Oakville Zen Meditation
Anxiety has a bad reputation
Worries, anxiety and fear are, at different degrees, the mind-mad anticipation of a negative or positive future scenario. They can be imminent or anytime after.
Everyday anxiety is a fact of life and can actually be helpful “How we use it makes all the difference,”
As the world gets faster and more uncertain, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by anxiety.
We are hijacked by anxiety coming from our reptilian brain, source of fear and excitement.
Denying or running away from anxiety make it worse.”
We view anxiety through a negative lens, something to fear and avoid. That thinking is self-defeating. We need to accept it as a natural part of our emotional spectrum.
Another cause of anxiety is our faulty thinking around change.
For centuries, change was viewed as dangerous.. But stability and permanence are total illusion, and uncertainty of life is reality. It makes us anxious and vulnerable, and leads us to worry or run away because we realize that we are not in control of life. This is anxiogenic.
People often move back and forth between too much, just enough, and too little anxiety.
Anxiety is contagious. We communicate our level of anxiety to others because we’re far more connected to each other than we think.
Anxiety is energy, and we must strike the right balance if you know what to look for:
Too Much Anxiety:
The most frequent form. It is a burden but it is also an advantage: by doing so, they are not badly surprised when a negative scenario happens.
Too much anxiety is created when we are telling yourself about a positive or negative outcome which does not exist. For example, “If I don’t do a good job I’ll get fired.” It is not the current scenario that causes anxiety, it is its potential outcome that we creating in our mind.
Severe forms of anxiety require medical treatment.
Too Little Anxiety:
Too little anxiety isn’t good either. Those people value status quo and live in a rosy bubble.
It is nice to be optimistic but it is also a curse when we are badly surprised when negative scenarios happen.
Good Anxiety:
Living with the right amount of anxiety provides enough tension to drive us forward without causing we to resist, give up, or try to control what happens. “It’s a productive energy,”
The first step is to accept being uncomfortable. A lot of people think the goal of life is to be happy, but the goal is to experience life with its good and bad moments.
Listen to your body; it is the proxy of your mental state. We talked already about the physical symptoms of anxiety.
Ask yourself why you’re anxious. Is it because you’re excited or fearful?
Is your anxiety: good or bad. If you’re about to give a speech, anxiety is good. If you’re not anxious, you’re probably not going to give a great speech. And if you’re too anxious, that won’t be a great speech, either.”
All change happens in the gap that the mind is creating between current reality and desired or fearful future scenarios. We create a problem we want to solve or have a goal we want to accomplish.
In this gap sits our motivation, our engagement, and our anxiety. Anxiety becomes a positive energy needed to cross the gap. No other way. Meditation brings body and mind together, the first step to analyze both of them and reduce this gap between reality and future scenarios.
