A short series of thoughts on anxiety

This is anxiety.

This is you. You are not anxiety

This is a thing that happens to you during the day. That thing––and the thousands of others like it––is not anxiety.

Anxiety is a neurotransmission. That’s all.

When acknowledged, that transmission turns into a feeling. When nurtured time and time again, that feeling becomes a belief. As that belief matures, it becomes your identity. That identity creates your reality.

But, at any moment of any day, you can reverse anxiety. It’s just harder to do the longer you let it grow.

Anxiety is a lens. Nothing you encounter has anxiety in it. Our anxiety filter just makes it look that way.

There is nothing wrong with the raw materials that make up who you are and what you are capable of. But anxiety will determine what you are capable of if you let it.

Anxiety is a passive emotion. It expands to fill the space you give it. Instead of trying to reduce anxiety, give more space to productive emotions. That will naturally reduce the amount of space available for anxiety.

Anxiety manifests as a conscious thought but is generated by your subconscious. After you have an anxious thought, the best you can do is contain it. To have your anxiety in control, you need to train your subconscious not to recognize it in the first place and instead recognize a more productive emotion. For that, we need to rewire our mental model.

Life will always be neutral. Reality will always be neutral. It is how we process life that determines if we see it as an opportunity or a threat. If we go through life afraid or curious. that determines how we perceive our reality.