WE ALL HAVE ANXIETY

I got a call from my dad. He sounded anxious. Panicked. "When will you be here, son? I need your help."

I was on my way already, but now wondering what was the major problem I'd encounter when I got to my parents' house.

To cut to the punch line, my dad was panicking because the anti-virus software we were given for free when I helped him to buy a new computer the year before had auto-renewed and £12 had been taken out of his bank account.

Twelve English pounds.

I calmed him and told him it would all be ok. I'd contact the company, cancel the subscription and get him a refund.

"But what if they won't give me the £12 back?!!" he said, still panicking.

"If that happens, dad, I'll give you the £12 myself if it makes you feel better."

I went home that night shaking my head, wondering how I could have been raised by someone who suffered so much anxiety about something so small, when I was so laid back all the time.

Years later I realised I was just blind to myself.

I didn't stress about things auto-renewing for £12, because I ran a company that needed me to regularly find tens of thousands of pounds for wages, VAT bills and other expenses as I juggled my cash flow.

I suffered from the same high-level anxiety as my parents, I just did it in a totally different context which allowed my ego to tell me I was different to my family when the truth was I was just the same.

The wider truth is that the vast majority of successful people are dealing with high levels of anxiety, stress and worry every day, often without recognising it.

The society we've built is anxiety-inducing for a human system that hasn't been upgraded since caveman times.

What was built to respond to seeing a lion once a week now thinks it's seeing lions every time we scroll through our phones or open an email, keeping us in a state of fight or flight much more than is healthy.

It leads to all kinds of other problems, from needing to indulge in alcohol or food to relieve stress, all the way up to depression, health issues and impacting our relationships at home.

It's another problem that many approaches try to solve by treating the symptom - teaching things like meditation, breathing exercises or jumping in an ice bath every morning, when the most effective solution is to get to the root cause and change the subconscious programming underlying everything else.

Until we teach our system that emails, social media posts and bad news aren't lions threatening our existence, we'll be fighting a losing battle with the sheer volume of things overwhelming us on an hourly basis.

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