The Fear and Anxiety Solution (5 page)

“Nobody is really happy” was the philosophy of some of my fellow colleagues and “inmates.” My favorite uncle once told me that he couldn’t wait to retire. At that time, he was only in his mid-forties. He died of a massive heart attack right after he reached retirement age. For quite some time, I saw myself and those around me entangled in limiting beliefs of “I can’t” and “I have to.” Gradually my hopes and dreams of freedom and fulfillment were replaced with feelings of being imprisoned by a never-ending string of obligations and external expectations.

Over the years, I’ve come to understand and appreciate that we all have the power of choice inside of us; we just don’t always know how to access it. We may feel obliged or forced to behave in ways that are determined by others; however, we can still choose our thoughts, our perspectives, and even our emotions. Although our external circumstances may not immediately change, our experience of life can dramatically improve if we choose more resourceful, supportive internal responses. In my case, I finally chose to worry less about getting approval from my superiors and instead to focus more on myself and on building trust in myself as a doctor. Interestingly, this shift in attitude brought me more positive recognition and support from my bosses, which, as I look back, was instrumental to my receiving the research stipend that brought me to the United States and ultimately set me on the path of my life’s work, which includes writing this book. Just like small hinges that swing open big doors, small choices like this one can make a big difference.

A friend of mine who volunteers at a school and codirects its annual theatre production, which could rival many professionally produced shows, told me about a little girl who was born without legs and with only one arm. This little girl made the choice to be a star—so she thinks, feels, and acts like one. When she dances in her wheelchair—or dances without her chair, propelling herself with one hand across the floor—she exhibits amazing skills and agility. Her radiance and pizzazz are so bright that everyone around her feels inspired to be
their best. This girl understands that there are no limitations and that people can make a choice to be either the victim or the star of their lives.

As you go through this book considering and incorporating the insights and tools that I describe, look at every chapter as an opportunity to make a choice—a choice to say yes to yourself and yes to empowering yourself to create the life you choose.

This principle of change can be summarized with three words that Nike made famous:
just do it.
If you don’t take action when you discover the keys to unlocking yourself, moments of awareness, times of flexibility, and important choices remain just thoughts or nice dreams. How many self-help books ended up as
shelf-
help books, looking quite impressive in your library but never really having a true impact on your life? The fear of change, which is the fear of the unknown, may have kept those books sitting on the shelf and you on the fence. As someone once pointed out to me, “All I got from sitting on the fence was a sore butt.”

Making that jump off the fence and taking the first step down the path of change are often easier than staying on the path. The pain of being stuck in fear and anxiety can be the catalyst that propels you forward, because anything seems to be better than that pain. But what happens if you don’t reach the promised land as quickly as you’d hoped?

The saying “It often gets worse, before it gets better” describes a fascinating phenomenon, one I’ve observed to be true with both physical and emotional challenges. It appears that sometimes the resistance is the strongest just before the actual breakthrough. During these times, you believe you’re spinning your wheels or sliding backward despite your best efforts and good intentions. This is when it’s valuable to remember the self-empowering sequence of awareness, flexibility, choice, and actualization.

Actualization means to move forward with the focus on and conscious commitment to your path of growth, self-discovery, and empowerment without letting yourself become sidetracked by old patterns and habits. Actualization means staying centered and focused and continuing to commit to
you.
This does not mean that you have to dedicate most of your time and energy to your self-improvement. In fact, just as it is with reshaping your body, working consistently on yourself for a relatively short amount of time each day is more effective than pushing yourself hard only once a week.

Another common challenge can present itself after you’ve made progress toward your goals of emotional freedom and self-empowerment. Let’s say you’ve been feeling good about yourself for quite some time, when suddenly you seem to fall back into old patterns and habits. Old grooves can be deep, familiar, and slippery—especially when you forget to practice and use what got you out of them in the first place. Eventually you believe that you never changed and that all your past efforts were in vain, which is one of the biggest misconceptions of life.

You can’t live without changing. My friend Chris says life is a circle that continually expands, whether you’re aware of it or not. After his first, and probably last, bungee jump, still a bit pale and shaken, he said to me, “I didn’t really enjoy the experience, but my circle is wider now, and nothing can ever make it smaller again.”

It’s in our nature to expand and grow; all that varies is the speed of that expansion. This means there is no real endpoint to this journey of emotional freedom and self-empowerment, which makes it important to continuously invest focus, time, and energy. Use your awareness to determine whether you’re still on track; your flexibility to define new and more resourceful ways of being, thinking, and acting; and your power of choice to decide what is truly important to you. Then put everything into action. Just do it—again and again.

This principle is all about solidifying and implementing, in a balanced and sustainable manner, the changes you have achieved. This book is designed to take you effectively
and
gently through the various stages of breaking through fear and anxiety. For some, however, taking steps on this journey may feel like walking on a tightrope. At the beginning, you may have to deal with your high expectations, which are usually coupled with impatience. You know what happens. At first you are all excited and motivated to make that big breakthrough happen. If others can do it, so can you. But rather than focusing on the journey and appreciating the progress you have made, you are so invested in your desired outcome that you force yourself to do more and push harder—until eventually you run out of steam. Or you drop the ball and give up too quickly because you haven’t yet achieved the amazing results you expected. Both options only lead to more anxiety, frustration, and disappointment with yourself.

