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                                     The Evolution of Anxiety

Good evening or good morning dear reader. And welcome to my world for another week. Easter is here with us & already we can reflect on another three month period of our lives. Personally, I love the Easter period, time for reading, writing, relaxing & reflection. I wish to take a little more of your time this week, & given the long weekend if you are able to bear with me on a longer missive than usual & pretty much a guest commentary from James Clear. So, sit back & relax…

Let us pretend for a moment you are a giraffe.
You live on the grasslands of the African Savannah. You have a neck which is 7 feet long (2.1 meters). Every now & then, you spot a group of humans driving around on a safari taking pictures of you.

But it is not just your neck & their cameras separating you from the humans. Perhaps the biggest difference between you & your giraffe friends & the humans taking your picture is nearly every decision you make provides an immediate benefit to your life.

  • When you are hungry, you walk over & munch on a tree.
  • When a storm rolls across the plains, you take shelter under the brush.
  • When you spot a lion stalking you, & your friends, you run away.
On any given day, most of your choices as a giraffe ~ like what to eat or where to sleep or when to avoid a predator ~ make an immediate impact on your life. You live in what researchers call an Immediate Return Environment because your actions deliver immediate benefits. Your life is strongly oriented toward the present moment.

Now, let’s flip the script & pretend you are one of the humans vacationing on safari. Unlike the giraffe, humans live in what researchers call a Delayed Return Environment.

Most of the choices you make today will not benefit you immediately. If you do a good job at work today, you will get your weekly, fortnight, or monthly pay. If you save money now, you will have enough for retirement later. Many aspects of modern society are designed to delay rewards until some point in the future.

This is true of our problems as well. While a giraffe is worried about immediate problems like avoiding lions & seeking shelter from a storm, many of the problems humans worry about are problems of the future.

For example, while bouncing around the Savannah in your Jeep, you might think, “This safari has been a lot of fun. It would be cool to work as a park ranger & see giraffes every day. Speaking of work, is it time for a career change? Am I really doing the work I was meant to do? Should I change jobs?”

Unfortunately, living in a Delayed Return Environment tends to lead to chronic stress & anxiety for humans. Why? Because your brain was not designed to solve the problems of a Delayed Return Environment.

The Evolution of the Human Brain developed into its current form while humans still lived in an Immediate Return Environment. The earliest remains of modern humans ~ known as Homo sapiens, are approximately 200,000 years old. Apparently, it is only recently—during the last 500 years or so ~ our society has shifted to a predominantly Delayed Return Environment. The pace of change has increased exponentially compared to prehistoric times. In the last 100 years we have seen the rise of the car, the airplane, the television, the personal computer, & Internet. Nearly everything which makes up our daily life has been created in a very small window of time.
 
A lot can happen in 100 years. From the perspective of evolution, however, 100 years is nothing. The modern human brain spent hundreds of thousands of years evolving for one type of environment (immediate returns) & in the blink of an eye the entire environment changed (delayed returns). Your brain was designed to value immediate returns.

This evolution of anxiety therefore, has created the mismatch between our old brain, & our new environment therefore has a significant impact on the amount of chronic stress & anxiety we experience today.

Thousands of years ago, when humans lived in an Immediate Return Environment, stress & anxiety were useful emotions because they helped us take action in the face of immediate problems.
For example:
  • A lion appears across the plain > you feel stressed > you run away > your stress is relieved.
  • A storm rumbles in the distance > you worry about finding shelter > you find shelter > your anxiety is relieved.
  • You have not had a drink of water today > you feel stressed & dehydrated > you find water > your stress is relieved.
This is how our brain evolved to use worry, anxiety & stress. Anxiety was an emotion to help protect humans in an Immediate Return Environment. It was built for solving short-term, acute problems. There was no such thing as chronic stress because there are not really chronic problems in an Immediate Return Environment.

Interestingly, researchers have found no evidence wild animals experience chronic stress. As Duke University professor Mark Leary put it, “A deer may be startled by a loud noise & take off through the forest, but as soon as the threat is gone, the deer immediately calms down & starts grazing. And it does not appear to be tied in knots the way many people are.” When you live in an Immediate Return Environment, you only have to worry about acute stressors. Once the threat is gone, the anxiety subsides.

Today we face different problems. Will I have enough money to pay bills next month? Will I get the promotion at work or remain stuck in my current job? Will I repair my broken relationship? Problems in a Delayed Return Environment can rarely be solved right now in the present moment.

So, what to do about it? One of the greatest sources of anxiety in a Delayed Return Environment is the constant uncertainty. There is no guarantee working hard in school will get you a job. There is no promise that investments will go up in the future. There is no assurance that going on a date will land you a soulmate. Living in a Delayed Return Environment means you are surrounded by uncertainty.

So what can you do? How can you thrive in a Delayed Return Environment which creates so much stress & anxiety? The first thing you can do is measure something. You cannot know for certain how much money you will have in retirement, but you can remove some uncertainty from the situation by measuring how much you save each month. You cannot be sure you will get a job after a university degree, but you can track how often you reach out for employment. You cannot predict when you find love, but you can pay attention to how many times you introduce yourself to someone new.
 
The act of measurement takes an unknown quantity & makes it known. When you measure something, you immediately become more certain about the situation. Measurement will not magically solve your problems, but it will clarify the situation, pull you out of the black box of worry & uncertainty, & help you get a grip on what is actually happening.

Furthermore, one of the most important distinctions between an Immediate Return Environment and a Delayed Return Environment is rapid feedback. Animals are constantly getting feedback about the things causing them stress. As a result, they actually know whether or not they should feel stressed. Without measurement you have no feedback.

The second thing you can do is “shift your worry” from the long-term problem to a daily routine to solve the problem.
  • Instead of worrying about living longer, worry about taking a walk each day.
  • Instead of worrying about whether your child will get a university degree, worry about how much time they spend studying today.
  • Instead of worrying about losing enough weight for the wedding, worry about cooking a healthy dinner tonight.
The key insight to this strategy work is making sure your daily routine both rewards you right away (immediate return) & resolves your future problems (delayed return). Yet another reason to focus on the system & not the goal.
Here are the three examples from my life:
  • Writing. When I publish an article, the quality of my life is noticeably higher. Additionally, I know if I write consistently, then my business will grow & time permitting, I will publish another book. By focusing my attention on writing each day, I increase my well-being (immediate return) while also working toward my future (delayed return).
  • Lifting. I experienced a huge shift in well-being when I learned to fall in love with exercise. The act of going to the my Riverside Pool 4~5 times weekly brings joy to my life (immediate return) & I also believe it also leads to better long-term health (delayed return).
  • Reading. I get a sense of accomplishment whenever I do my daily reading (immediate return) & I become a more interesting person & the practice helps me produce relevant work & develop into an interesting person (delayed return).
Our brains did not evolve in a Delayed Return Environment, but this regretfully is where we find ourselves today. My hope is, by measuring the things important to you, & shifting your worry to daily practices the changes will pay off in the long-run, you can reduce some of the uncertainty & chronic stress inherent in modern society.

Thank you my friends for taking the time to be with me once again & reading if you managed this week. And I hope my journey may encourage you also. I appreciate there will be many of you working this weekend, my thoughts & blessings are with you.

Until next weekend, this is Kenn Butler in Paradise, Nelson, with my best wishes & to you all, a splendid weekend & another short week.
 
 
 
www.kennbutler.com
 
 

 
The distinction between Immediate Return Environments & Delayed Return Environments can be found in The Mysteries of Human Behavior by Mark Leary. The  course I am advised is fascinating & definitely recommend if you are interested in psychology & human behavior
 
Research has shown the ability to delay gratification is one of the primary drivers of success. It is interesting to note delaying gratification is both the opposite of what your brain evolved to do & the skill matching the Delayed Return Environment we live in today? For millions of years, humans survived because we were wired for immediate gratification (eat now, take shelter now, have sex now), but today the opposite strategy helps us achieve “success.” I doubt we will know in my lifetime, but it will be interesting to see if delaying gratification is merely a tactic favoured by our current society that will fade away in the long-run or if it is a sustainable long-term pressure that will shift the course of our evolution.

Even many of the acute problems we face today are very different from the acute problems of Immediate Return Environments. Consider turbulence on an airplane. This is an immediate, short-term problem which makes many travellers feel stressed & anxious. Unlike acute problems in the wild, however, there is nothing you can do about it except sit there. When you saw a lion in the grass, you could at least run. But our environment has changed so much many of the acute problems we face, we can no longer take action on. We cannot resolve the stress ourselves. We can only sit & worry.
 
Inspired & compiled from the weekly blog by James Clear Behavioural Psychology, Cognitive Science & Neuropsychology, he writes about the science of human behavior & how to build better habits. Thousands of people have attended his online seminars on Habits, Willpower & Procrastination.


 

Kenn Butler
Director
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