Anxiety

In this day and age, it’s pretty hard not to be anxious. Reading the news is meeting some people on the worst days of their lives. There’s always a new virus coming up, new side-effects of over the counter drugs being discovered, a natural disaster occurring somewhere else in the world, or another political scandal making waves.   And those aren’t even issues that are close to home. There are deadlines to be battled. Differences to be ironed out. Expectations to be met. A budget to be balanced. The list goes on and on and on.

Everyone talks about how polluted the environment has become and how we all should be cleaning up our act. But very few people talk about how toxic we’ve made our lives out to be. There is noise everywhere. Pressure everywhere. Stress all the time. And we turn out to these worried and anxious little people running around waiting for the sky to fall.

When, really, life could be so much simpler.

Oh there are things that we can never do without simply because we’re human. We’re bound to commit mistakes and hurt others and be hurt in return. The economy is never going to turn itself around overnight. The traffic only really gets better on Sundays. And things will never turn out the way we imagine them to be because some of us are such big dreamers and the rest dream too little. But the quality of our lives depends on whether or not we worry about the things that are not in our control.

This is a lesson I’ve been trying to teach myself these past couple of years. And it’s been a hard lesson to take. But the payoff has been tremendous. Really, I used to worry about every little thing. I realized this was because I was a control freak. I couldn’t stand when things went wrong and when people didn’t live up to my expectations (which is why group works stressed me out). I didn’t like the schedule being messed up. I loved surprises but only insofar as I could determine that they were going to be happy ones. But living life like that can be very draining. There’s only really so much of it that is technically under my control. And so my new mantra is “Let it go.”

It’s been very helpful so far. It helps me keep perspective about the things that occupy my time. And most of them are really quite useless. For example, I cannot keep worrying about how people perceive me. I cannot keep worrying about how things turn out. I cannot keep worrying how humanity fares. I could, instead, devote my time to treating everyone with kindness and respect. I could do my best so that there is a better chance that things will turn out the way I plan. I could also spend more time praying and doing good. Doing this has helped be more at peace, become more intuitive about the world. Less time worrying is more time reflecting, praying and thanking God. I’ve discovered that worrying never really changes things. All it does is rob me of peace. So, I’ve decided I would just do my best and let God worry about how it all turns out. I figure, He’s done a wonderful job in my life so far, I should just let him take care of the rest of it.