Hi.
I think I figured this out. Where does stress and anxiety come from? It comes of course from our thoughts which leads to our feelings or emotions. So we feel anxious. It's amazing. I look around and just about everyone I see feels like they have the weight of the world on thier shoulders. But why?
Learned this from Deepak Chopra recently. It comes from not being present. I never really understood that until recently. We feel stressed or anxious when we are thinking and feeling about either the past or the future. We have absolutely no control over the past and really not alot of control about the future. You are going to have the experiences that God wants you to have in this life until you have learned the lessons that your Soul is supposed to learn in this life. So what are you if you are not thinking about the past or the future? You are present.
How do you become present? Look around. Look with quiet eyes. Just notice whatever is going on all around you without judgement. Without opinion. Realize the everything just is. It's a great way to take a break from being in your own head. It's what many of us use TV or drugs or alcohol or food for. To get out of our own heads. But you really don't NEED that stuff. That's just more noise to cover up the regular noise that you want to get away from.
And you can do things to remind yourself to just recognise that - "It's now right now." Remember to recognise presence every time you log into your computer, look at your watch, brush your teeth. Anyway I'm not Yoda, but that's what I'm trying to do.
The other part of stress and anxiety I realized at a Tony Robbins conference last December. Tony teaches about the 6 human needs that we all have, and 2 of them cause stress and anxiety. (Or fear or depression really.) Those 2 needs are Certainty and Significance.
Certainty is our need to have the feeling that we are in control. Our desire to control what's happening or going to happen. TR also goes on to say that the quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of UNCERTAINTY you can comfortably live with. You see fighting for certainty is fighting for an unfulfilling life. For one thing it's boring. Life is meant to be enjoyed and savored. Also, how much control of the future do you really have? You can lie to yourself if you want to, but life is full of challenges and lessons to be learned. And again, if you don't learn the lessons you are supposed to, you'll get the same challenges over and over. "What if everything in life was happening for you, and not to you?" was one of the best lessons from that conference for me. Let go of certainty.
Then there is sigficance. Our need to feel important in other peoples eyes. When we care so much about how other people percieve us. The trouble with significance is that in order to feel significant we have to be comparing ourselves to someone else. Only way to do it. And whoever you are, there will always be someone that you will compare yourself to that will make you feel insignificant. If you desire significance, you think about those people who you believe are more significant than you are. Or you may think about those people and instead of letting yourself feel badly, you will tear them down for some reason.
I once read that when you die, the biggest consideration used by the people attending your funeral when deciding if they should go to the burial afterword or not, is the weather. So your dead and they don't want to get their hair wet. So really why care at all what other people think. Also anyone I think is truly significant could care less about being significant. They are concerned about much more important things than what I think. That makes them significant. Let go of significance.
So how do you tie this all together? Just recognise it. The next time you feel negative feelings, I am sure it will be because you are thinking about the past or future and you are concerned about certainty or significance. Just recognise it when it happens and the feelings will start to dissipate.
All my best,
Jason