Are You Anxious About Being Anxious?

Mitch Arnold • October 23, 2023

Last week, one of my clients invited me to visit her office, and my reaction, like always whenever I consider going someplace new, was immediate anxiety. I’m not anxious about how she will react to my obvious handicap – I got over that fear decades ago. Now, I just worry if I can navigate the terrain.


Anxiety like that is something that I experience almost daily. Because I’m prone to falls, I must be cautious, and avoid unnecessary risks, but, because I need to experience life, I also must be courageous enough to accept some risk. It’s that fine line that creates the anxiety, and it’s something that all of us face to some degree. The greater challenge is not becoming anxious about being anxious.


There is risk any time we leave our comfort zones. When we apply for a job, ask someone out for a date or try something new, we expose ourselves to risk, and that creates anxiety. Leaving our comfort zones is also necessary to living a full and rewarding life, so we must be willing to accept some risk. Unfortunately, we often choose to avoid risk at any cost, because we know that anxiety comes with any risk, and we don’t want to be anxious.


When we become anxious about being anxious, we slowly strangle the joy out of our lives. The pandemic we lived through a few years back was a stark reminder of that. During that weird time, “experts” recommended, and actually enforced, anxiety. Don’t leave your home unless absolutely necessary, they told us, and if you do leave your home, limit your contact with other people. Some of us heeded that warning, while others accepted whatever risk they were comfortable with, and continued to live their lives. Though I tended toward the latter, I eventually quit looking forward to travel and other outings, as I didn’t want to expose myself to worrying about something getting in the way of those plans. I had become anxious about being anxious.


I experienced something similar with a goal I have had for some time. For the past couple of years, I have wanted to publish a book that I have written once and revised countless times, but publishing a book brings enormous risk and anxiety. It’s much easier to nurture the dream of writing a successful novel than it is to actually put the work out there and see how others react, so I have procrastinated with that final step while obsessively editing the manuscript. I became anxious about being anxious, and that has held me back for far too long.


Inspired by a friend who published his first novel last year, I recently changed my thinking and took the next step by hiring a professional to help me finally put my work into print. Now, I’m not only risking my ego, I’m also risking a significant financial investment. With my money, time and ego tied up in the project, I’m anxious, but no longer anxious about being anxious, and that’s liberating. If all goes according to plan, my book, Marginal, should be available for purchase by the end of the year. It might not win me a Pulitzer or land on a best sellers list, but it wouldn’t even have a chance if I didn’t risk the anxiety that is coming my way.


Our time on this earth is limited, and we shouldn’t limit our enjoyment of that time with unnecessary anxiety. Take that trip. Apply for that dream job. Try a new hobby. Share a hidden talent. Start that business. Things might not work out the way you want, but then again, they might! You’ll never know unless you try. Don’t let anxiety about being anxious keep you from trying.

