I am a notoriously anxious person. To put it more vividly, I am the type of person who, when I express interest in buying a product, my entire search history on all search-enabled mobile applications up until I buy that product is filled with searches of all the product’s features, just to make sure I’m not buying something I won’t like or use.
Spoiler: I have bought several things I didn’t end up liking or using, despite all my research.
I think it goes a little beyond mere anxiety. Another example: When I was younger and school parties were approaching, I would spend hours in my head obsessing over things that could happen, how they would happen, whether they would happen. It would override my mind and my consciousness to the point that it was all I would talk about to anyone who cared to listen at home for weeks.
Spoiler: They hardly, if ever, went according to my plans or dreams.
I mentioned in one of these newsletters that my mom used to say things “shacked” me too much (Nigerian speak for being overly excited), and they did. But it wasn’t just excitement. I was and have always been a little obsessed with planning out my life under the guise of daydreaming. The problem wasn’t my imagination or how vivid and vast it could be. I still think that’s a top contender for my greatest features. I can build make-believe worlds like no one else can. Really, the problem was that I expected these things, these little conjurings of mine, to happen in actuality, and I would actively wait for them to. For instance, let’s assume I daydreamed about my friend telling me she liked my party dress at my school’s end-of-the-year party. This would lead to me telling her I liked her dress and us talking more about dresses and dress shopping and eventually agreeing to beg our moms to take us shopping together. Cute, right? I know. The problem was that in the actual party, I would expect this to happen. So, I would wait for the trigger, for my friend to tell me she liked my dress, so I could tell her I liked hers, and the whole conversation would play out the way my mind willed it to.
But it hardly ever did. And I would spend most of the party waiting, worrying internally that this conversation wouldn’t happen. It never occurred to me then that I could just say I liked her dress first, or that some other conversation could lead to the one I foresaw, so I just spent time worrying about things not going to plan.
I was maybe six then, so my problems were a lot different, and so were my thoughts. For the most part, though, the core of it has remained the same. Having a goal, a plan, or a dream, waiting for the trigger, worrying it will never come the way you planned it. The thing is, or the theory, shall I say, is that it is almost foundationally important to detach from this assumed trigger.
I believe, radically optimistic as ever, that most of our dreams will come true. I really do. I believe every core idea planted in your head that you let grow is growing for a reason. I believe if you choose to achieve anything, you probably can. What I’ve stopped believing in is that you need to achieve everything the exact way you dreamed you would. And most times those are the things we worry about, especially people in their 20s (because I can only talk about the experiences I have lived, and I really don’t know how worry conceptually changes as you age).
I think we spend far too much time worrying about things we cannot control. Examples are an easier tool than abstract explanations, so let me use another one here. If you have a goal of, say, becoming a fashion designer, and you believe that to achieve this goal, you need to do three things:
a) get into a school for design, probably the best school in the world if you’re as ambitious as me,
b) build a career in Europe because that’s the heart of fashion, and
c) intern with some real-life version of Meryl Streep from The Devil Wears Prada.
This is your plan, and it’s a great plan. And, sometimes, if you’re lucky enough and your dreams are in alignment with your path, this plan works. I, too, have fantasized about things that have happened exactly as planned, okay? We’ve all been there!
The thing is, and maybe more often than not, it may not all go exactly according to plan. You may not get into the best school, but you might get into another and end up really liking it and meeting people there that become the reason you become the fashion designer of your dreams.
But before you know that, before the gift of retrospect, all that matters is that you didn’t get into the school you wanted. And so, you worry, and worry, about an admissions committee you cannot control, about what’s next, about what schools you could even get into now. It becomes your obsession, and you start to forget that getting into this school is NOT your goal. It was only the trigger. It’s one step in the path to your goal. And as long as you’re still on the path, all is well.
The things we should worry about are the things we can control, and I believe only inaction can beget worrying in these instances. If you do what you’re meant to, there’s hardly ever anything to worry about. So you outlined a path, and the first step was getting into the fashion school. Don’t spend time worrying about whether you’re qualified or if you’ll make it in. Worry about the essays you have to write, so you write them well. Worry about creating your portfolio so it’s the best portfolio ever. Worry about the things YOU are capable of. Worry only about doing your best at those things. If you’re not capable of giving yourself a promotion, don’t worry about it. If you’re not capable of getting yourself past an interview stage, it’s not your job to obsess about that. Because fundamentally, worry is useless. We are only in control of the things we can control. Everything else is up to forces we cannot see, beings we may or may not believe in, and maybe our chi.
So do your best. Remember your goals, and don’t obsess about the path. You can change the path a thousand times, because as long as you make it to your goal, it really doesn’t matter if you took a bus or a train, or if the train was 10 minutes late.