Your Anxiety is a Step Towards Living Your Desired Life
Positively Use Your Anxiety to Become a Self-Fulfilled Individual
Let us imagine a situation.
You called your friend multiple times, and he is not picking up the phone.
Inside the mind of a normal human being:
He will call me after some time. Let me get back to what I was doing.
Inside the mind of an anxious person:
Why is he not picking up the call? Is he all right?
Is he neglecting my calls? Have I done something wrong?
Did I hurt him?
Maybe he does not bother about me? Am I not important to him?
Will he call me after one hour?
If he does not call today, should I not consider him a friend?
Your mind goes on like a chattering monkey imagining hypothetical situations.
These situations might never take place in the future. Still, you keep on tormenting yourself.
What you see in the second person’s mind is not fear but anxiety.
Anxiety is a perceived response to situations, as in the case of fear.
The only difference. Unlike fear, the situation has an unknown outcome.
You do not have an inch of knowledge of what will happen in the future. Perhaps nothing will happen. Everything will go on smoothly as it is going now.
Yet you keep creating new situations and stay in a state of dread, continually fearing the worst.
The anxiety in the above situation is more or less baseless.
But what if a famous philosopher told you your anxiety is well-founded and can be the road to a wholesome life?
The Possibility of Freedom and the Dread of Anxiety Lurking at the Back:
The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard believed anxiety to be an essential part encountered through the journey to living a fulfilling life.
Just as a physician might say that there is very likely not one single living human being who is completely healthy, so anyone who really knows mankind might say there is not one single living human being who does not…secretly harbor an unrest, an inner strife, a disharmony, an anxiety about an unknown something or something he does not even dare to try to know, an anxiety about some possibility in existence or an anxiety about himself…an anxiety he cannot explain
—Soren Kierkegaard
Imagine yourself in a situation where you are at the crossroads of your life:
You have to choose between two paths:
The first path: take a corporate job and try to grow your career
The second path: do not seek a corporate job and instead pursue your hobby like writing, gardening, teaching, carpentry, or carrying out some form of entrepreneurship.
You finally choose the second option in your quest for a life where you can reach self-actualization.
While on your entrepreneurial journey, you face a sense of impending doom waiting to happen.
According to Kierkegaard, the possibility of freedom brings about a certain sense of responsibility upon the individual.
Learning to know anxiety is an adventure which every man has to affront…He therefore who has learned rightly to be in anxiety has learned the most important thing
— Soren Kierkegaard
As one walks a less traveled path, one is bound to have doubts about his future, and what if he fails during this endeavor?
A feeling of existential angst kicks in, throwing his mind into thinking of various options.
Option 1: He searches for a corporate job to return to where he feels secure, comfortable, and more sure of his future.
Option 2: Without knowing what the future will bring, he goes on with the anxiety. He continues with his work facing his anxiety.
It is as if a person is standing on the edge of an abyss where backward is the standard way of life and forward is a jump into the unknown with no sense of security.
Falling Back Into the Comfort Zone and Conforming to Society:
If a person chooses option one, he returns to his normal way of living, conforming to societal standards like anyone else.
The person lives life enjoying all comforts and privileges without facing any uncertainty.
But there is always a question lurking at the back of his head, even after many years.
What if?
What if I had carried on and endured the ups and down during my entrepreneurship journey?
I may have actualized my potential and would have become the human being I was supposed to be.
Years go on, and the person regrets his decision pondering what his life may have been.
He had the opportunity to live life on his terms.
But he panicked.
Instead of moving forward into a blind alley, he turned towards predictability and certainty.
His mind tried to weigh the pros and cons of every situation possible.
The less traveled path seemed to be filled with loneliness and full of bumps with anxiety all along.
As the person foresaw this path, he became more fearful, panic-stricken, and sure of failing.
All worst-case scenarios popped into his head.
The fear lurking forced him to go back and act according to societal norms.
By mixing with the masses, he bought security and safety at the price of self-independence. He experienced all pleasures in life but missed the greatest joy, i.e., finding oneself.
By following the herd, he erased a part of himself — the part desiring to be something greater than usual.
When a person sacrifices his right to self-expression [i.e., self-realization] for the sake of survival, his very survival is endangered, not from without but from within. With the surrender of the right to self-expression the meaning of life is lost. This is not a psychological phenomenon only. Self-expression is the direct and immediate manifestation of the life force in an individual. Self-expression is equivalent to life expression and a life that isn’t expressed, isn’t being lived. That leads to a slow death.
— Alexander Lowen
Facing Your Anxieties and Throwing Yourself Into the Abyss of Uncertainty to Achieve Your True Self:
Imagine the person choosing option number two.
Even amidst all tension and chaos, the person continues on his road to self-discovery.
He knows he does not have any grip on the future outcome. He may or may not succeed.
Whatever he is doing, he has to do all by himself, and the more he ventures on this journey he will have to face anxieties in various forms.
But he accepts this anxiety as an inevitable part of his journey.
Again he has two options:
- Either flee from the anxiety and not challenge your inner demons
- Face your anxiety head-on and, in the process, remove all your weaknesses.
He chooses option two because anxiety is a good determinator of his being in the right direction. In achieving self-fulfillment, he must look straight into the anxiety and keep performing his duties.
His rational mind urges him to quit this path, but something inside him keeps him going. His inner voice tells him not to betray himself.
Either betray yourself and choose a life of slow depression or keep going along with your worries and perform your work.
He does not betray himself and knows freedom comes along with a specific cost- a cost of responsibility to conquer your mental restrictions and bondages.
In a few years, he becomes a complete individual and a free man who can live life on his terms.
He lives a life with no regrets.
He is a joyful person. This joy reflects in his relationships with his wife and kids. He wants his kids’ potential to be maximized as well.
Overall it is a life well-lived and well-experienced.
The capacity to bear anxiety is important for the individual’s self-realization and for his conquest of his environment. Every person experiences continual shocks and threats to his existence; indeed, self-actualization occurs only at the price of moving ahead despite such shocks. This indicates the constructive use of anxiety.
— Rollo May
Final Insights and Conclusion:
Always remember not to treat our anxieties as always a bad thing.
One must prepare for many anxiety shocks along the way when pursuing something nourishing to one’s soul and not bowing out to the norm.
Anxiety is a healthy part of your journey, indicating your need to be responsible in the face of it.
Your mind can betray you at this point, but it is important not to rationalize too much and not give away or flee from your dread.
One must be brave enough to challenge the anxiousness and tension within by performing duties. Only by action can one overcome this feeling.
By piercing through the fears, one can reach the ultimate satisfaction in life- the satisfaction of becoming what nature truly intended you to become.
Thus we are forced into a difficult choice: anxiety or depression. If we move forward, as our soul insists, we may be flooded with anxiety. If we do not move forward, we will suffer the depression, the pressing down of the soul’s purpose. In such a difficult choice one must choose anxiety, for anxiety is at least the path of personal growth; depression is a stagnation and defeat of life.
— James Hollis
