Thought Shrapnel

This article is from a series that Arthur C. Brooks has in The Atlantic entitled ‘How to Build a Life’. He includes four bits of advice but I’m sharing this mainly so I can share my own approach to dealing with general background anxiety and existential angst.

First, I found several years ago that taking L-Theanine tablets every day is a gamechanger. I recommend them to anyone who will listen. And then, recently, I’ve found that running almost every day makes a huge difference. I literally can’t be anxious while running.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a handy tool to blunt everyday mental pain a bit? Not to become numb to life—just to take the edge off, especially when it is interfering with normal life, the way you can swallow a Tylenol when your back hurts. It turns out that there are safe and healthy methods to do exactly this, including taking the same sort of painkiller for what ails your body and your mind. And that’s only the beginning.