Anxiety - how detrimental it is?

When I wanted to write this blog on "Anxiety", the first incident that came to my mind is this. When I was working in Maldives (in a garment company) long back (around 1996), the Director of the company (based in India) used to visit Maldives quite often. Those days, we had to reach the Male' International Airport (situated on a separate island) from the capital island Male', only through normal boats. It takes about 10 minutes from Male' to the airport island. Just across the jetty (where the boats anchor), there was a hotel (which is not there now) in which our Director used to stay. Through the window of the hotel room, we could see the Indian Airlines flight (Trivandrum - Male' - Trivandrum) landing at the airport. Our Director who usually travels in business class needed to report at the check-in counter latest, by 30 minutes before the departure of the flight. The flight normally takes about 60 minutes, to take off from Male' airport (to Trivandrum) after landing. So, only after sighting the landing of the aircraft, our Director vacates the room and takes a boat to the airport. Till such time he used to have consultations with us. Vacating the room, reaching the jetty, waiting for a few minutes for the boat to start and alighting at the airport and reaching the counter take about 25 to 30 minutes. Just in time, he would report at the counter. He never missed the flight. He never had any 'anxiety' of missing the flight. He had such a 'cool head'. "Cool as a cucumber'. 

On the contrary, I have seen many people getting agitated and becoming anxious (desperate feeling) around 2.00 P.M, to get to the railway station to catch a train at 4.50 P.M. The normal time taken to cover the distance from home to the railway station would be only 30 minutes. Even allowing for unexpected hold-ups on the way, it would not take more than 1 hour 30 minutes. Such is their anxiety. They do not mind waiting at the railway station for 2 hours. Of course, it is necessary to plan your travel, with a reasonable margin for untoward incidents. But that does not mean that we should reach the station 2 hours earlier. It is like using a 20mm TMT bar, where you need to use only 8mm bar (for the concrete work). It is sheer waste of money. If we want to be a bit more safer, we can use 10mm bar (not 20mm bar).

It is okay to have occasional anxiety but not chronic anxiety. We all will become jittery while taking a job interview (early on, in our career) or while facing an audience to give a speech (however much we have prepared for it). On such occasions it is normal for everyone to become anxious. But we should try and become normal within a short span of time to enable us perform well. Prolonged anxiety will lead to unnecessary and unexpected detrimental results. We should try to come out of the 'anxiety phase' as soon as possible and apply our cool mind to the situational issue and find a plausible solution.

Some people have the habit of becoming anxious for even small and trivial things and they would start worrying abut it. (What if, I meet with an accident while crossing the road???). That is because of their ingrained worrying nature and fear of failure. Worrying or becoming anxious does not solve any problem. In fact, it would aggravate the intensity of the problem. We must try to control our anxiety as much as possible and think with a cool mind to face the difficult situation. 

Anxiety affects the physical well being as well as the mental health, due to various physiological changes that take place in the body. I am not going into the details (as I don't know them!). So, in order to have better physical and mental health, it is better to behave without anxiety, in any situation.

A 'cool head' can solve any problem, whereas a 'hot head' would spoil everything.