Anxiety Shift Tackling Anxiety One Day at a Time
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Is there such thing as Ambassador anxiety? Probably not, but there should be because it fits perfectly to what I used to experience in the late ’90s.
In 1997 I started travelling around South East Asia. I started in Thailand, moved down and around Malaysia and then onto my last leg through Indonesia.
It was the first time I had ever travelled alone and I had saved for the last year and a half, living with my parents and slaving away in a temporary job just to cobble together enough money to allow myself 6 months of “figuring out what to do with my life” in Asia.
The first few months in Thailand were fairly easy as there are plenty of tourists and travellers pretty much everywhere you go, but as you move down to the East coast of Malaysia and then West to Sumatra in Indonesia, the tourists start to thin out and you find yourself seeing fewer and fewer non-Asian faces.
Of course, this is great, you get treated exceptionally well in most places as they are happy to see a westerner because it is such a rare occurrence.
Going to villages outside places like Siantar in Sumatra can be an amazing experience as you get treated like royalty as they very rarely get any tourists. It is awesome, or at least it should be.
Of course, leave it to my brain to make life more complicated.
The problem was I felt like I was a representative. Not only of England, but of all western countries around the world, and as I was the only westerner some of them would meet, I had to make a good impression.
This is fine of course, I have no problems with trying to make a good impression, except the problem was my anxiety took it a step too far. I started to worry about the smallest things I did wrong. I banged my head getting off a bus, and I started to worry that the people would think all westerners are clumsy. I counted the wrong money out and I would worry that they would think all westerners are idiots.
Of course none of this was true. The people didn’t even think I was clumsy or an idiot, but the weight of responsibility of being an Ambassador for the whole of western civilisation that I had heaped upon myself made it seem like it.
There is really no wonder that you get anxiety when you heap that much responsibility and pressure on yourself. I mean the Indonesian Ambassador for the entire Western World? That’s quite a role.
This can happen in regular situations too. Very often we put pressure on ourselves for no reason, and make ourselves responsible for things that we really should not be responsible for, and very often have no control over. And then we blame ourselves when things go wrong, and the anxiety levels soar.
The only thing you should be responsible for (unless you’re a parent of young ones of course) is you. And you should take full responsibility for everything you do. Don’t blame other people, or other things when things go wrong, and especially don’t blame yourself, just take responsibility and move on to make things better.
Taking responsibility for everything in your life puts your life back under your control. And it is liberating.
If a friend does something terrible to you which causes you harm, don’t blame the friend for your misfortune, blame only hurts you and gives them control over your feelings, just take responsibility that you chose to have that friend and make a decision of where to go next. And that will probably be either to forgive your friend, or dump him. Either way you move on and don’t worry about it. Don’t blame yourself either. This is just as destructive and unnecessary. Taking responsibility is not the same as blame.
You also have to make a point of not taking responsibility for other people’s feelings or thoughts. This doesn’t of course mean that you don’t have to care about them, it just means that you treat them the best that you can, and then it’s up to them how they feel about you or themselves. You can never change people’s feelings.
There will always be precious snowflakes that get offended over the smallest thing. That is their problem and not yours. You don’t need to worry and get anxious because they are offended. It’s on them.
You treat everyone the way you want to be treated, and take responsibility for that, then you can give up taking responsibility for how they react to it. That’s up to them.
It’s time to stop being an Ambassador for everyone else, and start being an Ambassador for you.
Your anxiety will thank you for it.
