Sarah Knight, author of The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck and You Do You (among others), has taken her best-selling Calm the F*ck Down and made it into a journal. A great gift for anyone who deals with anxiety (even if it’s you), to help declutter the thoughts that make you crazy with her step-by-step NoWorries method.
Knight starts by going through the evolution of a freakout. It starts with a what-if, moves on to worry, is buffeted by inaction, thus resulting in a freakout. But as she explains, we have only so many freakout funds (resources like money, time, energy, and good will) to use for our freakouts.
In order to help decide how to spend those funds, there is One Question to Rule Them All: Can I control it? With each freakout, you can learn to ask yourself that and then make a plan based on the sh*tstorm scale. Once you’ve figured out how likely your worry is to come true, you can decide how much energy to spend on worrying about it (or taking action on it, if you’re going for teacher’s pet).
Treating our anxious thoughts like puppies, she gives advice on how to deal with them. Are you feeling anxious? Focus, by talking to other people about their problems. Feeling sad? Repair yourself with some self-care (laughter is best). Feeling angry? Find some perspective by plotting revenge (it’s fine as long it’s just plotting). Avoiding action? Use your phone alarm to drive you crazy until it’s easier just to do the thing you’ve been avoiding.
Clearly, this is a self-help journal for those who hate the entire self-help genre. Sarah Knight has created a whole shelf of anti-self-help books that genuinely do help people live better lives. Calling herself an anti-guru, she offers up useful tips with lots of snark and a few well-timed curse words to get help to those who would generally not admitting needing help.
The Calm the F*ck Down Journal is an ideal place to think and write about your anxiety, using the steps to figure out what is the best next step, so that you can get to the point of calming yourself down and leaving your freakouts behind.
Galleys for the Calm the F*ck Down Journal were provided by Little, Brown and Company through NetGalley, with many thanks.