Anxiety happens. It's not a choice. This is important to understand.
Nobody that I have ever known or heard about has ever made a choice to feel anxious, afraid, stressed, depressed, or any one of the countless emotions that we are all capable of feeling. And this includes the pleasant ones, too. No one has that kind of emotional "on or off" switch. Emotions happen. They just do. We have little control over them. If we could control them, then nobody would struggle with anxiety, fear, stress, worry, depression. We'd just flip the switch.
Every single human being on this planet will, at some point in their lives, confront anxiety and fear. There is no escaping this simple truth. But this doesn't mean you have to suffer. You don't have to let anxiety and fear control you!
There are simple and powerful tools you can learn to avoid letting anxiety and fear take over and wreak havoc in your life. But the most important tool is this: cultivating a new relationship with your anxious mind and body. This is something you can control.
Anxiety and fear need our active participation to grow and take over our lives. You've probably heard it put this way: What you resist, persists. There's truth in that. Even modern science teaches us that the more you try not to think a thought or feel an unpleasant feeling, the more you will find yourself thinking and feeling the very thing you don't want to think.
You can learn to meet the negative emotional energy packed inside anxiety and fear more kindly and in a gentle, less engaged way. This, we know, can have a powerful positive effect on the lives of many. And, it can give you the space, energy, and resources to do something else with your life other than fighting a war with your anxious mind and body.
I have learned over the years that I have the power to control what I do with anxiety and fear when it shows up. When anxiety happens, see if you can relate with your emotional life much like you would a person, pet, or object that you care about and love. If your anxiety were that person, how would you respond?
Would you be harsh and try to push them out of your life? Or would you be kind, gentle, friendly?
Anxiety happens to everyone. You are never alone in this. It is a powerful, unnerving experience at times. It can create ruin and needless extra suffering in our lives if we give it that power. But, as I said, it doesn't have to be that way. We have the power to disarm anxiety and fear and reclaim the power to create the space we need to keep moving forward in our lives, regardless of our emotional weather. There is freedom in that.
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