Breaking Free From Anxiety

How many people do you know that “suffer from anxiety?”

Anxiety is defined as a feeling of fear, dread, and uneasiness.

For the most part, it’s being worried or fearful of what’s to come in the future.

And call me crazy for this, but I think a majority of the people experiencing “anxiety” are really just repeating the same action over and over again.

They’re sacrificing the future at the cost of maximizing the present.

Meaning, they’re more focused on having a good time right now instead of making sacrifices in the present which will lead to a good time in the future.

Now, before I tell you a fun story about my past, I want to make this extremely clear…

I do believe some people genuinely have mental disorders and do have a lot of tragedy occurring in their life which causes anxiety.

I also believe that’s the minority, and the majority of people are just being completely irresponsible.

I’m not sure how to segue into the story I’m about to tell, so let’s just imagine a large friendly dragon named Nigel has swooped you up and is taking you to a past distant memory of mine.

Nigel has snacks and beverages available in a cooler to your left, enjoy them while he takes you back to 2018…

I had just graduated high school the year before and all of my friends were off at different colleges partying like crazy, having a grand ole time.

Meanwhile, I was working about 72 hours a week in a small office in Phoenix…

Sleeping on a broken couch inside of the office using T-shirts as a blanket…

Eating ramen noodles for breakfast lunch and dinner…

Showering at the gym across the street…

Making anywhere from 100-200 cold calls every single day…

And every time I opened my Instagram and looked at the stories from my old friends, I was reminded of how starkly different our lives were.

For some context, I had opted out of going to college because I saw no value in plunging myself into debt to pursue a degree in business.

Part of this conclusion of mine came from an early discovery of “Money Twitter” which helped me find a lot of different books on the topic of entrepreneurship…

It was very clear to me that if I wanted to run businesses, the best way to learn how to do that was to run businesses and not study the theory of businesses.

And that thought pattern brought me to Gordon Rose.

I was 17 years old when I met Gordon, who changed the trajectory of my life forever.

Gordon was this short Jewish-looking (and Jewish-sounding) man who was running a T-shirt printing business in Phoenix.

He cold-called my mom trying to sell her t-shirts for her security business, and said something along the lines of “we’re a new company in town and we’d love to earn your business.”

My mom was really upset I didn’t go to college, and she knew the “gap year” I was taking was really just an excuse to smoke weed and do nothing all day.

So she asked Gordon, “Are you hiring?”

Two days later I was sitting inside of the warehouse/office Gordon was renting out in Phoenix, and he asked me the million-dollar question…

“Nick, how do you feel about doing some sales calls?”

“I don’t really know much about sales but I can give it a shot.”

For my first couple of calls, I was stuttering and getting pushed around by hard-nosed blue-collar business owners who could smell my lack of confidence through the phone.

Gordon heard everything and walked into my office which was next to his…

“Hey Nick, you mind if I give you a little bit of advice?”

And from there, Gordon turned me into an absolute machine on the phone.

I went from barely being able to get 20 cold calls in a day to being able to crank out 200 like nobody’s business.

I went from being a setter for the closers to just closing the deals by myself, collecting credit cards on the phone, and upselling packages from $2000 to $5000.

I was learning the art of sales from someone who to this day, I still believe is one of the greatest salespeople I’ve ever met.

His style of warm, friendly, personable sales made this entire game just so easy.

I ended up asking Gordon if he’d be cool with me sleeping in the office because I wanted to be able to get as much work done in a day as possible, and driving to and from work felt like a waste of time.

Surprisingly he said yes.

So my entire life for about a year and a half was working 12-hour days, cold calling like a psychopath, and fulfilling orders for our clients.

Down the road, the business became so dependent on my performance that Gordon actually offered me equity inside of the company.

However, I eventually left the business due to some disagreements with Gordon and I went right back to the food service industry, taking a bartending job at night, and a fast-food job during the day.

During that time, I spent the 2-3 free hours I had every single day consuming Sam Ovens's content and learning everything I could about copywriting.

I would get maybe 5 hours of sleep a night and had basically zero social life.

Eventually, I was making enough money as a copywriter that I decided to leave both jobs, and the rest is history.

At this point in my career, I do pretty well for myself, I’m known in my industry, and I constantly have clients coming to me wanting to work with me and pay me nice chunky fees and retainers.

Why?

Because I made sacrifices.

So let’s circle back to the beginning of this post…

Anxiety.

I see a lot of the people that I went to high school with, talking about “mental health awareness” and how they suffer from anxiety or depression.

But the conversation none of these people want to have is that they did nothing but play grab-ass for 4 years straight…

They got a pointless degree, and are completely aimless in life.

Like Sisyphus, they pushed the boulder all the way to the top of the mountain in high school becoming the “cool kid”...

And then rolled all the way back down to the bottom of the mountain once they entered college…

They then rolled that boulder all the way to the top of the mountain in college gaining “clout” from their fraternity or social circle…

And once again, they’re at the bottom of the mountain now because nobody in the real world cares about your social status from college.

They care about what value you can provide to the market.

From the ages of 17 to 23, I did nothing but spend that time building my value, growing my network, and improving my ability to articulate myself.

And because of that, I don’t really have much anxiety about the trajectory of my life or if I’m going to become successful or not.

I know I’m going to be successful because at the age of 23 I’m already further ahead than most 45-year-olds.

(I give most of the credit to my mentors and their willingness to guide me towards the right beliefs, thoughts, and actions.)

So when I look at the people talking about their anxiety, parading it around, demanding other people be aware of it, and advocating for the use of anti-anxiety prescription medicine…

I can’t help but think…

“Are you experiencing anxiety because something is genuinely wrong with you mentally, or because you’ve just been completely irresponsible in your life and that reality is confronting you?”

Here’s the truth…

The pathway to less suffering is through suffering.

And when your entire life has been nothing but seeking happiness and short-term dopamine hits, it’s very hard to accept this harsh but true fact of life.

So if you’re experiencing anxiety, I think it may be a good idea to look at your past and have an honest conversation about if you were effectively using your time or not.

Because believe me, your subconscious knows.

If you’re worried about the future, that’s fine, it’s totally normal.

But continuing to worry about the future and continuing to numb yourself is the worst strategy you can employ.

I promise you if you spend 2 to 3 years orientating yourself towards becoming valuable to the market…

Learning skills, developing positive momentum, and sacrificing who you are now for who you could become…

That anxiety will become non-existent.

And this doesn’t mean life needs to be all doom and gloom for those next few years!

You can still have fun and enjoy life!

But a majority of your time should definitely be spent on focusing on the creation of a version of you in the future you can be proud of.

Take on total responsibility for your past and present, and watch how much your life changes.

You got this, don’t sell yourself short.