Anxiety Monkey

A long time ago, Jen (co-founder of Quill and my wife!) blew my mind when she explained anxiety and how it's actually a super useful thing... in the right situations! Like it literally helped our ancestors survive -- and those who lacked some of that anxiety? Well, they perished, to put it lightly.

A monkey who isn't anxious around a tiger? Oops, dead. A monkey who isn't anxious about falling off a tree branch? Also dead. But a monkey who is anxious about both of those things? They survived -- and probably had baby monkeys, passed along its genes (and possibly anxiety), and the generations continue from there.

The issue today is that we aren't running from a rhinoceros or lion. We aren't randomly almost falling off a cliff. We are... sitting at desks typing at computers. We're commuting to work in a car. We're shopping at the grocery store, where the biggest risk is maybe buying the wrong flavor of yogurt.