Connecting the Dots—a series by GV Ravishankar, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India, that explores and makes connections across a range of diverse ideas on scaling companies, personal growth and leading teams.

Am not a big fan of movies—in fact, I routinely doze off during our family movie time and that remains a long-standing complaint from my wife. But once in a while I watch something that speaks to me, moves me and stays with me. Steven Spielberg’s Bridges of Spies, a movie based on real-life events during the cold war in the 1960s, was one such movie.

Tom Hanks plays the character of an American Lawyer (James Donovan) defending Mark Rylance, who delivers a powerful performance as a stoic Russian spy (Rudolf Abel) facing grave consequences after his capture. Despite the difficult circumstances and the likely death penalty that he faces, Rudolf remains calm and composed which prompts James to ask him, several times, why he isn’t worried. Rudolf always has the same response “Would it help?”. There is something very profound about those three words and that’s what got me thinking about my approach to dealing with anxiety.

I am anxious as a person and I think it is a gift from my genes. One of my siblings is so anxious that we make fun of her saying “she even worries that there is nothing to worry about!”. Some level of anxiety is good for all of us—just ahead of the exams, the day before an important meeting, etc—it helps us remain alert and prepare well. But there are times when anxiety starts to hurt—the mind becomes filled with the worry that things may go wrong and this creates negative energy, clouds our judgement and makes us defensive, forces us to play safe and erodes our ability to dream big. It’s hard to navigate the path to greatness by playing safe and defensive. This is a problem—the anxious ones may do alright but will struggle to do great if they stay in the negative energy zone. In early 2017 when facing a difficult situation, I learnt several lessons on how to overcome anxiety and since then my life seems to have gotten better. Whether it is causation or correlation, life automatically gets better when we learn to worry less and focus on the positives!

Would it help?

The brilliance of these three words lies in the fact that it shows us the mirror when it comes to anxiety. Just worrying or being scared is unlikely to solve anything. So why then should we allow our mind to be a slave of the fears and the concerns of things going wrong. Rudolf Abel, with a simple childlike curiosity, asks James Donavan how worrying might help him deal with the situation at hand. There is a big lesson in this for all of us. Instead of worrying and losing sleep over something, we need to find a way to ‘deal with it’. Here are some lessons I have learnt which helped me both contextualise and deal with anxiety and a framework that I now try to use to find a way forward.

Contextualising Anxiety

Understanding probability: Most anxiety is about some future event not working in our favour. It could be about losing a business deal, not making it to a meeting or flight on time, losing a key employee or even forgetting your spouse’s birthday. In fact for the anxious person, there are many things that seem likely to go wrong. The first thing for us to realise is that life is about probabilities and that means there is only a certain likelihood that something could go wrong—but by focusing on what could go wrong, our anxious brain exaggerates the probability of failure. One good piece of advice I got was to use a journal to document what I felt anxious about. This not only helps get some of our concerns off our minds, but it also serves as a tool to help us understand the actual probability of things going wrong. More than 90 percent of the time, we find that our concerns did not play out and we were wasting precious brain capacity stuck in the anxiety loop.

Gaining perspective: We are usually anxious about an important meeting coming up or an exam we are taking. When I was an anxious Junior Associate at McKinsey, I often worried about big presentations to our clients. My then Engagement Manager gave me a piece of advice which till date has served me really well. He said, “Think of how important the next 45 mins are likely to be in your career of 45 years”. By contextualising those 45 mins in long life and career ahead, he helped me see how I was fretting over a relatively small blip in a much longer timeline. I use this hack every time I feel nervous about a so-called big meeting or presentation.

Facing our fears: When stuck in the anxiety loop, I have realised it is sometimes better to mentally walk down the path we fear the most. For example, if you are worried about losing your job, it is not a bad idea to walk down the path and go all the way till the event and a bit after to know what really lies ahead. If you are worried about having a tough chat with a colleague, play it out and see what the worst outcome can be. I have personally done this in a few situations and the takeaway has always been that the worst we are worried about is also not as damaging as we fear it to be. By walking down all the way to the edge, we get to see what lies ahead more clearly instead of fearing the unknown. Once we know the worst case, we can start planning for how we will deal with that and this also reduces our anxiety.

Acceptance: For those that are a bit more spiritual, thinking about any undesired outcome as something that was in our best interest in the longer term is also a way to contextualise our anxiety and accepting it versus worrying consistently. Several elders in my family find peace in thinking this way and are able to move on and look forward.

Dealing with Anxiety – a simple framework

When it comes to anxiety I usually think of the Controllable-Actionable framework shown below as a way to find my response to ‘deal with it’. While this is fairly self-explanatory, we will see how to apply it through some examples.

Yes-Yes quadrant: Situations like a health issue or forgetting the spouse’s birthday or anxiety about a tough conversation are all examples of where the outcome is usually controllable and you can action it as an individual. This is the simplest situation where we get rid of the anxiety by acting on what needs to be done or addressing the problem in hand. Closing the loop releases energy and helps focus on the future with a more positive mindset

No-No quadrant: Situations like your exam results (post the exam), university admittance, the outcome of an India-Pakistan cricket match are examples where we can neither action anything nor can we influence the outcome. If you have already written your exams, you can neither act nor influence the outcome anymore. In such a situation the “would it help?” question makes it clear that there is no point being anxious. Instead, if you say “** it” and move forward, you can channelise your energies towards the future.

No-Yes quadrant: Situations like the anxiety of missing a flight, fear of flunking an exam (before taking it), becoming diabetic (due to family history), etc are those where the outcome is not controllable but you can still action something. And much of it is in the form of preparation—working harder, showing up at the airport earlier or keeping yourself fit and being careful with your diet—these are preventive or preparative things one can do instead of being anxious about things going wrong.

Yes-No quadrant: There may be situations where the outcome can be controlled but not just by your actions—e.g. climate change or elections or being rescued from an island when marooned. In such situations, the best advice I have heard is from Bear Grylls who says NGU—Never Give up. If you can still remain optimistic, keep doing your bit and hope for a good outcome, you give yourself a chance to be surprised positively. Victor Frankl talks about how the survivors from Auschwitz were those who never lost hope and had something to look forward to.

Whether you use a framework like this or not, I encourage you to think about the truth that there is no upside to being in the anxiety loop—you either act and get out of it to release energy or get to a “** it” mindset where you give yourself a chance to move from defensive and cautious thinking to doing the right thing to increase your odds of success in your endeavours. It is not like I am not anxious anymore in my life but when I find myself worrying I now ask— “Would it help?”

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(Edited by : Ajay Vaishnav)