposed to do. It's a mild form of addiction replacement, which gives us a sense of accomplishment. Then, anxiety comes along and triggers us to complete the thing we put off and should've been doing in the first place.
One key way to overcome procrastination is to remind the mind that it can do hard things. Things like a cold shower or cold immersion. Anything that requires friction and effort.
Having a list of activities that help us get out of procrastination helps us be proactive about it so when it strikes you're prepared.
What are three things you can add to your anti-procrastination list?
Till next week,
— Carlos & Stef
