This Is My Most Expensive Habit

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…