This past week I read Redefining Anxiety by Dr. John Delony. Here are the three biggest lessons I got from the book along with my top 3 pieces of advice I would give someone about anxiety:

Top 3 Lessons

Anxiety is just an alarm telling us that something is wrong. When we’re anxious, that means that something isn’t quite right in our “ecosystem”, as Dr. Delony puts it. It means that there is something we need to change about our environment.

Put out the fire. Don’t disable the alarm.

Anxiety is not a medical condition. Medical professionals have reduced anxiety to a medical condition/diagnosis. Here’s the problem with that: When a doctor tells you that you have an anxiety “disorder”, you immediately start to believe that anxiety is simply a part of your identity, which it isn’t. Again, it’s only an alarm.

What the doctor will then do is give you anxiety medication to fight it off. What that medication is doing, simply put, is silencing the alarm. With no alarm, we can’t detect “fires”, or changes we need to make in our environment.

Dr. Delony does touch on the utility of medication to reduce the sound of those alarms temporarily so you can make necessary changes. However, medication isn’t the solution. You are.

Anxiety is not a destiny. There are short and long-term solutions to help with anxiety, which Dr. Delony goes into in the book. With the right changes to your “ecosystem” and with human connection, the alarms will quiet and you can have more peace in your life.

Top 3 Pieces of Advice

1. If you’re feeling anxious, take inventory of your ecosystem and target the things that need to change.
2. If you’re trying to “do it all”, stop. Reduce your goals and priorities to the few most important things at a time.
3. Strengthen and deepen relationships with good, supportive, and loving people. As Dr. Delony says in his book, “connection heals anxiety.”

My wife and I went to Burgess Orchards in Alpine, UT to get some of their famous ice cream sundaes!

Burgess Orchards grows a variety of fruits, but they’re most famous for their peaches and apples.

They have a little shack next to their warehouse that sells shakes, sundaes, and slushies with fresh fruit.

I got their Apple Pie Sundae, and my wife got their Peach Sundae.

Best way to eat fruit. Ever.

I used a new method for remembering what I read from books.

After watching this video from Tiago Forte’s YouTube channel, I decided to be more proactive in converting the knowledge I gain from books into personal life lessons and actionable advice.

Here’s a quick summary of the note-taking method I learned:

• As you read, underline or highlight meaningful passages.
• Create your own “table of contents” on a blank (or mostly blank) page in the front of the book.
• After finishing the book, write down the top three lessons you learned in the back on a blank (or mostly blank) page.
• After writing down the top three personal lessons you learned, write down three pieces of actionable advice on a separate page.

Here’s an example from the book I just finished, Redefining Anxiety: