This is a little story about how I overcame anxiety.
It's funny when I think about it now,
Your parents and your teachers,
I know my parents and my teachers,
Bless them,
Probably had this really absurd idea that when you grew up you'd know how to adult effectively.
At least I think that's what my parents thought.
I would know how to build healthy relationships,
Raise children,
And lead successful lives all by myself.
What they didn't teach me,
And maybe what they didn't teach you,
Is about the pain of failed love,
The burden of mortgage repayments,
And the stress of everyday life.
They gave us tidbits of wisdom,
Sure,
But for many of us,
Our early childhood teachers didn't teach us how to understand doubt,
Fear,
Stress,
And our own thoughts.
Did you know that anxiety is the most common mental health condition in Australia,
Maybe even the world?
In Australia,
One in four people suffer from anxiety at some stage of their lives.
Many of us have experienced moments of anxiety.
What if I make an idiot of myself at the party?
Will I make it in time for the meeting?
What if I stuff up this presentation?
Did I leave the heater on?
For an ever-growing number of people,
Anxiety is chronic.
This kind of anxiety doesn't stop.
It's when the heater is off,
But we still think it's on.
It's a kind of anxiety that stops us leaving the house,
Affects our sleep,
Our health,
And our capacity to function at our best.
It's a heavy,
Negative presence that can ruin careers,
Relationships,
And even lives.
I know this because 10 years ago,
I had it.
For over 10 years,
I operated on low levels of anxiety throughout my career in the corporate world.
I assumed that the nerves and the edginess were part of corporate life.
I supplemented my sleep,
My poor sleep,
With three or four cups of coffee a day,
My afternoon lulls with chocolate,
And my constant self-doubt with procrastination.
I had no idea I had anxiety because I never learned what it was.
I wasn't aware until one day I had an anxiety attack at work.
I remember the day well.
I was enjoying my morning coffee.
I thought it was just a strong coffee.
I thought it was strong because I started to get fidgety.
My heart started to beat really quickly,
And I was like,
Damn,
This is a really strong coffee.
The kind of coffee that goes straight to your heart.
My bottom lip at one stage started to quiver,
And my first thought was,
Oh,
The people around me can't see this.
But all the staff that were reporting to me at that point did.
They saw me quivering and shaking and weren't quite sure what was going on.
I'm sure at some point,
The whole office wondered why I was staring at my computer,
Breathing deeply.
I ran out of the office,
Hyperventilating,
And I started walking fast all through the city.
I knew then that it wasn't the damn coffee.
It was some kind of anxiety attack,
And something that I would later find out was called a panic attack.
So I did what any sane person on the verge of a nervous breakdown would do.
I quit my job and didn't leave the house for months.
This was a really big panic attack.
I saw a lot of experts during that time.
Anyone that I thought could help,
Doctors,
Psychiatrists,
Shamanic healers,
Reiki masters.
They all listened to my story,
And they were wonderful people doing their best to help.
But then one day,
Five words changed my life.
It was during a Buddhist meditation with my now teacher.
It was a day like any other day,
Except when I walked out,
I held in my hand an exit door out of my anxiety.
A cure in five words,
Whispered by my teacher.
Five words that have stayed with me forever.
You are not your thoughts.
You can confront your anxiety in many ways.
Seeing a psychologist is a great start.
A doctor can direct you towards healing.
Even a nutritionist who can educate you about the impact your diet has on your mental well-being.
For me,
It was the observing of my own mind,
And befriending what was arising.
It was realizing I didn't have to accept every thought that popped into my mind.
I was able to be aware of it,
And to notice it.
More specifically,
It was learning how to be present to the moment-to-moment experiences of my life with a genuine sense of compassionate awareness.
I love this quote by Michael Singer.
In case you haven't noticed,
You have a mental dialogue going on inside your head that never stops.
It just keeps going and going and going.
Have you ever wondered why it talks in there?
How does it decide what to say and when to say it?
How much of what it says turns out to be true?
How much of what it says is even important?
And if right,
Now you are hearing,
I don't know what you're talking about.
I don't have any voice inside my head.
That's the voice we're talking about.
When we go through any form of suffering,
It can feel personal,
But it's not.
You think you're the only person having an experience like you're having,
But we all suffer.
You're not alone.
I've shared this story many times in person,
And so many people have commented how they've had similar experiences.
I work my way out of a pretty debilitating situation,
And you know what worked for me?
Well,
It started with awareness.
You can't change what you can't see.
