If you’ve seen How I Met Your Mother, you know that Lily and Marshall have systems — ways to handle arguments, ways to check in with one another, etc. I actually just did a scene from the show in my acting class the other day.
When you’ve been in a long term relationship, developing systems is a way of communicating — crafting a language that only the two of you understand.
A system that Amrit and I have started in our own relationship is asking each other this thing when we notice that either of us is worried about something:
“Is this an existential worry or an executional worry?”
If existential worry sounds like “OMG what am I going to do with my life? There’s so much to do, and I don’t know where to start”, executional worry sounds more like “OMG what am I going to do with my day? There’s so much to do, and I need to start it all immediately.”
Like sine and cosine waves, our existential worry and executional worry swim away from and towards each other eternally in the helix that forms our life.
Worrying — regardless of whether it’s existential or executional — is often given a bad rap.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not necessarily a state of mind I optimize for. But in the right configuration, worry can be the fuel that pushes us forward.
If worry is a fear driven-motivator, it makes me think, what’s the non-fear driven equivalent? What’s the opposite of worry?
I think the answer would be excitement. And if that’s true, what’s the relationship between excitement and worry?
Excitement and Worry
We all have existential excitement and worry AND executional excitement and worry. Existential usually relates to pieces of our identity (who will I be?), while executional is more about how we spend our time (how will I get there?).
In other words, there are a total of four variables at play: Excitement, Worry, Existential, and Executional.
Some examples of things that fall into these buckets for me:
But we also have things that might fall into more than one of these buckets. Meaning, things that are existentially AND executionally exciting and/or worrisome. So how might we visualize that?
Well, if excitement and worry lie at either end of a single spectrum, let’s define the neutral position of that range to be contentment or a state of flow. Then, we can also add the agnostic variable of time to understand the nature of how these four variables interact.
It might look something like this:
Example: Writing a Book
Let’s take the example of writing a book — one of my BIG goals.
Initially, for me, I think I would be excited both existentially and executionally. I’m finally on the path to being a “real” writer AND I’m finally going to spend time doing this thing that I love and have been thinking about forever.
Aspirational identity? Check.
Time spent doing what I love? Also, check.
Over time, I think my executional excitement turns into executional worry. If I miss deadlines, hit writer’s block, etc., I’ll be concerned about whether or not I can actually do the thing, and do it on time. Similarly, I think my existential excitement also dips over time as I approach finishing the book.
Once the book is finished, my graph might look like this:
…where now that I’ve actually finished the book, I start thinking, will people think it’s good? Will they even read it? Who am I to write a book in the first place? And a slew of other existentially concerned questions that play a dangerous game of Russian Roulette with my sense of worth for the day.
Of course, these questions will likely plague me throughout the entire process of writing a book, and not just creep up at the end of the timeline.
In which case, a more realistic version of this graph might look like this:
I originally planned to eliminate this chart because it looks more like it’s measuring seismic-wave activity rather than my some-point-in-the-future emotional state. But, I decided to keep it in case I can offer anyone a sense of feeling “seen” through the insanity displayed here. Me and you both, pal. Me and you both.
Existential and Executional
While this level of oscillation is scary, the truth is that the things that excite us existentially are usually worrying executionally. Anything that’s really exciting to us— and thus worth doing — is usually hard to do.
The relationship between existential excitement/worry and executional excitement/worry only becomes more complex with less know-how.
If we’re new to something, our existential and executional worries could be sky high for a long time, especially if there’s no deadline or specific goal we’re working towards. Like this acting thing I’m doing for example!
Sometimes, this can make us feel (read: I have felt) heightened existential worry.
When this happens, it’s common to turn back to things that give us smaller degrees of existential excitement.
For example: let’s say another one of my goals, in addition to writing a book, was to read books. To read 1 book per month. How might that map against our original chart above?
Here the excitement of reading one book per month won’t give me as much of a high— neither existentially, nor executionally — as writing a book (or even starting to write a book). However, it gives me something that a lofty goal can’t: existential excitement without any worry. In other words, there is no cost.
I read. I’m a reader! I know things, and I’m 12 books smarter than I was last year.
Goals, Big AND Small
Unlike our big hopes and dreams that have great rewards, but also the potential of great costs, our smaller hopes and dreams might give us just rewards with little to no cost. This is why we turn back to them when our existential worry is too tough to bear. We return to familiar comforts.
All of that is to say, we need both. The big goals and the small goals.
Living a life where we don’t have those big hopes and dreams that scare us means we’ll never reach the altitude of excitement (AKA happiness, satisfaction, fulfillment, or however else you want to describe that feeling) that we know is possible if we took a chance on ourselves.
But only having those big goals can often mean that we’re missing out on the smaller things that make up our day to day. And a lot of times, the smaller goals can even lead up to (or prepare us for) the bigger ones.
Goals like, being a good roommate/parent/daughter/son/partner, etc. Goals like staying active and healthy. Goals like writing every day and shipping a newsletter every month. 😉
Hope you’ve had an existentially exciting February,
Shiv
If this post resonated and you’d like to chat, I’d love to hear from you. You can find me on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and now YouTube.
I love that you decided to include the seismic-wave chart because that accurately depicts the reality of trying something new - it's both scary and exciting. Sometimes I end up using coping mechanisms to deal with the anxiety of big goals...but it's a work in progress and I remind myself that big goals are achieved through incremental steps. Overnight success is a myth.