Something You Should Know - Why We Are So Often Wrong & How to Dial Down Anxiety

Episode Date: November 24, 2022

Why does it seem that your stomach growls at exactly the wrong time? It is right when the room is full of people and very very is quiet. That's when your stomach emits those grumbling noises that you are certain everyone can hear. This episode begins with an explanation as to why your stomach growls in the first place and what you can do to prevent it. https://www.outsideonline.com/1784166/why-does-my-stomach-growl A lot of the time you think you are right – you are really wrong. You see humans seem to like to believe things that are just not true. Often, we tend to believe things are actually worse than they really are. It’s important to understand how and why this happens. Here to discuss this odd human quirk is Bobby Duffy, a professor of public policy at King’s College in London and author of the book Why We’re Wrong About Nearly Everything (https://amzn.to/2qdz9aK). Doesn’t it seem that people are more anxious than they used to be? Tempers are shorter, patience wears thin quickly, and people just seem generally worried about so many things. So how can we dial down the anxiety and worry? That’s what Olivia Remes is here to discuss. Olivia is an anxiety researcher at the University of Cambridge in London. Her writing has appeared in several major publications and she posts a lot of information on the topic on Twitter. (@OliviaRoxann). Listen as she offers some simple ways to ease your anxiety and find more joy in life. There is a good chance you hit an afternoon slump around 3 pm. You can try a cup of coffee to help fight it off but there is actually a way to prevent yourself from getting – or at least minimizing that late day slump. Listen as I explain a simple yet effective technique. https://www.thorne.com/take-5-daily/article/avoiding-the-afternoon-energy-slump PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Go to https://CozyEarth.com/SOMETHING to SAVE 35% now!  All backed by a 100-Night Sleep Guarantee. First Alert would like you to know that along with alarms, fire extinguishers are essential. Make sure to place fire extinguishers on every level and in common spaces like the kitchen and know how to use them. For more information on fire safety products, safety tips and educational activities you can do at home with your family visit https://www.firstalert.com https://www.geico.com Bundle your policies and save! It's Geico easy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, why does your stomach growl and how can you stop it? Then, why are humans so wrong about so many things? For example, most people believe the world is getting worse and more violent. And this is related to another really important effect, which is rosy retrospection, where we think the past was better than it was, but it has a negative consequence that means that we think the present and the future are worse than they really are.

Plus, how to avoid that 3 o'clock afternoon slump. And people today seem more worried and anxious than ever before. And there are ways to turn the anxiety down. Next time something bothersome comes up, don't worry about it then and there. Instead, postpone your worry until a later time. So when you get to the worrying time later on in the day, it's not as bothersome anymore. All this today on Something You Should Know. This episode is brought to you by Melissa and Doug. Wooden puzzles and building toys for problem solving and arts and crafts for creative thinking. Melissa and Doug makes toys that help kids take on the world.

Because the way they play today shapes who they become tomorrow. Melissa and Doug, the play is pretend. The skills are real. Look for Melissa and Doug wherever you shop for toys. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life.

Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. And this episode of Something You Should Know is publishing on Thanksgiving Day, so happy Thanksgiving. And I'm certainly thankful that you're spending time listening to this podcast. And if you have some time off this holiday weekend, I invite you to explore our back catalog of shows. There is quite a catalog to explore and browse through, and I know you'll find some interesting episodes that I'm sure will capture your interest. First up today, nothing is more embarrassing than sitting in a quiet meeting and having your stomach start growling.

It's happened to everybody, but why does it happen? Well, what you're hearing is the sound of air and fluid sloshing around, kind of like in the wash cycle of a washing machine, according to gastroenterologist Dr. Patricia Raymond, who is an assistant professor of clinical internal medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School. But it's not just coming from your stomach. The noise is also coming from your intestines. The noise is completely normal. It happens to everyone. But if it happens a lot to you and it

really bothers you, the recommendation is to chew your food more slowly and be sure to swallow before you take the next bite. You might also want to avoid sugar-free food. You could be sensitive to fructose, which is present in some fruity drinks and sodas, as well as foods like onions and artichokes. Sorbitol, which is found in apples, prunes, and other fruits and used in sugar-free candy and gum, could also be a trigger for that excessive noise.

