what i wish i knew

also: how to manage anxiety

hi! this week i asked myself. what do i wish i knew when i was only sixteen? ..i wish i did not to delay happiness and curbed my desire my control far earlier. if this resonates with you, let me know :) if you have life questions you’d like me to answer or write about, you can do so anonymously here.

i used to be a lot more anxious. never to a point where i couldn’t function, but enough to prevent me from enjoying the present.

i was laser-focused on getting admitted to a “good school” in the united states as a teen. because my high school had really bad college prep, i knew it would be hard and i had to mostly figure things out myself. i established a detailed four year roadmap to increase my chances of succeeding.

inherently an MBTI type P, being exacting made me anxious and resentful as it betrayed my core identity. but i didn’t care because i was blinded by the promise of ambition. i lived in the future. in the narrative that when i get my college acceptance letter, i could bid my crappy school goodbye and cultivate my curiosities, then my life would be perfect and i would be happy.

i genuinely believed in this narrative. until i spent a summer at brown. halfway around the world, far from my family and friends, for the first time in my life. brown mimicked the typical college experience. it gave me the so-called intellectual rigor i craved. it was a taste of what was to come.

but surprise, surprise! i was so miserable. i cried every night. pasted post its around my room counting the days until i went back to jakarta. i just hated my life and reflected a lot. why was i so unhappy all the time? is this how i want to live?

i had a rude awakening. i realized how i had such good friends back home: friends who accepted me for who i was. it was a rare genuine thing. yet i had taken them for granted because i assumed everyone had good friends and the good times would last forever.

here is the strange thing about anxiety. it fools you into thinking you will be happy in the future. when you get that job, lose a few pounds, or meet the love of your life. that you can only be happy when things are exactly the way you want. but when you get what you want, you will find yourself feeling empty, wondering wow, is this i? why am i still so unhappy? you will either continue to look into the future or back wishing something was different. anxiety steals from you the ability to live in the present.

the truth then was, despite my stressful college preparation, i had friends who let me be myself around them. friends who always made me laugh. i was so fixated on having a perfect life i couldn’t appreciate the good transient things in my life.

anxiety stems from the desire to control. the belief that the more you control, the more likely you will get the outcome you want. but you can’t control outcomes, you can only control the choices you make. in this uncertain reality, good choices can still yield bad outcomes. believing you can control your life will only exhaust you.

managing anxiety requires acceptance. accepting the fact that life isn’t supposed to be perfect and most things are beyond your control. it wasn’t so much that i stopped having goals or ceased to try my best. i just accepted the fact that despite what i do, things might still be undesirable. i am better off enjoying the present and managing bad outcomes should they come. because when you have anxiety, you don’t really have control, all you have is anxiety.

life isn’t supposed to be perfect. the point of life isn’t to have things unfold exactly the way you want. you don’t owe anyone anything especially not perfection. you do however owe yourself to live in the present and to be happy. after all, what is the point of it all?