Awareness is so critical,
So vital,
Not only to overcoming anxiety,
But also getting the most out of our life.
When I developed greater awareness,
I noticed how often my mind would wander away into thoughts,
Replaying what went wrong in the past and catastrophizing about what may go wrong in the future.
I noticed I wasn't able to have a conversation without my mind drifting off into thoughts,
And there were usually negative ones.
But that awareness is where we begin.
It's where we start to realize we have an overactive mind,
Like a puppy that won't sit.
It can help to think of what triggers our anxiety,
A certain event,
A certain drink,
A food,
A time of day.
Sometimes it's inexplicable,
And that's okay.
Can we become aware of it?
Once we have that awareness,
We are ready to begin to transform it.
Meditation.
When I was first asked to sit and notice my breath and my thoughts,
I felt like I was in my version of solitary confinement.
Except there were no prison guards and darkness,
Just anxiety,
Panic,
Self-doubt,
And a few monks in orange robes sitting around me.
Meditation can be hard.
Transformation is also difficult.
Committing to something that we know is good for us is difficult,
But I decided living with anxiety was more difficult.
I sat sometimes for 5 minutes a day,
Sometimes 15,
Eventually 30 minutes a day and beyond.
I began by watching a candle flame,
Then noticing sensations in my body,
Eventually settling on shamatha practice,
Calm abiding meditation,
Or mindfulness of breath.
I learned that I have thoughts,
Thousands of freaking thoughts,
Actually.
But that's normal.
Being a relentless thought factory is normal.
I realized I could train my awareness to be where I wanted it to be,
This moment,
This breath,
And not on the things I had to do that day.
For me,
Meditation was a game changer.
I encourage you to explore it yourself.
Acceptance.
Acceptance isn't a meek excuse to avoid fighting back.
It's a serene acceptance of our reality at that moment.
An important aspect of developing acceptance is learning to avoid craving.
Craving is when we long for something that's not there in that moment.
It's okay to want to change and to get better,
But craving usually makes healing harder.
When we crave for our anxiety to disappear quickly,
We're rejecting our current experience.
It's the spiritual equivalent of chin-up tiger,
And we're aware we can cultivate mindfulness.
Which involves an attitude of acceptance.
This is what we're trying to cultivate.
With mindfulness,
We are prepared to sit with how we actually are at that moment.
This doesn't mean we reject something or we follow anything.
It's simply an acknowledgement of that moment's sensations.
It means we're prepared to accept our current reality exactly how it is.
From there,
We can begin to move skillfully beyond it.
Disconnection.
Social media was doing my head in.
I became conscious of the impulse to reach into my phone and check my Facebook or Instagram every time I would become anxious.
Any time I was alone with my thoughts,
I would notice how much I just wanted to avoid being there.
Then my email,
Then my Snapchat,
And then just googling random things.
I would respond to a message within a few seconds of receiving it.
That's crazy behavior,
I realized.
But it's common for many of us.
Technology isn't our enemy,
Our attention deficiency is.
Did you know our attention span is literally less than a goldfish?
Once we discover our ability to be present,
Then we can go about finding this sense of attention and awareness and acceptance.
But something has to change,
Because we're heading towards record levels of stress and anxiety and even depression.
You can start by creating pockets of stillness in your day by disconnecting.
I like to keep my phone on flight mode until I leave the house.
I've switched off all my notifications,
So I just need to check my social media.
I actually have to go into it to check it.
Find ways to disconnect from your devices so you can reconnect to the moment,
The people you live with,
The food that you're eating,
Or the sounds inside or outside.
More importantly,
Be present with yourself.
Compassion.
Compassion is the ability to understand the emotional state of another or oneself.
And then be motivated to help shift that,
To change that.
When we try to heal from anything,
It's crucial that we are gentle with ourselves.
There are moments that I feel like the world was going on around me,
That I was stuck in the depths of anxious self-pity.
But transformation and healing take time.
They worsen if we judge our tendencies,
Thoughts,
And progress.
They soften when we accept where we are and how we got there.
You see,
Compassion is a virtue that allows us to really embrace the journey towards optimal living.
And hey,
The journey back from anxiety isn't an easy one.
I never promised that.
For some serious cases,
You should definitely see a professional that's highly credentialed.
But with my hand on my heart,
The body and mind has a genuine capacity to heal itself.
Start where you are.
Start now.
Smile,
Breathe,
And go slowly.
And if anything in this little talk resonated,
I encourage you to take one step forward,
Then another,
And then another.
