3 Secrets to Turning Anxiety Into Power
Photograph by Luis Quintero
3 Secrets to Turning Anxiety Into Power
According to the modern tradition of psychology, anxiety is a problem; a problem that should be fixed. Prescribed solutions in the form of medicine and therapy help with a certain level of initial stability but fail, to help us in living to our full potential. Some other unofficial solutions to this perceived problem are affixations with drugs, sex, entertainment, social media, and other fixes that serve to soothe our nerves, but cost us our power and do not deliver long-term satisfaction.
Psychologists have been trying to solve the problem of anxiety, but perhaps the modern rationalistic tradition of Psychology is limited in its interpretation of what a human being is and what the mood of anxiety is. This psychological view and orientation for understanding anxiety are not wrong, but perhaps we are in need of a new story about our anxiety, its role in our existence, and how might we deal with it so that it doesn’t diminish us but adds to our power. If you suffer from a debilitating disorder involving anxiety, then a psychiatrist or psychologist may be able to help you. Otherwise, I suggest that anxiety is not a problem and that anxiety could be the source of your power.
The mood of anxiety is with us our entire life. We are born in a state of some anxiety and we die in a state of some anxiety. But if everything is going as expected in our daily lives, this anxiety becomes invisible to us. It is only when something goes wrong when a breakdown occurs—a satisfaction expected but not delivered—that we get in touch with this anxiety. We are meant to be boundless, but we live bounded lives, small lives, inauthentic lives with potentiality trapped in everyday emotions and habits, characterizing the wasting of life. Anxiety is a reminder for exercising our deep freedom of choosing a new possibility by owning our inauthenticity and waking from the prisons of everyday slumber.
Anxiety is a constitutive property of human beings. If someone in our biological lineage did not have some breakdown and some anxiety, we might still be living in a cave, hanging from a tree, or perhaps swimming in warm oceanic waters as a single-cell amoeba. Anxiety is the reminder that we are boundless beings, that the core of our existence is meaningless, and that we have the power to give it meaning, as speaking beings. Anxiety is how your essence of who you are, invites you to pay attention to what is going on with you and your local and global community.
So, our anxiety is about our belonging and which is about care, and concern for ourselves, our loved ones, and our communities. Anxiety is what pushes us to the boundary of what we can be in a deep commitment to those we choose to care about. Anxiety is our best friend that attunes us to what is existence, to our loves and cares, to our friends and enemies, and to our families and careers and all that is worth loving and living for.
But you may wonder, what is anxiety and where does it come from? The mood of anxiety is one of the most primordial moods in human existence, which is about the fear and guilt of living. In the psychological approach, rationalists have attempted to tranquilize this emotion. The results are not good. We damage greatly our capacity to navigate important breakdowns by ignoring the calls made by anxiety. If you are a real human being living and observing what is going on with the world and humanity, you will have anxiety.
We propose that there are two main aspects of human life that create the ground of anxiety, on which our house of being is built.
Firstly, if we inquire with all of our courage and utter honesty by setting aside everything we have heard from others about who we are, we find that at the core, our life is completely empty. Everything comes to us from others via language. For example, a wolf baby becomes a wolf, a monkey baby becomes a monkey, but a human baby does not automatically become a human. We arrive mostly as blank bio-entities into the storied realm and get imprinted with the metaphysics of life, living in the language of where you are born. In a manner of speaking, we are born into programming, thus the very essence of who we are is empty and blank. The core of our meaning comes from caring for, belonging to, and struggling with the cultures into which we are born and move into. Our backgrounds, narratives, histories, cultures, families, and our being in the world give us meaning, but while living our lives, we remain in touch with some primordial awareness about this emptiness that is at the base of our existence. We will never really know what this world is and who we really are. And then without ever knowing who we are and what we should do with our time, we will die. That is certain and guaranteed for everyone. This dynamic of meaninglessness and certainty of our death creates the first ground for our constitutive anxiety.
Secondly, we are wanting beings that are continually dissatisfied. We constantly invent new satisfactions and dissatisfactions in language. We frequently want things. If we get what we want, we quickly get bored and want the next thing. If we don’t get what we want, we take ourselves to be small and indignified and develop moods of victimhood and resentment. In our daily life, we are immersed and gripped by our sensory apparatus, our comforts, and our daily habits. The nature of life is that everything changes. We see change as a threat to this “going on” and standing in the way of what we want. We resent change, that further provokes the moods of stress, overwhelm, worry, fear, greed, regret, and hyperactivity. Our circumstances constantly change and so do our feelings and emotions and our likes and dislikes and the standards of what makes us “feel good” and “look good”. We cannot really know what we should really want. To fill this unfillable void we set up objects of desire and set about to chase them. Our ever-desiring nature sets up the second ground for our constitutive anxiety.
In conclusion, when we look at ourselves with all of our honesty in our solitude, we realize that at our core we are nothing, we don’t know what to want, and we are going to die. This causes us anxiety, the feeling of being lost, not belonging, and such. At such a moment we forget that although we are nothing at our core, we are something to those we love and care about. Our commitment to care means something to them and gives us context and courage, and makes us something out of nothing. Our nothingness where on the one hand causes us anxiety, on the other hand, gives us an unprecedented opportunity to authentically acknowledge our entrapment, and by doing so expand our belonging and open up new possibilities.
So to help you transform anxiety into a real power in your life that shows up as money, reputation, growth, access, and personal satisfaction, here are the three secrets which we recommend you take on as practices.
First, carefully listen to what we are saying here about anxiety. Read or listen to this discourse as many times as possible and try on this new perspective we have brought to you here. By doing this you will see that life is the most stupendous and glorious opportunity for creating new possibilities and that our anxiety is a signal for us to go beyond our comfort zone.
Second, practice a simple Mind Focus Technique (MFT) that can medically alter your brain and uncouple destructive neural pathways and habit patterns. To do this, close your eyes, breathe naturally, and observe the sensations of your breath at the entrance of your nostrils and the area above your upper lip. Focus on your breath and ignore all other sensations. Regardless of whatever comes up whether it's itchiness, pain, tingling, or any other sensation, remain completely still. Do this for 10 minutes once or twice a day and in a short time, you will notice your anxiety becoming the source of your power. I practice this twice a day myself. Follow this link to join me live twice a day, 7 days a week by Zoom or practice anytime using a recorded session.
Third, develop a practice of speaking with your family and friends, your community members, allies, partners, and colleagues about your challenges, roadblocks, and worries as you encounter them, and invite your people to think together with you about what you dealing with. Many of us fall into this trap of thinking, “I and I alone must deal with my problems”. This theology of self-motivation causes further loneliness and exacerbates anxiety. No human ever accomplishes anything serious alone. You are a function of your belonging and your background. If you find yourself cut off from the world, then consider joining some communities of care and engagement, in any domain that concerns you. By helping others and asking others for help, you will begin to transform your anxiety into a source of power for your shared greatness.
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Written by Saqib Rasool & Edited by Victoria Ruelas
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