[antihoney]

I used to be really anxious and nervous until sophomore year of high school, when I had to take a marketing elective aimed towards juniors. We had to present our products via PowerPoint each week in a group. My first two presentations were terrible, so I racked up enough courage to ask my teacher on whether I could present alone next week, which he allowed.

Every week or so, I'd ask him to present my products as a single-person group in front of the class and every week I got pretty good feedback which led to getting better grades. That increased my confidence, and also became the pipeline towards learning how to reduce the amount of (pardon my language) fucks I gave about unnecessary things. (Also, trying to convince your classmates and teacher to buy a fake product every week or two works wonders for your anxiety.)

I did know how to be a team player and collaborate with other people, but the group I was usually assigned to sucked and I refused to let them affect my grade average.

I also started going to the gym that year, did nothing too serious though. I'd go after school and would either use the treadmill or pretend that I knew how to lift weights, haha. It made me feel better, and I was diagnosed with ADHD later on, so the exercise bit checks out even more.

Tl;dr: find something that you feel strongly enough for, and use that to take-off into the anxiety to less anxiety pipeline. Also, exercise. It doesn't have to be working out intensely, but even a walk around the neighborhood can make you feel better.