Anxiety at the Breakthrough to Success

The first show was aired from the SiriusXM Studios on the 35th floor of the Rockefeller Center building. I was well-prepared, but some things you can’t prepare for. “Five minutes to air,” the production manager’s voice in my headphones said.

My anxiety shot from trending high to redlining. I got panicky. My heart started racing, my palms sweating. I became terrified that I would sound nervous right out of the gate, and the more I thought about how nervous I would sound, the more nervous I got.

“Sixty seconds.”

It felt like you were about to be called on in school, and you knew the answer and you were so excited about giving the answer, but at the same time that all eyes would suddenly turn to you while you were giving the answer that you got nervous and didn’t even want to give the answer after all.

I went through a cycle of calming down and then growing full on nerves again.

“Ten seconds.”

And there it was, the moment of truth. My heart hammering so hard I could barely hear my own voice. This was not the cool, calm, fun-loving, beer-drinking podcast guy. This guy was nervous and stiff and sticking to the script. I relaxed into the show, and it all came and went, and I flew back home, and the company lauded our efforts and the production team at SiriusXM liked what we did.

But as the countdown began for the second show I went through the exact same near panic attack. And again after the third show. This time the CEO ripped into us. He hated it.

The show marched on, and so did the nerves until the 9th episode. My brother suggested meditating. I downloaded an app, performed the breathing and visualization techniques for ten minutes leading up to the show, and incredibly, I was totally calm as the show began. For a few weeks, I only meditated prior to a show, but as I began to do some research and learn more about meditating, I started my own daily practice.

Where We’re at With the Latest Research

When it comes to the study of our brains you could say these are heady times. Even so, the past decade might have overpromised. We saw a proliferation of neuroscience studies with widespread optimism about what we could prove is going on during activities in which the brain is at work but the body is otherwise seen to be calm or in stasis.

Most neuroscience research has so far focused on mindfulness, and that has generally shown positive results. Mindfulness in meditation beginners has been linked to increases in the anterior cingulate cortex activation (easy for me to say!), which is associated with attention control, and deactivation in the amygdala (aka: reptilian), associated with threat detection.

The problem is that there is a fundamental divide between brain study and what the mind is actually doing when it is in the process of meditating. Making it further complicated, there are many ways to meditate.

A Portrait of the Un-Self-Aware Author

I have some background in creating solitude, self-reflection, and ritualistic introspection, all centered in meditative traditions. In my early 20s, as a seminary student, I practiced a variety of spiritual formation disciplines: I read, prayed, dwelled on a concept or theme, journaled extensively, and sometimes tried the dharmic emptying of the mind.

But whatever happened, I stopped cold. I don’t know why. I guess I got swept up in our outward-focused, productivity-obsessed culture. I believed in doing, in pushing, in work work work. I didn’t have time to sit still. Also, my self-awareness didn’t run as deep as I gave myself credit for.

As life dealt me personal and professional setbacks and failures, I became brittle and angry. I didn’t have a repository for healthy responses, and like everyone who needs to grow in self-awareness, I was blind. Little did I know, when I met back up with success, I was finally confronted with the need to take a new approach to meet with reality’s expectations.

Disruptions Happened

My wife was CEO of a startup tech company that went from gaining a little market traction to struggling to all-out tanking in the course of three years. There were troubling signs along the long and winding road of running a startup, but against any headwind, we kept hoping. She kept fighting.

But when the fall came it came fast.

We had to make some major life adjustments on the fly. We had to sell our home and find a more affordable one. We had to take our kids out of their schools. I had to drop everything and find a job, and that may well have meant that we would uproot all three kids to another state. It wasn’t the end of the world, just the reality we faced.

I took the first job offer I was given, writing an article a day for a tech startup in the logistics industry. I had no background in the field. At first, the whole thing felt a little depressing.

At least we could stay planted. At least we sold our home and found another in a good school zone. We were landing on our feet.

I was proud to be the primary supporter again, but everything else about my identity and the projects I’d worked on for years felt like scorched earth. It felt like nothing I had ever done really mattered. All the writing, the novel striving, the publishing — literary and otherwise — nothing mattered even a sliver. It was all for naught. I had lost and I needed to move ahead.

