What are Your Mantras to Get You Through Anxiety, Panic, Stress, Despair and/or Impending Doom?

Title says it all. Please, Dopers, share your words of wisdom.

I think I know what you mean.
There’s this phrase “just do it textbook” that seems to pop up when some of those feelings arise. For me, it signifies a need to get back to basics, think through basic steps, absolve myself of the need to have an individual or novel or artistic approach. I use it snowboarding and biking too - cornering becomes a methodical process of sequential simple events.
You wouldn’t believe how much effort is devoted to this topic in university today. Might just be that the quarter is coming to a close and many people are feeling The Panic.

progress not perfection

It’s all in the mind; just carry on.

Whenever such a feeling pops up, it’s always better to connect to a task at hand, and start taking a small step towards desired results - stuff of the negative mind never results in that, so better start working. As one of my tutors said - if you ever experience a designer’s block, it’s always better to start drawing lines / curves towards something than to analyze the why and how of your feelings/experiences.

Perspective.

(and sometimes therapy)

I think different cultures clearly manage this differently and I certainly struggle with this frequently. When things are going objectively well, I often find myself most easily stressed about work, projects and other things often out of my control while ignoring things like my health, family, etc which are easy to take for granted. It often isn’t until something kicks me in the head and reminds me that this hurdle is objectively unimportant in the grand scheme of my life. I do not expect I am going to look back in 30 years and remember that 1 project deliverable I worked on that one time and how it changed my life. I’m proud of my patents and design awards but they ultimately make zero impact to who I am or how I feel.

Similarly I’ve had many periods of profound loss that the only real way to move forward is to take small steps like people have said. Some people use the “most important thing” concept to allow you to better focus your energy on at least 1 thing that will be positive and proactive and that will pay dividends in terms of how it makes you feel. Trying to accomplish 10 things and then failing at all of them inevitably makes you feel worse.

Of course, everything happens for a reason. Whether it’s good or bad, everything comes into your life for a reason, even though at the time, something might seem to come into your life to hurt you. It is only natural to feel like things are not meant to happen this way – people are not meant to leave, you are not meant to get rejected, accidents are not meant to happen – and if you had done something differently, the situation might have turned out different.

However, as time has passed, you realize that things were supposed to happen the way they did because one event led to another. People come into your life to teach you something. Things that seemed horrible, painful, or unfair at the time happened for a reason. And in reflection, you realize that they happened to help you become stronger.

But when I’m really in panic, I quote the great philosopher Bill Murray, “It Just Doesn’t Matter”, and then eat my favorite cbd chocolate bar

My goodness, what a well-done and authentic ad campaign for cbd chocolate.

wow, that was a long way to go to set up. spam account… I fixed the link for you. :smiley:

Sh*t like this makes me want to go away and never come back. Like I did with the Tour de France once all my favorite riders started getting popped for doping. Turn it off forever.

Just the opposite for me. Nihilism gets me through the day.

Hey man, we try our best to catch all the spammers, but don’t forget to cut us volunteers some slack if one gets through. We do the best we can but we are all working design jobs too :slight_smile:

Just point them out if we miss them and we will drop the ban hammer.

I am sorry - I meant nothing toward the moderators or the site. Just frustrated seeing the inevitable spam (or disinfo) slip in undetected, executed better and more invisibly all the time. At least Core77 attempts to do something about it; FB is a bunch of hot air “ohhhh its really really difficult”.

no worries, I get that it is frustrating… trust me, I know first hand. For every spam post you see there are probably 50 to 100 that we already deleted. We have a pretty good system in place for screening new members now. I have to manually approve members. On average I’m blocking about 3-5 per day. It is tedious but it prevents most from ever even having valid accounts. Sometimes a savvy one gets through.

Not trying to “woe is me” it up over here, just explaining some of the behind the scenes volunteer work going on. It is worth it to keep the community running though.

Yeah - to be fair to the mods this guy had 17 rando posts including introducing himself. It’s hard because generally these aren’t even bots any more, just people getting paid a nickel to infiltrate and post crap over a period of days.

Or maybe he was a real designer and just loved CBD chocolate.

We should all discuss over a warm cup of Folgers Organic instant coffee. :smiley:

LOL

I was on the fence about him, but with designers you never know, might just be an odd ball. :smiley: … like the rest of us.


just deleted one with a UFC livestream… if you want the link, let me know…

Its the sneakiness of 17 random posts that end up with … essentially an advertisement, that gets my goat. Not frustrated that the mods didn’t recognize it - I didn’t recognize it either, and I’d trust the mods 10x more than myself to sniff this out. Its just creepy. I don’t like being commodified, can’t stand the idea of being manipulated without knowing. Core77 is literally one of the three internet-social things I participate in (Strava and LinkedIn being the other two.)

It is super creepy. Strange days we are living in my friend.

I heard that the ‘I am successful and I deserve it mantra’ works very well and there are some crazies that shout that stuff underneath their morning showers. I don’t know, I haven’t done affirmations much. Doesn’t it all revolve around a self-concept that no one cares about anyway?