With NextLetter, each issue serves as your personal practice for crafting your future and brings you one step closer to your next opportunity. Together, we’ll go beyond predicting tomorrow—we’ll create it.

If you prefer to listen to this NextLetter, click here.

Here are the previous NextLetters you might want to read if you haven’t already: Digital Detox, Courage To Face Your Future, and First Days of School.

The Simple Way to Turn Angst into Opportunity  

In language, we often assign words some kind of value—they’re positive, negative, neutral, or “it’s determined by your point of view.”

For most, for example, happy feels positive, death leans to the negative, and hat might be neutral, while cats, soccer, and sauerkraut would largely depend on your experiences and how you feel about such things.

As we think about a future-ready mindstate, one challenge is overcoming our fears (and the complacency that comes from them), which keep us spinning our wheels, rather than moving forward. One of those feelings—angst, a word with German roots that has existed since the 8^th century—succinctly captures our stresses and insecurities.

Angst, I would safely guess, has a negative value for most of us: It encapsulates our nerves, our jitters, our fears, and our uneasiness about whatever situation lies ahead.

I often find that one way to develop a future-ready mindstate is to reframe these negative-value concepts—and use them to take action. A parallel concept is that of pain: Most of us don’t love physical or emotional pain, and most of us prefer to avoid feeling it. But biologically, pain is a signal that tells your brain to make a change (get your hand off the hot pan) or to take action (ending a toxic relationship).

We should think of angst in a similar way.

Instead of assigning angst a negative value that paralyzes us from moving forward, what if we thought of angst as a call from our brain to take action toward growth?

A signal, not an enemy.

What if angst didn’t act as the handcuffs that lock you into inaction, but rather worked like a quiet hero who unlocks the cuffs, urging you to move forward, asking you to create, and motivating you to ask, “What’s next?”

Quote I Love

Unbottle Your Angst

If you begin to think of angst as an invitation to explore uncharted territory, you’re better equipped to handle the stressors that may be attached to your uneasiness.

The way to do it? Break your angst into manageable steps by starting with small and doable experiments, which removes the all-or-nothing pressure that often comes with angst. Next time you feel angst rising, try this:

Step 1: Tell a close friend or someone you trust you’d like to talk through something weighing on your mind.

Step 2: Share the source of your angst, and notice how vocalizing the fear changes your relationship to it.

Step 3: Invite your friend to reflect to you what they heard. Sometimes hearing your own thoughts in someone else's voice provides clarity.

Step 4: Together, brainstorm and identify one small step you can take to face the angst and move forward. Your friend can offer insights you may not have considered.

Step 5: Commit to checking back in with them once you’ve taken that step. Accountability is key in turning angst into action. 

Another option if you’d like to do it by yourself: Close your eyes and visualize the thing that’s causing the angst. Now imagine stepping through a door to a place where the unknown resides. Take a deep breath and feel both the excitement and fear of the future. Now ask yourself if there’s one action—even a very small one—you can take to get you closer toward the future. Write it down. Watch your angst transform into momentum.

Big Problems, Small Solutions

I felt all of this tension the moment I turned my ID badge into Google: What had I given up? Though I walked out the door smiling, it was the most angst-ridden decision I ever made. But it also led me to explore and experiment and open up a new future.

You can, of course, apply this approach to large decisions like the one I made about my career or everyday angst you encounter. I had a friend confide in me that he was deeply scared of flying. Instead of avoiding it, he took small steps—reading about aviation safety, meditating during takeoff, talking to the flight attendants. Soon, he flipped his anxiety into opportunity: Rather than just “not flying,” he managed the stressors enough to literally change his world—by being able to travel to and explore new ones.  

A good metaphor for all of us, isn’t it?

Safety in Silence

Try this simple grounding practice to remind yourself of the safety and stability you have. Spend a few minutes just breathing and feeling, allowing yourself to settle into the sense of safety that surrounds you.

With Your Body: Sit or lie down in a quiet space.

With Your Senses: Feel your body against the surface, and feel your feet on the floor or the weight of the blanket.

With Your Lungs: Take three slow, deep breaths, allowing yourself to relax into the moment with each exhale.

With Your Words: Silently or out loud, name things that make you feel safe—the quiet of the room, the warmth of the room, etc…

With Your Mind:Let the physical sensations remind you that, right now, you are safe. Let the tension melt away as you focus on the simple, comforting presence of your environment.

You’re Up Next!

Every NextLetter, I’ll offer up a new approach to thinking about the future. Look for some fun ways of thinking about what’s next for you! 

Reader Response to the last NextLetter on a Digital Detox: “I love this reflection. It’s exactly my experience of the contrast between retreat practice and daily life with screens.” –Robert Waldinger, MD, Harvard professor and author of The Good Life

My Response to the Response: Daily life with screens. Talk about something that can give you angst. Apply some of the practices from above to help you deal with digital overload. How? Take action. Unfollow the accounts that can drive you crazy, and explore new people that inspire you, make you think, and help you dream. On Instagram, some of my favorites include: @danharris, @rickrubin, @drbeckyatgoodinside, @neilstrauss, @nationalparkservice, @santa_woodz.

Ask and You Shall Receive

Have a question for Frederik about innovation, creativity, or how to create a better future? Hit reply and let me know what’s on your mind.  

Let me know what causes you angst and how you handle it. Respond to this email, and I may share your experience in a future NextLetter. My new book, What’s Next is Now, is available now.