The Mountain Is You

EXTRAPOLATION
Extrapolation is when we take our current circumstances and then project
them out into the future. Ryan Holiday says it best: “This moment is not my
life. It is a moment in my life.”
Extrapolation makes us think that we are the sum of our past or current
experiences, that whatever stressors or anxieties we are currently
experiencing are ones that we will grapple with for the rest of our lives.
Unable to see through the problem at hand, we assume it will never resolve
itself. Unfortunately, this can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we are so
easily defeated and exhausted by the idea that we will never get over our
problems, then we make it more likely that we will hang onto them instead
of logically trying to resolve them, for a lot more time than is necessary.

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SPOTLIGHTING
Everyone thinks that the world revolves around them.
You are thinking about you and your own interests all day, every day. It can
be challenging to forget that others are not thinking about us with such
intensity; they are thinking about themselves.
The spotlight effect is what happens when we imagine that our lives are
performative, or “on display” for others to consume. We remember the last
two or three embarrassing
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things we have done and imagine that others are thinking about them
actively as well. Can you recall the last two or three embarrassing things
someone else did? Of course you can’t. Because you aren’t paying
attention.
Spotlighting gives us the false impression that the world is all about us,
when it is not.
These biases plus others, when combined with psychic thinking, or the idea
that our assumptions and feelings about the world will transpose into
reality, are harmful and mostly incorrect. Instead of trying to predict what
will happen next, our energy is better used when it’s focused intently on the
moment—the infinite “now,” the mystics would say—because the truth is
that the past and future are illusions in the present, and all we have is the
present.

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Instead of trying to use your intelligence to hack what’s next, try to get
better at where you are currently. That’s what’s really going to change the
outcomes of your life.
L O G I C A L L A P S E S A R E G I V I N G Y O U
P R O F O U N D A N X I E T Y
Most of the anxiety you experience in life is the result in inefficient critical-
thinking skills. You might assume that because you are anxious, you are an
overthinker, someone who obsesses about unlikely and scary outcomes
more than is reasonable. The reality is that you are an under-thinker.
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You’re missing a part of your reasoning process.
Let’s start at the beginning. Anxiety is a normal emotion that every person
experiences at some point in their lives, typically when circumstances are
stressful, tense, or scary.
When anxiety is chronic and begins to interfere with day-to-day
functioning, it becomes a clinical disorder.
We understand the importance of speaking about mental health with the
same degree of legitimacy as physical health. However, in the same way
that we’d question what someone keeps tripping over if they repeatedly
sprain their ankle, a lot of anxiety is similarly circumstantial, as many
illnesses are. Specifically, anxiety tends to be the result of an inability to
process acutely stressful and ongoing circumstances.
If we want to heal, we have to learn to process.

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This applies to everyone, not just those with a diagnosis.
One of the hallmarks of anxiety is rapid thinking. Because you are focusing
on some issue so deeply and for so much time, you assume that you are also
thinking through the issue thoroughly and arriving at the most likely
conclusion. However, the opposite is happening.
You’re experiencing a logical lapse. You’re jumping to the worst-case
scenario because you aren’t thinking clearly, and then you are engaging
your fight-or-flight response
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because the worst-case scenario makes you feel threatened.
This is why you obsess about that one, terrifying idea. Your body is
responding as though it’s an immediate threat, and until you “defeat” or
overcome it, your body will do its job, which is to keep you in defense
mode, which is really a heightened state of awareness to the “enemy.”