Google, after incredibly intense data gathering and management in the real world of operating in business, has oriented its structure to make sure the employees feel emotional safety. Then and only then can their motivation come out into full bloom.
It turns out that a human being will have to pay attention to the thoughts of not feeling safe and to curing them, for that is our very first priority that has evolved in us. The next priority is, of course, to survive better - meaning to add good feeling stuff into our lives that have us feel good about ourselves and our lives. (See Am I Safe?)
It is difficult to do much of a job in the second priority if our minds are occupied at some level above a minimal degree with the first priority. In fact, it is, at times, not a winnable battle.
Our "elephant" which we ride through life has to eat and go its own primitive ways and to feel safe enough so that it can do what we want it to do - get us to where we want to be in terms of happiness, fulfillment, satisfaction, strength, etc.
This is a big topic with many different aspects to it, but the first part of it is to correct one's beliefs such that we are not concerned in the present moment about dangers and threats. Yes, it is helpful to "soothe" our elephant, so we should lay out our methods to soothe and calm the elephant, so that it is not so reactive and crazy. We can soothe it with "coping" statements, such as "you're ok there. All is well right now" and on to the more sophisticated ones. And it is foolish not to spend the time investing in developing the soothing and coping statements that will, for sure, be needed in life - there is no way the need will disappear short of enlightenment.
In the Csikszentmihalyi's flow model (scroll down a bit on the linked page), he identifies anxiety as the result of low ability or low confidence in being able to meet a challenge or solve a danger/threat. In other words, if we do not feel safe from experiencing failure or some other undesired result that is significant to us, we feel anxiety. But if something is insignificant to us, like, say, getting approval from a stranger, we will not experience a "problem" and not feel the fear emotion. It will be a so what, no big deal.
Since we undoubtedly want to get away from the feeling of fear we must do one, or both, of these two things:
1. Change our beliefs such that we no longer see a threat or true danger. In other words, we properly size the "danger" as being zero or close to zero and/or we see that it can do no harm in reality even if it happens. (See Threats And Fear Differentiated, with the end goal being that you realize that 99% of your perceived threats are of no consequence in reality - yes, it takes reading all the way through to the end of the relevant pieces and rewriting your significant beliefs, but it is super worth it - it is actually priceless!.)
2. We change our skills and confidence such that we know we can handle the "problems" that come up (and still be ok in life) and therefore will not suffer any significant consequences.
Essentially, we lower the believed danger down to reality or we increase our ability to cure the danger so that we no longer fear failure. Those are our two alternatives.
Hope or believing one can get away via avoidance are not viable strategies, as they lead straight to a not-good place of repeating negative emotional results - the name of the place begins with h.
Of course, this means this is a rather simple blog post, as it suggests there are only two ways out of anxiety and unhappiness. But perhaps it might be helpful, as you can now stop using all of the "other" paths leading to nowhere that people propose, from wishful thinking, fairy tales, myths, etc. to the magic of thinking or trying to overpower emotions. These are your only two choices. (If you can give me another one, I would be happy to include it - but I've not seen it in all my searching and studies.)
I believe that changing our beliefs is the very first approach to take, for not correcting the way we perceive life and how things happen in it leave us with the danger of creating false dangers and threats and wrong roads to go down that don't work.
However, as soon as you can, you should begin to work on increasing your skill in life competency areas (emotional management, problem solving, effective learning, physical well-being management, and methods of effectively directing your energies to get more of what you want). Fortunately, the process of doing this includes the same initial process as is needed to correct, replace, and set up one's beliefs into a workable whole. The start must always be with learning what reality is. This includes with regard to the body and mind learning how they work and how to work them. The best path right now is doing the reading sequence in The Only Sure Path To The Greatest Life.
You can also use acceleration techniques such as getting a coach or counselor to guide you. An intense immersion single focus training and workshop like The Hoffman Institute (on beliefs and emotional management competency) would be a super accelerator and launch you very, very well down the right path with some good life skills.
WHAT TO DO
Although you may be tempted to get better at a lot of other things in life, your quickest and best payoff will come from not doing anything but maintenance and emergency handling of anything else in life and concentrating your efforts on these two things until you have "sufficiently" completed these two areas to the point where you are confident that you are capable of handling life overall, without anxiety. It is after this point that you will be able to make super-progress in anything you like, since you will have a powerful foundation for living life as you want to.
The rule of preparing first before one does the performing is a valid rule. However, we don't seem to do that in our overall lives - and the lack of proper and complete preparation shows up in our living our lives far below the potential. Any person who follows The Path will do a "20X" - meaning they will at least increase their happiness levels, from wherever they are right not, 20 times!
Do the complete Program For Learning And Mastering Emotional Management, including upgrading at least the core beliefs and 10 more you identify that are causing negative results, but you can schedule for later, if you wish, the "positive" side programs. Continue on with more beliefs if you do not yet feel that your fear level has dropped at least 80% from where it was. The eventual target is to drop at least 95+% of all current fears.
Follow The Spectrum Of The Mastery Of Life - The Road To Experiencing Life Fully, Powerfully, with Ultimate Happiness. Living life with Ultimate Confidence is an incredible experience!
Bon Voyage!
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