Written around 2000, it is surprising how many of his verses are relevant today. These are translations of the original, so have picked up some contemporary interpretation.
"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment."
"The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts."
"You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength."
Anxiety comes from a lack of competence, confidence, or self-awareness. Lack any or all (and we all lack them to some extent) and you’re more nervous.
Get experience talking, presenting, comfort with how you look and sound, practice humor, gauge if you can maintain an audience. These are all practicable things. You can work on them.
I think meditation or mindfulness or any therapy tends to be good for realizing the importance of this, and perhaps some peripheral issues, but would never beat the cause of anxiety because the anxiety is rational. If someone asked me to fly a plane I’d be anxious - and that’s a good response, at a normal level, it means I’d have more cortisol and norepinephrine to react quicker and pay attention. But it’s not great for social things because it makes you shaky, so people see it as more of a fault than a good thing.
A lot of people today want to subscribe to “believe and you can” or “it’s all in your mind” type mantras but to me it’s really backwards to something like, “it’s ok that you can’t, accept it, and with hard work you can.”
This is oversimplified, anxiety isn’t just about social situations. My anxiety is none of these but comes from an overwhelming awareness of my own mortality.
I don’t feel like I’m going to die today or tomorrow, but the knowledge that I will die one day and wipe out all memory of me as I am now is permanently terrifying to me. I really believe that almost everyone else has some part of their brain to suppress this fact, that I am missing.
It’s still hard for me. But I think the biggest difference is that I have shifted my focus more towards the things that are here and now, and that I can actually control, and focusing attention on those things naturally means spending less time thinking about things that are far away or beyond my control. (Ie, applying attention elsewhere is not the same as distraction.)
Not super coherent, but I hope some part of that is helpful.