I manage my finances pretty well. I don’t gamble, I don’t spend recklessly, and I don’t indulge in luxuries I can’t afford.
But I do have an expensive habit. And you probably have it, too.
Anxiety.
It’s cost me so much.
A lot of misery, a lot of frustration, countless hours of sleep. It’s caused me to miss out on a lot of things that are important to me.
It’s not flashy, it’s not thrilling, and it doesn’t even provide the fleeting pleasures that other vices might. And yet, anxiety is a vice. A habit. A relentless one that eats away at your time, your relationships, and your moments of joy.
How many family dinners have I ruined by letting my mind wander to what could go wrong? How many minutes of vacations have I missed out on because I was preoccupied, lost in spirals about things that hadn’t happened? How many opportunities have I passed up because I was too caught up in my own fears? How much sleep did I waste, lying awake at night, worrying about what might or might not happen?
It doesn’t just steal moments. It adds costs. You leave hours earlier for the airport than you need to, only to sit at the gate. You ruminate on the past or the future at the expense of the project you could be working on. You spend weeks dreading news that you know you could have actually been preparing for, instead of just thinking about.
What does anxiety really give us in return? Nothing but exhaustion and the tiniest sliver of relief when the thing you feared doesn’t happen. And even that relief is fleeting because another worry is always waiting to take its place.
Seneca tells us we suffer more in imagination than in reality. Anxiety turns the hypothetical into the actual. It drags us into a future that doesn’t yet exist and forces us to live out every worst-case scenario in vivid detail. The cost isn’t just mental. It’s physical. It’s emotional. It’s relational.
Take a moment to think about what anxiety has stolen from you.
The car ride that could have been fun, but you spent stressed because you thought you’d be late. The arguments it got you into, the relationships it strained. The way it hijacks your thoughts, like a runaway train, speeding further and further away from the present moment.
And for what?
How often does the thing you were worried about actually happen? Sure, occasionally there are issues that come up. Occasionally, you miss the connection or the package arrives late. But far more often, the imagined disaster dissolves into nothing. Meanwhile, the moments anxiety robbed you of are gone forever.
The Stoics understood this all too well. Anxiety feeds on itself. It’s like the ouroboros—a snake devouring its own tail.
Worry leads to more worry, until the cycle becomes self-sustaining. Marcus Aurelius, in Meditations, put it succinctly: “Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions—not outside.”
Work. Your kids. Politics. Flying. These things aren’t the source of your anxiety. You are. They’re just places. Just people. Just things happening in the world. We’re the ones getting upset about them. Certainly, the airport isn’t thinking about us!
The good news? If we’re the problem then we can also be the solution.
I carry a small reminder with me—a medallion engraved with Epictetus’ phrase, ta eph’hemin, ta ouk eph’hemin (“What is up to us, what is not up to us”). On the back is a quote from Seneca: “He who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary.” These phrases are anchors. They remind me that anxiety doesn’t change the outcome—it only punishes me before anything has even happened.
But even with reminders, breaking free from anxiety is not easy. It traps you in a tunnel where emotions blur your thinking, and every exit seems further away than it really is. You start to feel like a prisoner of your own mind, held hostage by thoughts you can’t control.
Yet, there are tools to escape.
The Stoics offered timeless strategies: stay in the present moment, detach from the illusion of control, and gain perspective. Epictetus reminds us, “It’s not events that upset us but our opinions about them.” Anxiety thrives on those opinions. Letting go of them can be transformative.
Anxiety is expensive—not just in terms of the mental toll, but in the way it costs us our lives. Every minute spent consumed by worry is a minute lost.
Maybe we can’t get rid of it entirely, but like our finances, we can be more efficient. We can budget. We can eliminate unnecessary expenses and get rid of obvious waste.
Anxiety may never disappear entirely. But with practice, you can begin to discard it, as Marcus did. You can remind yourself that it’s within you, not outside. And slowly, you can reclaim the moments it’s stolen.
It’s not easy, but I’m working on it. Every day, I try to get a little better. And I hope you will, too.