And if your stomach's growling because you're hungry, just eating something will quiet things down. And that is something you should know. This may be hard to believe, but a lot of the time, we as humans don't know what we're talking about. We think we do, but so often we don't. Human beings in many ways delude themselves for a variety of different reasons, which we're about to discuss. But the fact that we're wrong about so many things is really amazing, and it's actually an area of study. One of the leaders in that area is Bobby Duffy. He's a professor of public policy at King's College in London, and he's author of the book, Why We're Wrong About

Nearly Everything. Hi, Professor. Welcome. It's great to be here, Mike. Thank you. So explain your thesis here. What is it we're wrong about and how is it that we're wrong? Yeah what we found in dozens of studies that add up to a hundred thousand interviews around the world in up to 40 countries is that there's an enormous gap between the general public's perception across all of these countries and the reality on a very wide range of social issues, everything from immigration levels to what's happening in crime rates to obesity levels

to all sorts of aspects of social reality, social and political realities, that are facts about the societies we live in. The gaps between our perceptions of those and the realities are huge. So give me an example of what you mean to make this come to life. So taking one example from America, people in America think that 24% of teenage girls get pregnant each year when the reality is it's only 2% of teenage women or girls that get pregnant and give birth each year so this enormous overestimate of the extent of teenage pregnancies and birth so it's actually a very rare phenomenon around the world now you start to ask the question why why?

Why do we overestimate these things? And that's the main purpose of the analysis, is to try to understand why we get these things so wrong. And it's partly because we are storytelling animals and we're drawn to vivid, unusual stories. And so we take more notice of those types of stories and they take up more space in our brain. And we kind of think something is bigger because we paid more attention to it,

particularly when it's negative stories or when we view them as negative stories. So we overestimate what we worry about as much as worrying about what we overestimate. But you would think that that would not serve us evolutionarily, to be so out of whack with reality and the facts, would cause us harm. If we think things are true that aren't, and we think things that aren't true that are, that that would put us in peril. It's a really good question because the evolutionary aspect of this suggests it's the opposite for people. So we are literally programmed from our cave people past to pay more attention to negative information because when we were cave

people and someone warned us about a threat so gave us negative information so there's a lurking saber-toothed tiger that's going to attack us we needed to take notice of that we just take action on the back of that and the people who didn't take action didn't take notice were literally edited out of the gene pool. So me and you and all the listeners, we are at the end of a long line of evolution of people who've been successful from paying attention to negative information for acting on that. It's literally programmed into our brain to take notice, take more notice of those negative informations because they're threats. So let's talk about some of the other things that we're just way off on and you pick some and then I'm going to ask you about some but what are

some of your you know favorites or surprising things that we're just like so clueless? In the same sort of vein as teenage pregnancy, Americans think that 33% of their population are immigrants, when the reality is less than half that, that's 14%. Incredibly, the average guess is that 17% of the population are Muslim, when it's actually only around 1%. And then we asked a follow-up question to that, which was, what do you expect the Muslim population to be in a few years' time, three or four years' time, not a long time. And people expected it to go up to 23%, so nearly a quarter of the population to be Muslim, when actually it's

only going to go from 1% to 1.1% or a bit more than that now. So we've got this sense of the population changing much quicker than it actually is. And then on crime, crime is really a good news story around most of the serious crime has been going down. So across 30 countries where we did this study, the murder rate across those countries is down 29% since the year 2000. But only 15% of people think it's down, where around half think it's up. It's actually increased when it's gone down hugely. And this is related to another really important effect, which is rosy retrospection, where we think the past was better than it was because we literally forget the bad things from the past. We only tend to focus on the good things. And that's quite a good thing for our psychological health.

But it has a negative consequence that means that we think the present and the future are worse than they really are. So we've got this, again, this inbuilt sense that not only to focus on negative things, but to also think things are getting worse, that everything is going downhill, which is a dangerous trait in humans and one that politicians and the media can play on very successfully. Well, it seems that, for example, with crime and danger and all, that it is a lot less dangerous based on the statistics and the one you just gave. And yet, but there's more emphasis on safety, that even though the danger is disappearing or minimizing, there's still more emphasis, oh, don't let your kids do this, stranger danger, don't let them walk home from school. There's like opposing forces that are making the perception worse. Yeah, that's right. That's absolutely true.