It's Been Years

By Mitch Arnold • July 27, 2025
When I was a kid growing up in Loup City, I went to Ord at least once per month to visit my grandparents and other relatives, and it wasn’t a trip that I was always eager to make. It wasn’t that I disliked seeing my relatives, but there were other things that I would have rather been doing. I sure couldn’t imagine making that trip on my own volition, but that’s exactly what I did a couple of Saturdays ago. My grandfather has been gone for more than 40 years now, and grandmother, more than 20. I can still remember them vividly, as well as their house and the heaping bowls of fudge and caramel covered ice cream I enjoyed in their kitchen as I listened to Grandpa tell stories between drags on his unfiltered Pall Mall cigarettes. Though I resisted those trips as a kid, if given the chance now, I would love to make one more visit, but time has moved on, and all I have are the memories. I’m a grandpa myself now, and that has given me a new perspective on the fleeting moments that we enjoy with loved ones. Years pass quickly these days, and with each new calendar we pin to the wall, we lose touch with people and places from our past. New people and places come into our lives, and we push aside the past to make room for them. While some of that is necessary and a part of life, I think that it’s also important to stay in touch with our roots. “How long has it been since you’ve seen your uncles?” my wife asked as we began the three-hour trip from Omaha to Ord. “It’s been years,” I replied. We don’t have the family reunions like we used to, and because travel becomes difficult or impossible for older people, we don’t have the opportunities we once had to cross paths with them. If we’re going to see the people and places from our past, we have to make an effort to do so. That’s what I was doing on that Saturday morning. My hometown of Loup City is only a 30-minute drive from Ord and just slightly off the route between Omaha and Ord, so I also took the opportunity to tour the town I hadn’t seen in more than a year. I drove the sleepy streets I once roamed on my bike. I went past the church I attended through childhood, as well as the home I grew up in and the home where my maternal grandparents lived. I stopped at my grandfather's grave and symbolically shared a beer with him. After lunch at the marina at the lake just outside of town, where I spent many summer afternoons boating with my family, I headed to Ord, driving past my aunt and uncle’s farm that I hadn’t seen in more than a decade. The Ord visit with my uncles was brief, but more rewarding than I had imagined. The laughter, smiles and stories were so familiar that it was hard to believe that it had been years since we had seen each other. I even bumped into three cousins that I hadn’t seen in years. As we headed back to Omaha, I thought about those childhood visits that I once resisted and began to appreciate why my parents insisted that we make them. Time is fleeting and waits for no one, but we can’t get so caught up in the present that we forget the past and the people and places that helped shape us into the people we are. If you have been thinking about the people and places from your past, take that as a sign that you need to visit them. Don’t just wait for the next opportunity, make that opportunity happen. You will be glad that you did.

Surviving a Collision with a Garbage Truck

By Mitch Arnold • June 29, 2025
I got hit by a garbage truck the other day, but was able to recover quickly, because it wasn’t the first time it happened, and it won’t be the last. It’s an unfortunate reality that everyone will occasionally run into a garbage truck through no fault of their own. (see ‘The Law of the Garbage Truck” below) One day I hopped in a taxi and we took off for the airport. We were driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car jumped out of a parking space right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his brakes, skidded, and missed the other car by just inches! The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at us. My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. And I mean, he was really friendly. So I asked, ‘Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!’ This is when my taxi driver taught me what I now call, ‘The Law of the Garbage Truck.’ He explained that many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it! Sometimes they’ll dump it on you. Don’t take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Don’t take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets. The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage trucks take over their day. The garbage truck in my latest collision was a prospect who I had never talked to, before picking up the phone and calling him about a position I was helping a client fill. Within seconds of introducing myself, his aggressive tone began to dominate. He demanded that I tell him who my client was and how much they were going to pay. I assured him that I would answer those questions once we determined that his background was a good fit and that he was interested in learning more. Finally, I offered to arrange a call at his convenience, when we could discuss the opportunity further. We never got to that point. After sending him some information on the opportunity, he repeated his earlier demands, this time through text messaging. In our exchange, I was able to determine that his background wasn’t a fit, so I thanked him for his time and asked if he could confidentially refer anyone. He responded by calling me a “god-awful recruiter.” I know that I’m a pretty good recruiter, and was fairly certain that he was a miserable person (garbage truck), but I held off on sharing those opinions with him. Instead, I just backed away, recalling “The Law of the Garbage Truck.” I wasn’t going to spend any more mental energy on him than I already had, and I surely wasn’t going to dump his garbage on someone else. Furthermore, I knew that my faith in humanity would soon be restored when I visited the gym over the lunch hour for my daily workout. Knowing that there are already too many garbage trucks wandering around out there, I try to be just the opposite, and the gym gives me a place to put that effort into practice. Because I appreciate friendly, positive people, I try to be one myself. I attempt to learn the names of the people I routinely see, like the front desk people, custodian and regular members, and I try to make connections with those who are receptive. And, I try to do that all with a smile, regardless of how I feel, even if I’m still stinging from a garbage truck collision. Per usual, the gym atmosphere didn’t disappoint. I exchanged pleasantries with people who expect me to be there at the same time almost every day, and enjoyed conversations that completely erased the garbage truck from my memory. Getting older has taught me that kindness pays dividends, and that even when it can’t save you from garbage truck collisions, it can certainly make them easier to recover from. Take the time to create a refuge of kindness that you can rely on when something like a garbage truck threatens to ruin your day. It’s worth the effort.