Summary of How to stop feeling anxious about anxiety | Tim Box | TEDxFolkestone

00:00:00 - 00:15:00

In this TED talk, Tim Box discusses how to overcome anxiety by learning to work with it instead of trying to get rid of it. He argues that anxiety is important, but there are two groups of people who don't experience it: the first group is composed of those who are dead, and the second group is composed of psychopaths. Box explains that when you listen to your crew with kindness and positive thinking, they do their best work.

• 00:00:00 Tim Box discusses how he overcame his own anxiety by learning to work with and understand it instead of trying to get rid of it. He argues that anxiety is important, but there are two groups of people who don't experience it: the first group is composed of those who are dead, and the second group is composed of psychopaths.
• 00:05:00 Anxiety is an emotion, and every emotion is important. People go to doctors to treat anxiety because they believe it is an illness, and this creates anxiety. The analogy Tim Box uses is that of a ship with a captain and a crew. The captain is the logical, rational part of the mind, and the crew is the subconscious. The captain knows where the ship is going and has a fair idea of how it will get there, but the crew is in charge of all of the ship's automatic responses. For example, if we believe something is dangerous, our crew might trigger the feeling of fear. This feeling will encourage us to move away from the danger and return to comfort. If we believe we've been wronged, a member of our crew might trigger anger. This emotion will energize and draw our focus towards taking whatever action is necessary to right the wrong. Anxiety is just one emotion among many that are triggered by danger or wrongness.
• 00:10:00 The speaker shares that anxiety is the emotion that tells us when something is too important to simply lose focus of. He shares that when you listen to your crew with kindness and positive thinking, they do their best work.
• 00:15:00 This TED talk by Tim Box discusses how to accept anxiety as a part of the human experience and how to deal with it. Box explains that while anxiety can be a difficult and persistent feeling, it is real and should be treated as such. The first step towards overcoming anxiety is to accept it as a part of who we are.