This is going to sound crazy, but today’s Unsubscribe is an invitation to unsubscribe from living in anxiety about the future.
And before you think um… yeah, that’s literally impossible right now—no, I’m not saying don’t care. I’m not saying don’t pay attention. Given the state of the world, it would be completely irresponsible of me to say that. We actually need people to care and pay attention more than ever.
What I am talking about is how so many of us are living in a state of constant stress because of all the things that could happen but haven’t happened yet.
The clenched stomach.
The tight chest.
The buzzing, aching brain.
That low-grade (or sometimes not-so-low-grade) anxiety that becomes the background hum of our days.
I am living there more often than I’d like, and definitely more often than is healthy.
Living in constant stress or anxiety has real consequences. It impacts the quality of our lives in the present moment because it robs us of peace, of nervous system regulation, of joy. And over time, we know that chronic stress wears down our resilience—the very thing we’ll need if and when the next hard things actually arrive.
Being anxious today doesn’t actually make us more prepared tomorrow.
It just makes today harder. And it eventually erodes our strength for tomorrow.
What I’m practicing—and inviting you to experiment with—is this question:
What response is actually required of me right now, in this moment?
Does this moment actually require a stress or anxiety response from me? Like, right now. Not some possible imagined future. Not a potential worst-case scenario.
But today.
Sometimes we do need to respond in the moment and take concrete actions, either to deal with the present or to be smart about the future—save a little more money, have a hard conversation, make a thoughtful plan.
But we also need to acknowledge and accept that we don’t actually know the future. It’s the part we can’t necessarily predict. The part we can’t control. That’s what we need to let go of.
A dear friend of mine always says, “Don’t borrow tomorrow’s troubles.”
I understand that in theory. I struggle with it in practice.
But I’m learning—slowly—that I don’t need to live on red alert to be responsible. I can care deeply about the future and let my body know that, right now, thankfully, I’m safe. I’m okay.
We can do this.
— Belinda
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