So we've had a cultural change over time where we are much more likely to communicate about the risks to our children, much more likely to focus on their risks of befalling things that are actually incredibly rare and have been decreasing over time. So there is this trend of safetyism, which does affect how people both feel themselves and how they teach their kids and it is um this this uh trend is probably not good for kids not good for our ourselves because you have to test our limits you have to learn from mistakes and um one of the key themes is we're treating people as if they're fragile when actually they need some challenge. They need some things to go wrong in order to grow. And that's a key aspect for us to recognize is that we've got to be more anti-fragile. We've got to test ourselves, test our kids, because that's what humans do.

We actually react to those types of adversity rather than protecting ourselves from them all the time. But hasn't it always been kind of, as every new generation talks about how easy the newest generation has it, that when I was a kid, things were tougher. And maybe they were, but it does seem to be a recurring theme. It is. If you go back through history, everyone always denigrated young people. You always had, all the way back to Plato and Socrates, everyone was having a go at how useless young people are and how much harder it

was in our day. This is, and then repeated throughout history, that everything was harder in our day and the youth have got it easy today, but they're still ungrateful. It's like an inbuilt aspect of human nature. So yes, we're not as different over time as we think. More of these things are constant over time. We found that actually in these misperceptions that there's a great series of research studies in the US that go all the way back to 1940s in America, asking people similar questions to the questions that I've asked about unemployment and immigration levels, those types of things. And people were just as wrong back then in 1940s

America as they are now. It's very similar types of findings. And that's a really important point for the studies is that we tend to think we're in a uniquely bad information environment where lots of focus on fake news, alternative facts, post-truth, all of those types of concepts, when actually there was no golden age of pure information and very informed citizens. It's always been a struggle to get people to understand social and political realities.

And again, that kind of this sense that everything is going downhill or in crisis is not a real reflection. It's not as hopeless as that. Well, that's good to hear. Bobby Duffy is my guest. He is a professor of public policy at King's College in London, and he's author of the book Why We're Wrong About Nearly Everything. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there.

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Save up to $1,000 on two or more major appliances. Shop now in-store or online at bestbuy.ca. Exclusions apply. So, Professor, what about people who compare themselves to others? Because we've heard, for example, that, you know, people who spend a lot of time on social media get depressed because they seem to think their life is worse than everybody else's because everyone else seems to be having such a great time except them. And so what do we tend to think about? Are there examples of how we tend to think about ourselves compared to others?

One of the most striking ones is we ask people about other people's happiness. So when you ask Americans in a survey, would you say you're happy or not? And then it's kind of very happy, fairly happy, not very happy, not at all happy. 90% of Americans will say they're very happy or rather happy. But the guess, when people are guessing on behalf of other people, people guess that only half of Americans would say they're at least rather happy. So we've got this sense that other people are much more miserable than they really are, which kind of goes to your point is we don't go around kind of broadcasting our happiness with life and with ourselves. But actually, when you dig underneath that, it's not as bad as it seems. People actually,

when they're answering for themselves in those types of questions, it's not so bad. But that's not the image we project. So if we ask people instead whether they think the world is getting better or worse, barely one in 10 people will say that things are getting better. And two-thirds of people will say that things are getting worse, the world as a whole. When actually, when you look at the trends around the world, there's loads of things that are actually improving for lots of people around the world. But we've got this inbuilt sense that things are getting worse, including our own happiness and other people's happiness.

Is it inbuilt as much as it's what we see in the news, what we see in the media that taints our view of the world? Again, really great question. When I try to think about these types of, the causes behind these types of effects, I break it down into really just two big buckets of effects. There's two elements to it. There's how we think, which are the kind of biases and heuristics, the mental shortcuts that we've talked about that lead people astray. But then there's another bucket of things that are

what we're told. I think of as what we're told, which is the whole group of effects around the media, politicians, social media, all of those elements working together to give us an impression. And you can't really understand our misperceptions without understanding both sides of that, because it's a system. It's a system of delusion so the media know that we're interested naturally programmed to be interested in vivid unusual negative stories so that's what they give us is they recognize we want to see that vivid unusual thing that's what we'll remember that's what will affect us emotionally and that's what will affect us emotionally.

And that's what will make us click on the link or read the article or watch the news report. So that's what they give us. And they get instant feedback now on what's popular and what's not. So it's built into the system for them to play to our biases. So they get the feedback from that.

And they give us more. That makes us want more, and it goes round in a cycle. And similarly with politicians, they get the same sort of effect of focusing on the messages that play to those underlying biases, and that's successful for them when they get that instant feedback, and that informs their next communications on this. And they know how to push those types of buttons.