For others, the opposite may happen. Your changes and growth might be so profound and rapid that you start to feel a bit ungrounded and untethered, which might make you more susceptible to falling back into old, familiar patterns of anxiety.

To stay motivated and committed to this journey of healing and empowerment, you need to find that fine line between consistently making progress and taking time to adjust to the progress you’ve made. Through the process of integration, you can bring your thoughts, actions, and emotions into ever-increasing alignment with who you really are. In this regard, integration is the most important of these principles, because it allows you to own and embody your changes and, therefore, give meaning and purpose to them.

As you consciously work your way through this book and employ the principles of change, you’ll notice that with increasing awareness you can see where you’ve been and what’s waiting on the other side of your perceived limitations. With flexibility and choice, you can learn to stretch your mind beyond what you regarded as your reality. By taking action, you can step out of your comfort zone and create momentum that allows you to continue to expand your consciousness and your life. And through integration you will gain the strength and stability to solidify your new, true, and limitless identity.

Every step you take, even the smallest one, carries you forward and changes you. No matter how much time and effort you invest in the processes of this book, by the time you finish it, you’ll be a different person than the one who opened the cover.

F
EAR AND ANXIETY
can envelop your mind like a dark, persistent cloud, or they can appear so suddenly that you feel attacked or ambushed. In either case, fear and anxiety feel more like foreign entities than something you created. Understanding some important facts about fear and anxiety is the first step to demystifying them and regaining control. After all, with awareness comes knowledge, with knowledge comes responsibility, and with taking responsibility comes true empowerment.

Although you may often feel overcome, attacked, or trapped by anxiety, it’s still just a basic feeling that you’ve chosen to create, albeit subconsciously. A feeling is a message from the subconscious part of your mind to the conscious part. It lets you know that your subconscious has perceived something either pleasurable or dangerous. Physiologically, the intensity of physical pain indicates how much your body needs your attention; in the same way, the greater the intensity of an emotional sensation, the more closely and urgently your subconscious mind wants you to consciously pay attention to its message.

Fear and anxiety are created with a positive intention: to keep you safe. The resourceful and adaptive aspect of anxiety is that it places you on high alert, causing you to notice and anticipate danger and either take precautions or appropriately address the situation. A low-grade anxiety can keep you on your toes and prevent you from putting yourself into situations that could potentially harm you. A slightly more intense form of anxiety can help you to be fully
alert and mobilize additional energy and resources so that you’re mentally and physically ready to either fight the perceived source of danger or run from it.

Researchers believe that some fears, such as the fear of snakes or of anger, have been preserved during human evolution and passed down to us. Studies have shown that children, even infants, can recognize and respond to pictures of snakes and angry faces more rapidly than to neutral pictures.
¹
Our relatives from the Stone Age certainly faced life-threatening situations daily, whether they had to struggle with the elements or fend off huge predators. Fear and anxiety provided them with crucial information and led them to come up with adaptive responses. For example, the development of weapons and shelter ensured the safety and survival of our prehistoric ancestors and helped them overcome their physical weaknesses and the challenges of their environment. So it makes sense that the ability to create these emotions was preserved during evolution.

The world has changed significantly since caves were our castles. When we humans discovered how to overcome our limitations, outsmart our enemies, and emerge as the dominating species on the planet, we wasted no time extinguishing our natural predators or forcing them to retreat to small vestiges of nature, away from civilization.

Now we’re the most powerful species on Earth. At the same time, we’re the most dangerous threat to all living beings, including ourselves. That sounds rather bleak, and the truth is
most
humans don’t pose a physical threat to each other but live according to the “don’t harm and don’t get harmed” creed. Thus, the vast majority of people, especially in the industrialized nations, don’t face life-threatening situations on a daily basis. Yet around 17 percent of the world’s population has been diagnosed with anxiety disorder.
²
What are we still afraid of today?

According to a 2001 Gallup survey, the fear of public speaking, which is the fear of public humiliation, is the second most common fear in the United States, exceeded only by the “ancient” fear of snakes.
³
In addition to the fear of losing health, face, and respect, other common modern fears are losing a job, money, security, relationships, and love. At first glance, these fears could be summarized as: the fear of losing something of value. However, underneath the fear of losing something that’s important to us often lingers a greater fear,
which might be also anchored in evolution: the fear of losing control and being powerless. This deep-seated fear can lead to a vicious cycle, causing us to believe that hypervigilance, micromanaging, and even obsessive behaviors are the only way to maintain some sense of power and control when, in actuality, it is fear and anxiety that control our lives more and more.

Many people believe that without fear and anxiety their lives would be less safe. You could argue that you need a level of anxiety to stay productive and avoid failure. Or you might be convinced that the less worried and vigilant you are, the more likely it is that you will make mistakes, disappoint others, and face criticism or failure. Some of these fears are learned during your upbringing and rooted in old proverbs and beliefs, such as, “You can’t count on anybody but yourself,” “You gotta watch your back,” “You can’t make the same mistake twice,” and “Life is not fair.” These beliefs have been handed down from one generation to the next and became part of your subconscious programming, conveying the notion that fear and anxiety are necessary for staying safe and well.

However, considering your current day-to-day life, how much anxiety do you really need to be OK? Do you need the worry of losing your job to persuade you to go to work and do your best every day? Do you need the fear of causing an accident to motivate you to drive responsibly? Do you treat your spouse and others with courtesy and respect just because you’re afraid of what they might think about you otherwise?