Anxiety is something that most of us deal with at one time or another during our life. Anxiety is simply a repetitive fear of the unknown. When we have anxiety we worry over and over again wondering what is going to happen and how it might affect us. This excessive focus on the negative actually attracts negative energy to us. I know firsthand because I have had my fair share of experience with it.
Years ago when I was first diagnosed with Thyroidism, my health took a turn from being in peak shape to being overweight and sick. I won’t get into the details too much but my thyroid was not able to do its job any longer and my metabolism was spinning out of control. I gained 30 pounds in 4 weeks. I went from having a lean washboard like stomach to having a two or three inch gut in only month. On top of that, the thyroid gland was wrecking havoc on my electrical system, namely my heart, where I was having heart palpitations where my heart would suddenly miss a beat or two and then pound so loud in my chest that I would knock me backwards. Let me tell you that you really don’t know what fear is like until you think you have a problem with your heart. I didn’t know it at the time, but my heart was healthy. My thyroid gland was culprit causing these issues with irregular heartbeats. Each time I had a random heart palpitation I wondered if it was going to be my last breath. I was sure I was going to die of heart attack; I just didn’t know when. Understandably this gave me a fair amount of anxiety. My doctor wanted to put me on sedatives but I had been doing meditation for a few years and knew how to control my mind. I knew that a sedative was only a band-aid. The answer was in changing how I thought about the situation I was in.
That’s about when I read Eckhart Tolle’s book, “The Power of Now”. In his book, Eckhart teaches that the past is already gone and the future is not here yet, so it is a waste of time and energy to focus on any time other than now. Now is the only time where we have the power to change the present and future. Also the only thing we really have to fear is fear itself. If fear is taken out of the equation then we simple need to deal with what IS happening rather than dealing with what did or what might happen.
This came as a revelation to me when I realized I had been spending tremendous amount of mental energy worrying about a scary future that was not sure to happen. I decided to focus only on what I could control in that moment. I told myself: I know that I can’t control what is happening to me, but I do have control over how I react. I choose to live each moment to its fullest potential and not to worry about anything that might happen in the near future. You know what? When something actually is happening in this moment you are too busy dealing with it to ever worry about it. So worry is always a complete waste of time. I’ve often said that worry was created so that we can get the maximum amount of fear from the least amount of events that ever actually happen to us.
Worry was created so that we can get the maximum amount of fear from the least amount of events that ever actually happen to us.
This fear of death caused me great anxiety until one day I had had enough and decided to make a change. I told myself that I was not going to be a victim any longer. I thought to myself: I might not be able to handle what is happening to be but I do have control over how I handle it. I decided to accept the worst case scenario and stop being afraid of death and instead accept the fact that it may well happen. That moment I decided that instead of living in fear I was going to focus on appreciating each moment I had to be alive.
You know what happened next? As soon as I let go of the fear the palpitations greatly reduced. That’s ironic because I later found out that the palpitations were caused by stress on my adrenal glands. When I stopped worrying the stress lessened and so did the palpitations. Once I accepted my current reality, and stopped resisting it, my life began to get easier. I then focused on my good health returning and life being good again. In time everything did get better for me.
So whether you are worried about work, health, family, money, or anything else, just stay focused on feeling good in the present moment and you’ll save yourself from the dreaded anxiety.
Joe Rapisarda
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