It can help to shift from long-range certainty-seeking to values-based navigation. Instead of asking, “Will this matter in 50 years?” try asking, “What matters to me now, and how can I build a life that honors that?” This is a core insight from acceptance-based approaches to anxiety. When we loosen our grip on specific outcomes and orient ourselves toward what we value, we can become more resilient and sustain our motivation. Values travel with us, and they’re what allow us to keep pivoting as circumstances change.
A friend of mine was a social worker in senior leadership for a national hotline that was a resource for youth who were struggling with problems.
Over the years, the nature of the calls shifted away from typical teenage problems around parents, friends, school, dating etc.
The number 1 call coming from the teens was about a sense that there was no future and that older generations were engaging in gaslighting youth about how things are still ok.
For my friend, this posed a major dilemma because it became increasingly difficult to obtain the essential operating fund donations. How do you ask for funding from older generations who had a strong desire to avoid hearing that message?
I hate this timeline
I remember reading an article is a pop psychology magazine talking about the emergence of what was dubbed “climate anxiety”. The APA decided it did not belong in the DSM-V because it was not a mental illness, rather a natural healthy response to an overwhelmingly damaging and intractable threat.
Basically, take a few points from your intellect stat and dump them into agility.
Or just dump them. (Drugs and Alcohol) /s
Dump them into *meditation, but yeah agility can be a form of that.
If the going gets tough, the tough get going.
