What Bani Does When the Spiral Starts

I recently sat down with my friend, Bani, to discuss stress & anxiety and how she deals with it

In the last 3 years, Bani has moved countries, transitioned from law to marketing, completed her MBA and got the job she wanted in a new country

Bani’s last three years are a big win. And when you sit with her and really listen, you realize the wins came with something even more valuable: a way of thinking about stress that she’s spent three years figuring out

“You’re killing yourself twice. Once, while you’re thinking about it. Next time, when it actually happens.”

She’s talking about pre-suffering, the suffering that has nothing to do with what actually happens to you. It’s the suffering that happens before.

The night you can’t sleep because you’re convinced the interview went badly. The weeks you spend catastrophizing about a decision that hasn’t been made yet. The months you waste imagining the worst possible outcome, over and over.

Someone wise in her life told her while she was preparing for GRE:

“You’re doing all that you can. You’ve prepared, you’ve given it your best. Now all that is missing is luck. Worrying about luck won’t change the outcome. Don’t sacrifice your health for something that’s out of your hands

“You gotta have faith,” Bani says. “Not necessarily faith in God. It could be faith in yourself or Faith that you’ll be able to do it.”

“It will happen, but I don’t know when,” she tells me.

In Hindi, there’s a phrase for this: “hoga, but I don’t know kab hoga.” it is the ability to deal with certainty and uncertainty at the same time. You believe good things will happen, but you don’t stress over exactly how or when they will happen

It means do everything you can and then let go. And the reason You let go is because holding to it won’t change the outcome.

“If I sit here and think, oh my God, the job is not going to work out, it’s not going to work out, because subconsciously I will not put in the work to get it done.”

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When you convince yourself something won’t work out, you kind of stop trying. Maybe, you don’t show up fully, or maybe you don’t take the risks. Maybe you don’t send that one more LinkedIn request because you wonder what’s even the point?
And then when it doesn’t work out. And you tell yourself you were right all along, that it was not going to work out anyway.

Bani tells me that we gotta flip it around, tell yourself: “This has to work. I’ll make it work”

Then it becomes more likely to actually work, not because the universe is listening, but because you are listening to what you are saying.

I asked Bani, what’s the antidote to killing yourself twice?

It’s not eliminating stress. (Good luck with that.) She says that stress is natural and a part of the process when doing hard things.

It’s this, in Bani’s words:

“You’ve done your part. Now do something for yourself. Watch a movie, go out, order a pizza.” Bani loves breaking a spiral with pizzas.

Bani tells me the next time you find yourself spiraling, and you will, because we all do. Ask yourself this:

Am I killing myself twice?

And if the answer is yes, order the damn pizza.

If you have systems and non-negotiables that help you stay grounded in life, you’d like to share, message me please!!

I’m starting a colllection project. I’m documenting the systems that keep people grounded, functional, and joyfvl.