How to deal with fear of the future?

The future is frightening when the present is already hard. The economy, jobs, health, family, technology changing everything. Your mind races ahead and comes back with dark scenarios. You can bring that mind back to the place where it is able to act: today.

What to do now

1. Make two columns. On one side, what depends on you (your routine, your spending, your studies, your relationships). On the other, what doesn't (the economy, other people's decisions). Put your energy into the first column.
2. Turn worry into a plan. For each fear in the first column, write a small action. Afraid of losing your job? Update your résumé and take a course. Afraid of running out of money? Start a reserve, even of a few reais a month.
3. Limit the flood of news and social media. Information matters; an avalanche of bad news doesn't. Choose set times to catch up and reliable sources.
4. Take care of your body, which calms your mind. Regular sleep, food, walking, sunlight. Anxiety feeds on exhaustion.
5. Stay close to people. Fear grows in isolation. Talk, take part in your community, ask for and offer help.
6. Learn something about what scares you. Many people fear artificial intelligence, for example. Learning the basics about it usually turns fear into a tool.
7. If anxiety won't let you live, seek treatment. Panic attacks, persistent insomnia, worry that won't switch off: there is care for this through SUS, at primary health units (UBS) and psychosocial care centers (CAPS). To talk right now, CVV at 188.

When it happened to Bairo

Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez built much of his life facing futures others thought impossible. He says he heard "it won't work" about natural-based cosmetics and about artificial intelligence applied to business. Later, he says, the banks refused to integrate the platform he had built for agribusiness.

He says faith played a central role in how he came to look at the future. In a time of faith and silence, he says he saw his best self, and came out of it with an image and no map. He asked, in his words, for wisdom, understanding and courage to remember how to get there. Not to learn the way: to remember it.

Today he speaks of artificial intelligence not as a threat, but as an extension of the human.

The path

The story goes that, at the opening of Walt Disney World, in 1971, someone lamented that Walt had not lived to see the park, and heard: "He did see it. That's why it's here." The future is less frightening when you see it first and start building it today, with whatever is at hand. For Bairo, whoever has seen the end only needs to build the middle.

Notice: the future that frightens is almost always one in which you are alone and without resources. In real life, it is almost never like that. There are people, public services, communities and skills you have yet to develop. Fear erases all of that from the picture. Put it back, one thing at a time, and the future stops looking like a cliff.

Read also

• Fifty-five years later
• Why does Bairo say AI is an extension of the human?
• How to calm your mind in the middle of chaos?