Lately anxiety has been my constant companion. I never knew this debilitating sense of fear, this tightening of the chest, the ringing in the ears and the uncontrollable nervousness expressing itself in shaky hands and a racing heart.
I’ve heard many people talking about their anxieties, but I felt I was a reasonable being, not fearful, very focused and balanced, nothing could shake me up that bad - so I thought. Life has its own way of testing us.
We are living through times of heighten fears with Covid-19 starring into our faces. The violent pictures of people fighting and killing each other over their ideology, instead of communicating and making peace. Not to mention the daily personal challenges with family, children, and spouses. The inevitable health encounters as we age, always relating and being heavily influenced by our own mental state.
I’m asking myself, when was the last time that I felt perfectly calm and at peace? Nothing was troubling to me, nothing bothered my conscience, no worries creeping up in the midst of the night, no hesitation about a project I worked on, a task to be finished. Just blissful content.
And now, in this less than calm state of mind I observe this hectic world of ours and I must ask myself, what would make me less frantic and what would lessen my anxieties? I write in my diary, the good and the bad. The reasonable and the unreasonable. Right or wrong. I think, I ponder, there must be an answer to all of this.
I question myself: I have great faith in the Allness of Good. So what makes me think that there could be anything but the good? Why go to negative expectations instead of having faith in the positive?
Again, I ask: Why do I talk about my problems rather than what’s working well? Does saying it out loud help me to destress? Do I need confirmation that I’m doing the right thing? What does hearing myself speak out loud do to my thought habits? Does it intensify the feeling of being right? Or am I reaching out for help?
I know full well that focusing on the negative is an addictive and destructive habit. Instead, I must talk about what is good in my life, the joys, and upsides rather than the daily frustrations. No more banging my head on the wall. No more feeling the ‘end is near’, rather looking at the light and knowing that ‘a new beginning is awaiting’ with God’s grace.
I cannot fix the outside, my perception of what I see; it’s my inside, my innermost thoughts and feelings, that need attention. I cannot fix the ‘other’, not even a spouse or a child. The law of Individuality is always at work. Intelligence works its perfect way, it is for me to become aware of this fact and fully understand it.
Practice the Art of Calmness. Letting go of worries and fears - easier said than done, you say? Yes, I know…but only practice makes perfect. We have thought wrongly and negatively for so long, now we’ll have to change our long-held thought habits and turn them into a ray of light. We can do it, I know I’ll surely do the best I can!
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