And that's where you'll see very simple effects like we know humans have something called illusory truth bias, which is where if you hear something the second or third time, you're more likely to believe it, whether it's true or false. It just becomes more fluent in our brains because we've heard it before. So we're more likely to think it's true. So that's why you see politicians repeating the same disputed claims or outright lies a number of times when they're on the campaign trail, because it's effective. It comes back as more effective if you just keep repeating it. Well, we've talked about it on this podcast before, and I think pretty much everyone has heard the concept that you can manipulate statistics and get them to say almost anything

you want. And when people hear statistics out in the world and in the news that support their position, whatever their position may be, politically or otherwise, that those are the ones they gravitate to, that you'll always go for the statistics that supports what you think. So one of the classic questions that we ask around the world again, but just taking the U.S. figure, is whether people are killed, more people are killed by guns, knives, or other violence. In the U.S., 68% of interpersonal violent deaths are down to guns. And then the average guess, the average correct answer in America is 59%.

So 59% of Americans overall correctly identify that it's guns. But that has an enormous range from 83% of strong Democrats, people who strongly identify with the Democrat Party, who think it's guns, all the way down to 27% of strong Republicans who say it's guns. So this is the same social reality seen entirely differently depending on the political party that you support. So this is a really important effect in our misperceptions. These are not neutral misperceptions. These are what the social psychologists would call directionally motivated reasoning, where you've got a view of the world and you look for information that confirms that

view of the world and you dismiss information that contradicts it. So while this is really interesting that we're so wrong so much of the time, but so what do we do with this? What do we now do with this knowledge that we're so often way off? The thing that I take from it is more hopeful than unhopeful. It sounds quite hopeless in some ways if you think of this as a massive system of delusion where it's an interplay of how we think and what we're told. It feels like how do you change that system? But in some ways it's through recognizing that it is a big system. There are a few tips and tricks, if you like, in how to start your thinking. And it's very simple things like

you should start from the point of view that the world is better and getting better than you think because we're naturally programmed to think the opposite. So this isn't pretending to ourselves that everything is perfect and nothing can be improved. It's actually just trying to fight that bias of thinking everything is going downhill because we're naturally drawn to those types of views and it leaves a space for people who want to tell us

everything is going downhill, system isn't working, and therefore we should rip it up and start again. And that's more dangerous in many ways than complacency. So it's easier to understand why people would be led to believe things that aren't true, that fit with their view of the world, politically speaking. It's harder to understand why people are so wrong objectively about things where there's no stake in the game. It's just, they're just wrong. Yeah, that is an effect. Some of these are neutral biases built into it that are not for a purpose. We're not being misled or used in some way to promote an agenda. Things like just the basic structure of our population. So we in the US, people think that 36% of the population are

age 65 or over, when it's actually only 14% at the time of this study. So that is not about someone's misleading us. There's not targeted Facebook campaigns and big political speeches about trying to convince us that we're much older than we really are. That is much more just about this sense that we've got an aging society in much of the West, and we're worried about it. It's just a bias in our brains that focuses on negative information, this sense that an aging society is a problem, and so we think it's bigger than it is. So yeah, some of these is just neutral, just misleading us, not a concerted political effort by anyone. Well, and I imagine people believe what they believe, not a concerted political effort by anyone. Well, and I imagine people believe what they believe, not because they've heard the facts,

but maybe they're basing it on their own experience, or even just basing it on a hunch or what sounds reasonable, rather than really knowing, right? Let me ask you a question then, Mike, just as an example of this. So we asked again around lots of different countries around the world let's pick um the u.s uh as an example so we asked people how many times in the last four weeks the last month did uh young people aged 18 to 29 in your country have sex? Twice. Twice. Cool. That's quite low. People on that might be disappointed, but it's four times. You're not far off. It's four times, four times a month. And it's more or less the same across men and women. But the average guess for young women in America is that they have had sex 17 times in the last month.

That's the average guess. And then the average guess among American men about young American women is that they've had sex 22 times in the last month. And then the average guess for young American men about young American women is that they've had sex 32 times in the last month. So that's like every day of the month plus one extra, one spare. Who has time for all? Who has time for me? Time or energy? Certainly not me. It's incredible overestimation, which is, and more men have this misperception than women. The women are also wrong about frequency of sex, but men are much more wrong on this. And it kind of points to a couple of things that relate to that, how we think and what we're told.

