How to Manage & Channel Anxiety | Robert Greene & Dr. Andrew Huberman
00:00:00.000 | So, Someday, it's a book stirring in me, is the art of thinking, and how to use that
00:00:09.720 | kind of process and go deeper into it.
00:00:12.880 | And I talked a lot about it in one of my podcasts, which might be the seed of a book.
00:00:18.880 | But it's the difference between dead thinking and alive thinking.
00:00:24.280 | Ideas can be either alive or they can be dead.
00:00:27.320 | An alive idea is something that enters your brain from an external source, a philosopher,
00:00:34.040 | an article, somebody you admire, somebody you hate.
00:00:37.120 | And then you absorb it, and you think about it, and you decide, I'm going to turn it around
00:00:42.520 | into this, and I'm going to make it alive and make it something that's part of me.
00:00:47.720 | Another part of an alive idea is you have an idea that comes to you about a book or
00:00:53.980 | a project or something about the world, and you go, maybe that's not actually true.
00:00:59.540 | Maybe the opposite is true.
00:01:00.840 | And you go through a process, and you cycle through it on and on, and you reflect on it,
00:01:04.920 | and you refine this idea.
00:01:06.600 | And maybe it turns into its opposite.
00:01:08.720 | And through the process of reflecting and correcting and revising it, you turn it into
00:01:13.640 | something living, something alive within you, on and on and on.
00:01:19.240 | And what prevents people from going through that process, which would be the subject of
00:01:22.480 | my book, is basically anxiety.
00:01:26.040 | Because I think how you handle anxiety is the most important kind of quality in life.
00:01:32.000 | It will determine whether you will be successful, whether you will find your career path, or
00:01:37.200 | whether you won't be able to.
00:01:39.240 | I don't know if you can follow that idea at all.
00:01:42.040 | But anxiety is a signal to you that you don't understand something, that there's a problem
00:01:47.000 | out there that you can't resolve.
00:01:50.080 | And so what happens to most people, if you're insecure, is you glom onto something instant
00:01:56.680 | and easy to get rid of your feeling of anxiety.
00:02:00.360 | I don't understand this problem.
00:02:01.560 | Oh, it must be A. A must be the answer, because this person said that, right?
00:02:06.560 | And so you don't develop the ability to think.
00:02:09.080 | You don't develop the ability to go to the next level.
00:02:12.520 | But if you take that anxiety, and you go, all right, maybe A is an answer.
00:02:18.200 | And then you start going through A, and then you go, no, maybe A isn't the answer.
00:02:21.920 | Maybe B is the answer.
00:02:23.440 | You're able to surmount your anxiety and go past it, come further and further and further.
00:02:27.760 | You don't rush for the first available answer that's out there, right?
00:02:32.160 | You're able to go through a process of refining things.
00:02:35.200 | And so in your career, if you're anxious for success, if you're anxious for money, you're
00:02:41.440 | going to make the wrong choices.
00:02:43.640 | But if you're able to deal with that anxiety and say, maybe I have to think more deeply
00:02:49.120 | about where I'm going.
00:02:50.120 | I have to come up with other alternatives, then you're going to make a much better choice
00:02:54.120 | on and on and on.
00:02:56.000 | So if you're a creative person, it's very, very challenging to have that blank piece
00:03:02.480 | of paper before you, that book that you haven't written, that film or whatever.
00:03:06.400 | You're filled with a lot of anxiety, and you have to deal with it.
00:03:10.160 | And if you're able to turn it into something creative and productive, then great things
00:03:13.840 | will happen.
00:03:14.840 | You'll create a masterpiece.
00:03:16.400 | So the ability to deal with anxiety and to not give in to the most instant gratification
00:03:21.760 | that you can get is to me a marker of somebody who will be creative and will invent something
00:03:26.800 | as opposed to people who just recycle old and dead ideas.
00:03:31.840 | Amen to that.
00:03:33.360 | I was once told that anxiety makes children of us all, and not in the positive sense of
00:03:41.120 | being childlike.
00:03:43.440 | It regresses us to a mode where we feel a complete lack of control.
00:03:46.840 | And I completely agree that being able to manage anxiety and dance with it, since we
00:03:52.320 | can't rid ourselves of it, perhaps nor should we, right?
00:03:56.240 | Because it's a signal, as you point out, that we don't understand something, that there's
00:03:59.600 | something to get curious about, a process or something out there, or both.
00:04:03.920 | I think that really resonates.
00:04:06.840 | I think a lot of people will benefit from hearing that, because I think we hear the
00:04:10.660 | word flow, and we just all imagine, I even catch myself imagining that when Robert Greene
00:04:16.760 | sits down to write, it's like there's a blank sheet, and then he just kind of meditates,
00:04:20.560 | and then boom, out come these books.
00:04:23.600 | But if I get realistic for a second, I'm sure that there's a lot of inner turmoil and anxiety.
00:04:28.560 | Oh my God, you have no idea.
00:04:30.640 | So my process is 95% pain, and maybe 2.5% ecstasy, and I don't know what the other 2.5%
00:04:40.080 | would be.
00:04:42.280 | So I write a story, because in my new book, and most of my books, I always begin with
00:04:47.200 | the story from history, et cetera, and it is so bad.
00:04:54.080 | I can't believe how bad, how flat it is, how it sucks.
00:04:58.080 | I'm so embarrassed, I hate myself, and I go and I dig into it, and I start changing the
00:05:02.480 | words in it.
00:05:03.480 | I start making it a little bit better.
00:05:05.120 | The second version, it's kind of palatable, but it still sucks.
00:05:10.160 | If I let it out into the world, it'd be very embarrassing.
00:05:13.640 | It's anxious, and my wife can tell you, I'm a miserable being when that happens.
00:05:19.440 | Everything looks black to me at that point, and I push through it.
00:05:23.160 | So if I gave in to my anxiety, and this happens with a lot of books and writers, I would just
00:05:28.840 | put out that second version, which isn't very good.
00:05:31.560 | It isn't very strong.
00:05:32.880 | It isn't thought through, because my ideas, when I look at them the first time, I go,
00:05:38.560 | that's not real.
00:05:39.560 | That's not the actual thing that's going on here, Robert.
00:05:41.720 | You've missed the mark.
00:05:43.200 | You want to hit what's actually real in that story.
00:05:46.240 | So you have to go deeper and deeper and harder and harder and harder.
00:05:49.560 | So I don't just give up and go, here's the chapter.
00:05:52.240 | I go, it's got to be better.
00:05:54.160 | It's got to be better, until finally, after two months of struggling, it seems like it's
00:06:01.480 | gone to the place that I want it to be in, right?
00:06:04.840 | But I use that anxiety to keep improving and making it better.
00:06:08.880 | And then when I reach that point, and the story is good enough, and I can let my wife
00:06:12.960 | read it, and then my editor, I feel great.
00:06:15.320 | I have that 2% moment of joy.
00:06:18.680 | But it came through all of that anxiety.
00:06:21.360 | But I can tell you, the feeling of fulfillment when I finish a chapter is pretty damn great.
00:06:28.400 | When I finish a book, it's better than any kind of drug experience anyone could ever
00:06:33.440 | have.
00:06:34.440 | It's such a wonderful feeling of accomplishment and pushing past all the barriers.
00:06:39.800 | So my process involves a lot of anxiety.
00:06:44.360 | That's why I'm talking about it, and why I want to write a book about it.