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Hey friend,

Some of us can easily dwell on tomorrow far more than today. The economy. Our jobs. Our kids. That feeling of worry or anxiety doesn't always leave when the results come in. For a lot of us, it's a voice that runs all year.

I had one of those voices for most of my adult life. It asked me one question, every hour of every day: Is this the best use of your time?

It asked me on the trampoline with my daughter. On a date with my wife. In the middle of a good meal. I thought it was my superpower. It kept me moving. It sounded like discipline.

Then my blood work came back. My C-reactive protein, a standard marker of inflammation, was 4. Anything over 3 counts as high. I ate well, I exercised, and I felt fine. A blood test can't tell you you're anxious, but it made me look harder at my life. When I did, I found it. I was anxious all the time, and I didn't know it.

That voice never lived in the present. It lived in tomorrow.

This week's podcast is a little different, by the way. I tell that whole story, plus a very old one about a man who ran from tomorrow, in a longer, more story-driven episode. The science today and going forward will still be shared here in my newsletter.

A couple of weeks ago I ran about 100,000 comments from the biggest health shows on YouTube through a sorting tool. I wanted to know what people are really struggling with. The number one answer wasn't weight. It wasn't sleep. It was anxiety. Overthinking. Being always on alert.

One person wrote this:

Hypervigilant means always scanning for what's coming next. I knew that feeling well.

Researchers in London had people play a guessing game where a wrong guess could bring a small electric shock. Their stress, both how they felt and what their bodies showed, peaked when the odds were closest to a coin flip. It wasn't highest when they knew the shock was coming. Stress tracked the uncertainty more than the pain.

I think that explains a lot of us. We can handle hard news. What wears us out is waiting. Refreshing the page. Running the what-ifs at 2 in the morning.

In a sleep lab at Baylor, 57 young adults wrote for 5 minutes before bed. Half wrote down what they'd already done that day. The other half wrote a to-do list for tomorrow. The to-do list group fell asleep about 9 minutes faster, and the more specific the list, the faster they fell asleep.

My suspicion is the voice is mostly trying to hold tomorrow for you. Write it down, and it can finally let go. It's like telling a guard dog, "I've got it. You can lie down."

While you've got the pen out, draw a line down the page. On one side, what you can do something about this week. On the other, what you can't. The election results go on the second side. Calling your neighbor goes on the first.

At Penn State, people with generalized anxiety disorder wrote down their worries for 10 days, then tracked what actually happened over the next month. About 9 out of 10 of their worries never came true.

Your worry voice is confident and loud, and it's usually wrong. So try it yourself. Write the worry down, put a date on it, and check back in a month.

Take the free Flourishing Assessment →

Anxiety about the future lives in the body too. Your heart rate, your breathing, your shoulders up around your ears.

A big review out of Australia pulled together about 1,000 trials and more than 128,000 people. Physical activity lowered anxiety with a medium-sized effect, across a wide range of adults.

At Georgetown, 276 adults with anxiety disorders got either one of the most common anxiety medications or an 8-week mindfulness class: breathing, paying attention, sitting still. The class worked about as well as the medication. If you take a medication, talk with whoever prescribed it before you change anything. But I think it shows stillness is strong medicine.

Sometimes you need a person, too. Cognitive behavioral therapy clearly helps anxiety disorders in placebo-controlled trials. There's no prize for carrying this alone.

And the smallest tool might be the one you'll actually use. Across 12 trials, slow, controlled breathing lowered stress by a small to moderate amount.

About 3,000 years ago there was a man named Elijah. People believed he had a direct line to God. God is my word for it. You might say the divine, the sacred, or whatever's bigger than us. In his day people like Elijah were called prophets: someone believed to be connected to the supernatural, who often spoke truth to power.

Elijah had just had the biggest public win of his life. Then he got one message from the queen. By this time tomorrow, she said, he'd be dead. Nothing had happened yet. It was a threat about the future, and he ran. He walked a whole day into the desert, sat down under a scrubby bush, and asked to die.

Here's what gets my attention. No lecture comes. He sleeps. An angel wakes him and says, "Arise and eat." He eats, sleeps again, and eats again. Sleep and food first. Later, after a wind, an earthquake and a fire, he hears a still small voice. Then he's given a friend, a young farmer named Elisha, so he doesn't go through life alone.

That's body, mind and spirit in one old story. And I think the spirit part has 3 connections: to a Higher Power, to the people around us, and to ourselves when we're alone.

I found the third one on a piece of land we bought in Arizona. The first day there, I climbed to the top of the canyon. I'm not what you'd call a hiker. I huffed. I stopped. I huffed some more. Then I sat on a rock and didn't say a word for an hour. A bird flew by close, and for the first time in my life I heard the sound its wings made pushing the air. When the outside noise stopped, I could finally hear what my own voice had been saying.

The answer to my question turned out to be 2 words: I'm intentional. I plan, and I execute. I settle tomorrow's questions ahead of time, so I don't have to carry them all day. Now when I'm on the trampoline with my daughter, the answer is already settled. Yes. I put it there on purpose.

I changed a few other things too: more omega-3s, better sleep, more movement, more fiber. My markers came down and have stayed down across more than one blood panel since.

1. Write tomorrow down. Five minutes before bed, make a specific to-do list.

2. Draw the line. What you can do something about this week, and what you can't.

3. Date your worries. Write one down and check it in a month.

4. Move every day. A walk outside counts.

5. Breathe before the phone. Tomorrow morning, take 3 slow breaths on the edge of the bed before you check anything. Then if you want to really find some relief in expression - tell one person what your voice has been saying.

What's your voice been saying about the future? And what answer could you give it so it can finally lie down?

Thoughts?

-Jared

P.S. - My wife Baddie Crocker has a beautiful newsletter where she shares her perspectives on tending the land, delicious recipes, women’s health and more.

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P.S. - This newsletter does not provide medical advice. The content, such as graphics, images, text, and all other materials, are provided for reference and educational purposes only. The content is not meant to be complete or exhaustive or to be applicable to any specific individual’s medical condition.

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