This saying by Mark Twain came to mind today when I was working with a client who said she was "suffering from anxiety."
I told her that anxiety was like rehearsing for a play that hasn't been produced yet. Here she is wasting her precious time creating and re-creating scenarios that may never occur. She's writing a script. She's rehearsing lines. She's placing the characters on the stage. But all she's really doing is creating stress for herself because living with anxiety is not living in the real world. In the moment.
There are ways to escape anxiety. A doctor will give us pills, which is a solution many of us addicts probably prefer. But, as addicts, this is a direction we don't want to go.
A simple way to reduce anxiety is to learn a meditation technique, such as transcendental meditation. There are over 600 studies about this particular type of meditation that shows its many benefits, including stress reduction. Go to www.tm.org for more information. While this option is expensive there are other meditation techniques which are free and likely work as well as TM -even though they haven't been as extensively studied.
Exercise is another option. Studies show that regular exercise is about as effective as medication in reducing stress and anxiety. Visit the site http://www.mindtools.com/stress/Defenses/Exercise.htm for more information on the relationship between exercise and stress reduction. This is one of multiple resources available on the internet..
A favorite and simple technique I use when things become challenging is to pause and take a deep breath to get in the moment. Then I accept that the world is exactly the way God intended it to be at this moment.
Try it. It's free.
Comments? schwary@msn.com
