A 45lb plate at Planet Fitness (cheap gym) and a 45lb plate at Equinox (expensive gym) are both 45lbs.

You can have the goal of getting in shape and do it any number of ways. The mechanism doesn't matter. The result does.

It doesn't matter if you lift at Planet Fitness or go to Equinox. What actually builds muscle and gets you in shape is the work of lifting the plate—wherever that plate may be.

If the result we want is to become less anxious, all that matters is the work to get there. Focusing on the behaviors that lead to the outcome of less anxiety.

What are those behaviors?

Perhaps we can approach that question from inversion and get at the issue Charlie Munger style.

Let's lay out a roadmap of behaviors we would engage in if we wanted to keep our anxiety firmly entrenched.

One of the most common ways people cope with anxiety is distracting themselves.

We've become master self distractors in fact. And do it for all kinds of emotions, sensations, or most anything we judge as bad and don't like.

Other ways people cope include numbing, running away, medicating, blaming, and victimizing, but for the purposes of this article let's stick with distraction.

First, we become habituated to distracting ourselves from ourselves through a variety of ways (mostly technological). These days, this conditioning starts in childhood and as we can already see from the data, mental health outcomes have plummeted in the last twenty years in large part due to early onboarding of screens.

When a strong sensation comes up like anxiety, instead of looking at our experience and questioning our reality, we turn on Netflix or YouTube, or drown ourselves in doom scrolling social media.

If those things don't work we turn to numbing ourselves through medication or substances. We're told we shouldn't have to deal with anything negative and no matter what we're dealing with there's always a pill for that.

As a result, our emotional intelligence atrophies to the point where we no longer have the capacity to deal with strong feelings in a healthy way.

At the same time, our society encourages us to become more and more comfortable—the goal is to make life easier through automation, technology, like AI, and convenience which damages our resilience even more.

These two phenomena get mixed in with a potent anxiety supercharger—instant access to information. Our "always on" newsfeed makes us either feel like we aren't good enough, because we're comparing our lives to someone else's', or like the world is going to end because we're aware of every heinous crime across the globe at all times.

What results is a catastrophe for us and a lottery win for anxiety.

Our mental landscape is chaos. Anxiety enjoys the show.

Even if someone has the wherewithal to acknowledge they have anxiety, resources for help often prescribe solutions that leave us dependent on something outside of us. If that something becomes unavailable, either temporarily or permanently, we're right back to our natural inclination to distract ourselves.

We think a weekend retreat in Cabo with 5am sun salutations, deep chakra energy work, 4 hour yoga meditation sessions and somatic recharging elixirs from Amazonian jungle leaves will make us less anxious.

We pay for the best therapists, expensive fringe drug therapies, or try a shiny new anti-anxiety technique we heard on a podcast for 2 days and give up.

We hop around from coach to program to book believing that consuming more information will help.

These are all distractions from the work.

Don't get me wrong, any number of those techniques above could be a part of a larger process that combats anxiety, the important reframe is not abdicating our own responsibility in the quest to feel better while at the same time exhibiting consistency in our practice.

Improving our experience of anxiety requires focus. It requires patience. And it requires time.

A lifetime of conditioning is working against you. Do you really think a weekend retreat is going to fix everything?

If you were attempting to climb Mount Everest, you wouldn’t half ass your training and planning. Yet a critical mistake many people make is thinking anxiety doesn’t require the same level of commitment and preparation.

We half ass our attempts to feel better, then keep ourselves distracted with the idea of improving, but never actually improve.

Back to the gym analogy.

Let's imagine you have the goal of getting in shape.

Doing all of the things above is like paying for an expensive gym membership at Equinox. Decent first step.

But then you think the next thing to do is go buy gym clothes. And a fancy fitness watch. Maybe if I have the right shoes that will help.

I'll tell all my friends about the new gym membership I have and my intention to get in shape.

Then once I get to the gym, I need to warm up. Once I stretch I realize I'm tired. You know, I'm not really feeling it today, I'll start tomorrow.

Taking this approach with our anxiety leaves us firmly in its grip. If we truly want to be free, we must show up and do the work. For a long time.

Just like we aren't going to get in shape in 1 week going to the gym, we aren't going to cure our anxiety in 1 month by reciting mantras.

Similarly, if we stop going to the gym we lose muscle and our health deteriorates.

If we stop focusing on our anti-anxiety practices, the same will happen. Anxiety is a weed in the mind and will grow back if not diligently attended to.

The behaviors that lead to less anxiety are not outside of us. They are within and require taking a courageous stand to turn and face our own experience. The equivalent to going to the gym and actually lifting the plate.

• Adopting a practitioner mindset and committing to showing up daily.
• Cutting off the fuel of fearful thoughts anxiety uses to keep us trapped in a cycle of suffering.
• Developing an iron-forged tool-kit we can rely on and then practicing it over and over.
• Cultivating qualities that make us proud of who we are to build discipline, acceptance, and gratitude.

Only then will we stop the habit of distraction and free ourselves from anxiety.