5 Great Pointers To Having Less Anxiety

Anybody who claims to know the source to endless happiness is a clown. If you’re a sensitive, thoughtful person, you should have discovered by now that pure happiness is sort of unrealistic. You will feel regret, sadness and anxiety, regardless of what you achieve or accomplish. This is natural, and I think the key is to learn how to cope with it, not long to dismantle it.

That said, here are a handful of pointers that I hope will allow you to curtail anxiety stemming from things that are not natural, and do not need to be there.

1. Have good sheets on your bed.

For the longest time, I slept on these sheets that were made of this thick, rough cotton that were always so hot. Any side I turned, any angle I tried, I started sweating. It was as if my body absorbed all the heat like black clothing on a summer day. I’m an idiot, so it took me about a month or two to replace these sheets. Sleeping, typically one of my favorite things to do, became more like work. IF you’re not having a great time during the eight hours you seriously don’t have to care about anything, when are you going to?

2. Put extra time in the meter.

I know most people on this site live in New York and are way too interesting to drive cars, but I’m only semi-interesting and I settle for living in LA. A part of this life is being in your car for a disturbing amount of hours per week, looking for parking spots, and then getting into these enormously self-bickering battles where I must predict how long I’m going to park like a psychic. 30, or 45? I go back and forth: the greedy, evil voice saying—“Ah, save that quarter, take the risk!” The other—“play it safe. Tickets are $65. You don’t know what might come up.” I hope, at some point, I having these inner conflicts over quarters. Quarters. Four of them make a dollar. Four of those make a cappuccino. Put a lot of money, sit back, forget the meter and enjoy your coffee. Who knows, you might pay for fifteen minutes, and on the fourteenth minute you see an angel in a summer dress walk in. But this time, she actually talks to you. After you chat for some minutes, are you really going to run out of that shop, throw in some quarters and expect to continue that conversation? No. She is going to think you’re strange. Put in the quarters. Put all the quarters you have.

3. Keep a healthy stash of eyeglasses fabric.

One thing you do often, if my scientific research proves true, is use your eyes a lot. You look at stuff. Monitors, people, and other stuff. And you do it a lot. You would preferably like to spend those hours not having to overcome clots of discoloration, speckles of dust, and fingerprints. Using your t-shirt or your breath won’t do the job. They make it worse. Keep some fabric around. Cleaning your lenses and starting fresh is like taking a shower after a stint in a sauna. Simply wonderful.

4. Buy millions of socks.

Look, I don’t know why, you don’t know why, mom doesn’t know why, nobody knows why. But socks disappear, and there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s tragic. Humanity will never know what it is that warranted these sorts of evil games socks play on us. What I do know, though, is that it sucks not having any, or having to use socks twice. I know some men are, but I’m not sold on the inside-out method. Far from it. So, when you do, buy millions. Racks on racks of sacks.

5. Get off Facebook.

Part of the reason Facebook is so popular is because it plays into our insecure human nature. It allows you to spy on those you feel less than, greater than, or equal to without consequence. Doing it for this reason—which is not the only reason were on Facebook so much, but one of them—will kill you. It is all, ultimately, a never-ending quest to discover your status amongst the people you know. The more you’re on it, the more you think about it, and the more you think, the more you stink. I mean, look at me.