So there is an element of how young women are portrayed in the media, much more sexualized than the reality. And as well, how young men in particular think about the sexual behavior of other people in particular. You know, they know their own level of sexual activity, this sense that they are missing out. Well, it's interesting how wrong people are. But I think one of the reasons people are wrong, at least in this case, is the nature of the question. You're asking a question that people probably haven't given much thought to before. How many times do people between, what, 18 and 29 have sex in a month? It's not a question that, you know, people are talking about a lot. So you're asking people to come up with it.

It isn't that they've heard a statistic. They're just trying to create one in their head, and it's one of the reasons we're wrong about so many things. Professor Bobby Duffy has been my guest. He's a professor of public policy at King's College in London, and he's author of the book, Why We're Wrong About Nearly Everything. And you'll find a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, Bobby. This was fun. No, thank you. That was great.

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Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. It seems that there's a lot more worry and anxiety in the world today. And maybe there's a little bit of the old longing for the good old days when things were simpler in that observation. But it does seem to me that people in general are wound a little tighter, more worried, more irritable, and just more anxious than they used to be. So what is anxiety exactly? Why do some people have more of it, and what does it do to you? And then how do you get control of it? Here to explain is Olivia Remus. She is an anxiety researcher at the University of Cambridge in London,

and she has written extensively on the issue of anxiety. A lot of what she writes she posts on Twitter, if you care to follow her. Hi, Olivia. Welcome. Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me. Sure. So I guess we need to start with a definition of what anxiety is exactly. It's an emotion that all of us have when we're in stressful situations, and it helps us to deal with challenges and to overcome obstacles. And the example that I like to give is, you know, if you go out in the woods and you come face-to-face with a wild animal, then you're going to be feeling anxious. Now, this anxiety that you're feeling, this adrenaline rush going through your body, that's normal anxiety. And another example of normal, this normal anxiety that all of us experience so often is the rush that we feel or the stress that we feel when we have a deadline at school or at work. But if you take this anxiety emotion to the extreme and when it arises in situations which don't pose a real

threat, then that's when you might have an anxiety disorder. So essentially, when your anxiety becomes debilitating, counterproductive, you feel that you can't work, you can't socialize, you're finding it hard to sleep, then that's when you might have a disorder. I imagine, though, that there are many people who don't necessarily have a diagnosable anxiety disorder, but who have times in their life when anxiety becomes a problem, when they're really worried, when they're really having trouble focusing, and yet there are plenty of people who don't. So why do some people have such a problem? Where does this come from?

There are many factors. If you have been through serious trauma, like if you have been physically or sexually abused, or if you've suffered from a chronic illness like cancer or diabetes, or if you have one now. Also, if your parents got divorced or you got divorced, so again, major life stress that can also increase your risk for anxiety. And the thing is, it's not just one thing that can trigger this condition. Usually it's when multiple things come together. So how we're raised is important. When we're kids, we look to our parents as role models. If we see, for example, our mothers reacting with anxiety if they see a spider, this is just an example. You know, if they're really fearful of spiders, then we're more likely to grow up fearing spiders

because what we see we take on and those become our behaviors and ways of responding to things as well. And also our personality. There's this personality factor called neuroticism. So people who are neurotic, you know, it's a research term, basically, they tend to be, they're more likely to experience feelings of envy, of jealousy, of irritability, to be pessimistic. These people are also at increased risk for anxiety. Yeah, well, as you're describing that, I'm thinking of people that I know that fit that personality type, that they just, and maybe bad things have happened to them in the past, but they just, their personality just seems to be one of anxiety and worry

more so than other people. And it has to do with their personality traits. And aren't there five personality traits, right? So there's extroversion, how extroverted you are, there's agreeableness, openness to experience, and conscientiousness. So there you go. These are all of the major personality traits that people can be described by. And the personality traits of conscientiousness

is, it's really interesting because research has shown that people who score highly on this trait, so if you're really conscientious, then basically these people tend to do really well in life in terms of their well-being. They tend to feel good, but also they tend to live longer than other people as well. And people who score highly on neuroticism who are more neurotic, so if you're more pessimistic, more irritable, more moody, you don't live as long as other people. You're more prone to anxiety and depression. And I think it's interesting knowing this because basically you can start taking charge of your moods, of your coping strategies so that you can move in a more positive direction in life. So is that related to the idea that optimists tend to live longer because they're not weighed down by all this

