How to Alleviate Stress and Anxiety

If you are on this blog, chances are you already realize how important struggle is to achieving anything in life.

And you should actively seek out struggles in this mediocre society. But don’t confuse it with stress! How to alleviate stress isn’t exactly the question.

More like, what is good stress, what is bad stress?

I see a lot of guys who take mine and other people’s advice and start to conquer their life. Which is good! Keep it up! But be careful not to load you up with stressful tasks instead of important ones.

Already see where I am going with this?

How to alleviate stress? Make an important distinction

The easiest way to put it is this:

A wise man knows, struggle is taking on difficult tasks, stress is taking on lots of tasks.

The conqueror

I get why you might end up in the stressful corner. Happened to me as well.

You have 20 tasks on your Todo-List. You gotta get them all done today! Shit! So you scramble around, trying to get it all done. But you probably end up stressed as fuck and wondering: “What did I even achieve?”

Success isn’t the quantity of tasks you tick off. It’s the quality of them.

Why you are building stress yourself

Usually, the tasks we need to do the most, are the ones we want to do the least. Because they are a struggle to finish (get it?).

It’ll take some studying before doing the task, some heavy mind-work. And it’s easier to do a simple task, you also need to do, than this one.

But this is a grave error. The simple task can usually wait.

For example, it’s easier to update my Blog software with a few clicks instead of actually writing the article I wanted to write today. But the software update is somewhat irrelevant. It doesn’t really further the blog. The content, on the other hand, is the driving force.

That’s what I really need to do.

And that’s how you end up stressed without achieving anything. While you managed to cross off a bunch of tasks for the day, you didn’t really go further with your mission.

What is good stress?

When you’re at the gym, you’re putting a lot of stress on your muscles, bones, nerves, etc. This kind of stress is good because it makes you grow.

Through this stress, your body is forced to grow muscle, so the new load of stress can be better coped with next time.

The same is true for other situations in your life.

For example, if you are in a financially bad situation right now, this is actually good stress. Because you will build skills and knowledge for life. And whenever such an issue might occur again.

If you’re just overwhelmed with stress at work with meaningless and irrelevant tasks, this is bad stress.

If you’re stressed because you need to get a project done which will increase your pay, or your climb within the company, this is good stress.

How to relief stress by embracing it

The good stress is the kind of stress you should be actively seeking.

As I mentioned in the adversity blog post, struggle or adversity makes you grow as a person.

Take again the example with the financial turmoil.

You will learn how to think clearly while being under pressure. You will learn how to fix your finances. Potentially how to make more money because you were forced to do so.

This is the kind of stress you want to seek.

But it doesn’t feel like stress if you attach positive words to it.

Stress itself has this negative tone to it. Use adversity instead. Or hustle, struggle, etc.

When you have a ton of bullshit to do, you’re stressed.

When you have to overcome obstacles, you’re hustling.

You will enjoy the second one, because you know you will come out stronger, skilled, and useful.

Winning in leisure

If you’ve read the 4-hour work-week by Tim Ferriss (or listened to it, which I highly recommend) you already know that you don’t need to work 80 hours a week to become rich.

And you shouldn’t. You don’t need to work hard, you need to work smart. A janitor works very hard. Some 80 hours in a shit job. Is he rich? Probably not (Nothing wrong with Janitors, just saying).

A slave works very hard. But he will never be free. A conqueror works hard on wise goals.

The conqueror

You can easily work pretty chill if you work smart.

Postpone the small tasks which aren’t crucial to your mission, and then do the heavy lifting. Don’t know which of them to tackle? The hard tasks you want to procrastinate. Those you want to do the least.

Do exactly those and kill em. Very quickly you will see yourself progressing on your journey.

Sidenote: This is also a key in relationships. Don’t try to put out small fires. Take care of the big issue you have with your partner. It’s the one you don’t want to talk about, because it hurts, and it brings conflict. I get it. But I will repeat, those are the important fights.

The importance of delegation for your mental health

You should absolutely delegate tasks. Especially the tedious ones.

There are cheap services to take care of your annoying shit and reduce stress that way.

You really think Elon Musk is sifting through his thousands of emails each day? No.

You think Tai Lopez is actually writing his emails himself? No.

These guys pay others, preferable people who are excellent at the job they get appointed (like copywriting) to do their job.

The same is true for your home.

If you want to build an environment where your wife can be feminine and chill, you need to pay someone to clean the house (especially if it’s big). Otherwise, she’s busy cleaning all day.

How to reduce stress with a daily structure?

I would recommend you structure your day accordingly. Use the Todoist app (PC and Phone) or any other Todo-List and set it up the following:

• One to three difficult (struggle/hustle) tasks for the day
• These need to be done before noon!
• Too big or too difficult? Split it up in smaller tasks and over multiple days.
• Use the afternoon to do smaller, less important tasks
• Stick with it! Do not do another heavy task in the afternoon if you have time left. Do something else. Your mind needs that free time.
• Too many small tasks a day? Move them into the next.
• Celebrate every time you achieved your big goal for the day.

This isn’t set in stone. You can adjust it to your mission. But generally set yourself some rules, and live by them.

Otherwise, you end up stressed again. And humans work way better if they are in struggle, not under stress.

I feel a lot of anxiety and stress all day

Anxiety usually stems from missing confidence.

A belief that you cannot cope with life and its tasks.

Or with your own set up tasks.

A way to reduce stress and anxiety therefore is reducing the amount of tasks to the core 1-3.

There is nothing to be anxious about when you have just one mandatory task a day.

Mental health is really just a question of mindset.

Anxiety is a feeling. And as a man, you can decide NOT to act on it. You don’t need mental consulting from anyone. It’s a decision!

If you want to know more about how to create a truly INDOMITABLE mindset that can create anything, check out INVICTA here.

–Alexander Graves