The woods
You have been diligent with you morning routine, manifestation practices, exercise, and healthy (read: healthier) eating. You have been doing everything right for months, and yet you still struggle with anxiety. Your life has not completely changed, and the excitement of unlocking a world that you have only dreamt of is starting to wane. You still believe it is all possible, but it’s exhausting. Your relationship with anxiety is undoubtedly in a much better place due to all this work. You are proud of the person you have become in several short months. But you’ve promised myself so much more.
What now? How do you keep the motivation when the rewards are less novel and the work is just as hard?
It requires understanding the nature of life-altering change. You have spent decades training yourself to be anxious. You were addicted to anxiety your entire life. Now, you are not just training yourself to be a new person but doing so while experiencing the withdrawals of an emotion that courses through the body like a drug.
It’s similar to how recovering alcoholics describe their journey to sobriety. For years, often decades, you have walked deeper and deeper into the woods of your addiction. For the anxious, it is the dark woods of anxiety. For years, you’ve taught yourself tricks to suppress or escape anxiety for brief moments, forgetting what might linger around in the darkness or focusing on casting just a bit more light on the ground around your feet.
You’ve devised ways to survive in the woods, but all the while only walking deeper into them.
Yes, the moment you truly committed to changing your relationship and perspective on anxiety, you initiated a drastic change. You were no longer suppressing or escaping anxiety but rather transforming it into a more productive form of energy. Your perspective on yourself has changed, turning you into your own light source, allowing you to see further and further ahead. Your perspective of the world has changed, so the blanket of darkness around you is not quite as dark and only getting brighter.
Significant changes are happening, but you can’t forget just how far into the woods you have already walked. Today, you can see better and further, but you are only just beginning the journey back out of the woods.
The return journey, though, is going to be part of the magic of this transformation.
While the journey out of the woords may be long and, at times like this, arduous, it will be illuminating and educational. The towering trees and sounds in the dark that were once fear-inducing can now be seen in the light of day and admired for their beauty. The cloak of darkness that once filled you with uncertainty is now lifted, and you can now see the vast expanse of forest.
Yes, there will still be frightful things in the woods, and even once you exit them, but you will know they are things that truly warrant fear, as opposed to harmless or even beneficial things that once triggered fear simply because they were in the shadows.
The excitement of changing your life may feel like it is wearing off, but you are simply building up your endurance to reach the next peak, valley, and eventually, the meadow you have never seen. But there is a long road ahead, and it’s not one that can be bypassed. Any shortcuts to get out of the woods will only make it that much easier to find yourself lost in them once again.