negativity and worry and anxiety? Yeah, exactly. And also optimists tend to have fewer illnesses, their immune system is stronger. So there are physical benefits as well if you're an optimist. And also, they tend to use better coping strategies. So, if you're faced with a problem, if you're optimistic, you're more likely to see it in a more positive light and think about ways of how you can solve the problem. So, there are different ways of approaching problems. If you're more optimistic, you're more likely to make use of this problem-focused coping. So basically, instead of worrying a lot about the issue and ruminating, you tend to focus more on what you can do to solve it without worrying so much and obsessing so much about it. So directly,

what you can do to solve it without putting in so much emotion into it. And that's really helpful for our mental health and our well-being. One of the things I find interesting and why I like to talk about this topic is that there are some pretty simple things people can do to turn the dial down on anxiety and worry. And you talk about them, and one of them is the idea of waiting to worry. So next time that something bothersome comes up or you think that you messed up, don't worry about it then and there. Instead, postpone your worrying to a later time.

So let's say you pick every day at 4 o'clock, I'm going to worry for 10 minutes about this issue. You're not trying to push your worries away and trying to think, okay, I'm not going to think about it. I'm not going to worry about it. You will be worrying about it, but just not right now, later in the day. And the reason that this is so effective is that our thoughts actually decay if we don't feed them with energy. So when you get to the worrying time later on in the day, you'll see that whatever you thought was so anxiety-provoking, it's not as bothersome anymore. So I encourage everyone out there to give this a try.

It is simple and practical. Another interesting thing I know you talk about is the idea that people with anxiety often feel as if they don't have control over their life. And by using techniques that give you the sense of having control over your life, you can ease the anxiety. So talk about that. You know, the question that I always like to ask is, to give an example of this, is, do you feel like you have trouble making decisions?

Or do you feel like you can't get started on something until you feel you're ready enough? And a way to overcome this indecision in life and lack of control is to do it badly. And there's a quote that I give by G.K. Chesterton, which says that anything worth doing is worth doing badly the first time. And essentially what this gets to is the fact that so many times we want to do something perfectly, whether it's tasks at work or things that we have to do at home or anything in life, really, we want to do something perfectly. So many times we're perfectionists or we try to be perfectionists and we can't begin until it's the perfect time, until we've got all the skills to do something. But this slows us down.

This makes us dread the tasks that are ahead of us and it increases the stress and anxiety that we have. So instead of aiming to do something perfectly, aim to do it badly at first. The reason that this works so well is that it speeds up your decision-making and it catapults you straight into action. So do it badly at first, and then, of course you try this out, that whatever you're doing badly, first of all, not only will it make it so much easier to start something and much more fun to begin that dreaded task, but you'll find that you're completing it much faster. And also, when you look back over what you've done, you'll realize most of the time that the thing that you did is actually not that bad. So I encourage everyone out there to use this coping strategy because it is really effective. It saves you a lot of time and it replaces anxiety with excitement. So that's one coping strategy. The other one is to forgive yourself, which is very important for our mental health. People with anxiety are

very self-critical. They think a lot about what they've done wrong and how bad they're feeling. And the thing that I like to ask people or to consider is, imagine if you had a friend who constantly pointed out everything that you're doing wrong and everything that is wrong with your life. You would, of course, you would want to get rid of this person right away, wouldn't you? But the thing is, if you have anxiety, you do this to yourself so many times that you don't even realize it anymore. So it's time to start being kinder with ourselves, to start forgiving ourselves for any mistakes we think we might have made in the past or in the present. And this essentially allows us to leave that burden behind and to start fresh. So if you think that you messed up a few moments ago, or if you wanted to talk to someone but couldn't muster up the courage to do so, whatever it is, forgive yourself for anything and everything, and this will give you greater compassion towards yourself. I know there's other advice I've heard from people who

talk about this topic, that one of the things that helps control anxiety and depression and worry and all that, is to have a purpose in life, to have your focus on someone other than yourself or something other than yourself and your problems, and that that will alleviate your worrying and your anxiety. This basically all stems from the research that Dr. Viktor Frankl has done. He was a famous neurologist who worked with prisoners of war in the Second World War, and he thought that there was one key difference between those prisoners who survived and those who didn't. And those who survived, what they all had in common was that they had this meaning and purpose in life.