With the New Opportunities Came the Anxiety

I felt humiliated by my lack of breaking through and wanted to turn hard in another direction. Now I was a journalist, and while the industry wasn’t exactly what I wanted to be writing about, it was quietly paying the bills.

Then, let’s put it this way: a whole lot happened in a short amount of time. Our company began to gain some real traction and we were getting first hundreds of views, then thousands, then tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands. And it wasn’t just trucking I wrote about. I got to write about tech trends, startups, innovation, the environment, and the economy. I learned how massive and complex the supply chain and the logistics industry really is. I was drinking from a firehose every day.

I volunteered to host a podcast that our CEO wanted. Neither my co-host or I had ever podcasted, and neither of us starting writing for the company with any knowledge of the supply chain. That is to say, while I was having fun with the exciting new opportunities, I didn’t really know how to talk “the industry” except through the headlines of the day, the earnings reports, and the stories we were writing. My co-host and I were so anxious before each show we drank a few beers to loosen up. Discussing the beer became a part of the show.

After a few months of beer and supply chain podcasting, our company got an opportunity for a weekly Saturday show with SiriusXM. I was paired with an older industry expert. I didn’t hesitate. Of course I wanted this! I was having fun.

What Research Shows, and How I Grew

In 2013 Erika Carlson reviewed the literature on whether and how mindfulness meditation improves one’s self-knowledge. Her research suggests that the construct of mindfulness, defined as paying attention to one’s current experience in a non-evaluative way, may serve as a path to self-knowledge. Specifically, mindfulness appears to directly address two major barriers to self-knowledge: informational barriers (the quantity and quality of information people have about themselves), and motivational barriers (ego-protective motives that affect how people process information about themselves).

Mindfulness can clarify your thinking and dissolve your ego’s protective shell. The practice of mindfulness teaches you how to allow your thoughts to simply drift by and to identify with them as little as possible. Thoughts are, after all, transitory and not absolute truth.

The improved focus you can gain through regular meditation increases memory and mental clarity. Metta, or “lovingkindness” meditation, is a practice of developing positive feelings, first toward yourself and then toward others. Positivity toward others develops a natural extension toward empathy and compassion.

Meditation reduces stress, anxiety, and anxiety-related mental health issues. Some forms of meditation improve depression and help people reframe their outlook. Self-inquiry and related styles of meditation can help you “know yourself.” Self-observation and depersonalizing our thoughts and emotions from who we are as a self is important. Many inputs shape the self. Sometimes meditation is nothing more than detaching and observing.

Meditation develops mental discipline and willpower and can help you avoid triggers for unwanted impulses. This can help you recover from addiction, lose weight, and redirect unwanted habits. Meditation techniques help you relax and control thoughts that interfere with sleep. This can shorten the time it takes to fall asleep and increase sleep quality. Meditation diminishes the perception of pain in the brain. This helps treat chronic pain when used as a supplement to medical care or physical therapy.

I don’t have chronic pain, but meditation improved my response to anxiety and helped me maintain a sense of calm in the face of almost any adversity I was confronted with. I cut down on my drinking, mainly by drinking more mindfully. The mental training led to discipline and focused attention on my work, from broadcasting to writing to research.

It helped me most when I began my day meditating, but if I missed a morning routine, I always made sure to come back around sometimes in the afternoon, but most often in the evening as a way of preparing for a deeper sleep.

I still meditate consistently, just not every single day. I have to say my personal growth journey took a big leap the past year as I implemented this practice day in and day out.

With every breath, the old moment is lost and a new moment arrives. You exhale and let go of the old moment. It is lost gone. In doing so, you let go of the person you used to be. You inhale and breathe in the moment that is becoming. In doing so, you welcome the person you are becoming. You repeat the process. This is meditation. This is renewal.

This is a summary of the simplicity and process — and beauty — of meditation. It induces calm, acceptance, and compassion. This is life.

Depending on your life situation you may want to complement your meditation practice with the input and support of a therapist. Sometimes a framework works best. It’s hard to fully explain all the ways in which meditation has changed my life. Perhaps the best way to express it is that I feel like I’ve moved a mountain one stone at a time.