Questioner: How should one reduce overthinking about situations and about the future? There is so much unnecessary anxiety in students.
Acharya Prashant: Work! To be anxious, you need to be blessed with a lot of spare time. How do you manage time to indulge in anxiety?
It is an indulgence to be anxious, worried. There is subtle enjoyment in all that. “I am worried. Something great is about to happen.” One is subtly sipping some juice. It's a covert kind of fun — anxiety, worry. May I say it's related to narcissism? When you say, "Something bad can happen to me, either right now or in the future", aren't you saying you are very important, at least to yourself? "Some really big misfortune is going to fall on me!" Indirectly you are asserting that you are so big that you can attract a big misfortune. Are you that big?
Has anything really big ever happened to you? Then how can even a big boulder fall on your head?
But there is pleasure in worry. This will sound strange to many. But stay with it. There is subtle pleasure in worrying. The opposite of this self-centered worry is immersion in action. Immerse yourself in the right action, then where are space and the time to worry? Indeed you are stealing time away from work. So that you can indulge in worries and anxiety and fancy and all kinds. Young people fantasize, don't they? Some fantasize about beautiful, pretty exciting things; others fantasize about scary demons. But fundamentally, it's much the same thing.