So he writes about this in his book, and he says that for one man, for example, it's knowing that his daughter is still waiting for him. And that's why he needs to keep on living for her. She needs him. For somebody else, it was knowing that he still had books that he needed to finish writing because this was his passion. He needed to keep living to be able to finish that because this was his passion. He needed to keep living to be able to finish that work, which was so important to him. So how can you find meaning and purpose in life? It is finding a goal, which you think is worthwhile, and making regular progress on it, even if it's for half an hour each day. That's one way to find

meaning and purpose in life. Another way is to do something with someone else in mind. When we take the spotlight off of us and our anxieties and problems, and we place the spotlight onto somebody else and how we can make a difference to them, when we're thinking about somebody else, that's when we realize the importance of our lives. We realize that we can help somebody else's lot in life by what we do. So how can you do something with someone else in mind? It can be through volunteering, taking care of a family member, or even a pet. Just making yourself important in somebody else's life.

What you said about having control over your life is really interesting to me, because I think people, when they feel like they don't have control over their life, that's in large part, it's just because they've surrendered, they've given up, they have stopped trying to control their life, and they look at life and say, well, there's nothing I can do. But if you were to think about it, there's nothing I can do. But if you were to think about it, there's plenty you can do. You may not control every part of your life, but there are plenty of things you do control. Exactly, exactly. And if you start to apply the do it badly strategy,

then exactly as you said, you start to realize that you actually do have control in life, that you can direct your life in the way that you want to. And this is so empowering and freeing because you're not weighed down by anxiety, by this paralysis over how to do something or in which direction to go next. If you're not sure about something, just do it badly. If you're not sure which job to choose, do it badly and pick something. And only by making mistakes in life. So, you know, whatever we do, it will, sometimes it will be a good decision. Sometimes it will be a bad decision. And if it's a good decision, the benefits are obvious. But if it's a bad decision, then we can, this helps us because it helps us to improve our performance in life. The only, and I shouldn't even say bad decision, if the outcome isn't as you had wanted it to be. The only truly bad decision is if we don't act, if we don't do anything in life or just when we're paralyzed by an action, if we're just standing still.

Because then we can't refine our performance in life. We can't learn from our mistakes. And the thing is, even if nobody else out there realizes that we haven't taken action, that we've just been defaulting. We will know that we have, and this will make us feel very bad, and it can give us anxiety. One of the things that I was going to ask you about is, it does seem to me, just from observation, that anxiety tends to dissipate when you do something, almost anything.

But in other words, the sitting and ruminating is what makes it worse. And if you just get up and go do something, even if it isn't necessarily about that, but just do something rather than sit and ruminate, that things seemingly get better. And that's because when we're distracting ourselves, essentially. So when we become immersed in another task, then we're not thinking about whatever was worrying us any longer. You know, our minds can't hold two thoughts at once. So we can't be obsessively worrying about something and also be immersed in another task. We can only think about one thing at a time. So when we direct our attention, our complete attention to something else, then our worries and our anxieties seem to

begin to dissipate. Well, as I said in the beginning, it does seem that the whole world is wound a little tighter and the anxiety level has gone up. And sure, there may be people who are very calm and relaxed and don't have to deal with anxiety but I imagine almost everybody has to deal with it at one point or another and it's good to know there are techniques you can use to get control of it. My guest has been Olivia Remus. She's an anxiety researcher at the University of Cambridge in the UK and she has written extensively on the issue of anxiety. She posts a lot of information about the topic on Twitter, and I've got her Twitter handle in the show notes for this

episode. Thank you, Olivia. Yeah, thanks for having me on. The afternoon slump. It hits most of us around 3 o'clock in the afternoon. And yes, coffee or a brisk walk can help, but you can actually prevent it with some bright light. Increasing your exposure to light between the hours of noon and 4 can help keep fatigue at bay. Now, natural light is best, but you can simulate it with a good bright desk lamp. If you get in the habit

of turning it on after lunch, it helps reset your body's internal clock. You can also get a quick boost by staring out the window for a full minute, even on a cloudy day. And that is something you should know. I know that this is usually the point in the episode where I ask you to please share this with a friend. I've asked you many times. And have you? If not, please share this podcast with a friend. And if you have shared it with a friend, share it with another one. I'm Micah Ruthers.

Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Do you love Disney? Do you love Top Ten lists? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore. There is nothing we don't cover on our show. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed.

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