Anxiety is Not a Strategy

When I moved to Osaka for the second time, I got a job at the Happy Days English School as a teacher while I pursued my Master’s degree in Japanese. I had just graduated from UCSB and was staying with the Yokotas, my host family during a semester in Japan as a sophomore, while I searched for somewhere permanent. The owner of the English school put the word out to his students that a teacher from America needed a place to live, and one of the students’ families, the Fukuokas, volunteered to take me in.

The Fukuokas introduced me to many things. One of them is a tradition that I have followed every year since. Rather than stay up until midnight on New Year’s Eve that year, we woke early and went to meet the first sunrise of the New Year at a local Buddhist temple called Kiyomizu-dera (est. 778). I’ve been waking to watch the sunrise on New Year’s Day, and set my intention for the new year, ever since.

This year, as we created our annual family mission statement, I wanted to focus not only on resolutions but dissolutions as well. Things I wanted to stop doing. My dissolution for the year is to quit anxiety.

Everyone experiences anxiety from time to time. It has become a cottage industry lately though it seems, and social media plays a large part in this. With so much bad news circulating all the time, we take what should be a speed bump and magnify it into a potential catastrophe. Whether it is job or health or relationship related, it seems like the other shoe is constantly about to drop in some aspect of our lives.

When my kids were young, we were busy all the time taking care of them. This engagement left no doubt in my mind that I was a good Mother. My kids are teenagers now, and it seems like my control over their safety has gotten smaller while the risks have gotten bigger. We are way past a child lock on the cupboard. So I filled the gap between the risks that I saw, and the control I had, with anxiety.

But anxiety took a toll. It came at too high of a price and I decided I didn’t want to be anxious anymore. I thought long and hard about what benefit I was receiving from being anxious. It had to be serving me somehow, otherwise why would I continue to do it? I realized that being anxious made me feel like I was still a good parent. It meant I was actively engaged somehow if I was actively worrying.

Once I realized this, I created a New Year’s Dissolution. I am dissolving my commitment to anxiety, and here is how I’m doing it:

Meditation

I meditate 10 minutes/day. It helps me tremendously. My favorite meditation app is called Insight Timer.

Inspiration

I go for a walk or get into water. Either one opens the calm space needed to let inspiration in. On New Year’s morning I walked in our local forest and spent 2 hours with just the birds and me. It was silent as the sun shone through the trees, and it was amazing.

Activation

Then I write down my thoughts. You can write, paint, or do something to let creativity flow through you. Take action toward a goal or an accomplishment that you’re excited about. Moving towards a thing helps to create your version of an exciting reality. Be bold. Be vulnerable. Take a risk.

I took a chance moving back to Japan after college, with no job and no place to live. But my time there and with the Fukuokas has brought many gifts, and for that I will always be grateful.

If you find yourself anxious over finding a job, an upcoming performance review, or a situation in your personal life, I hope that you can embrace a little personal Marie Kondo’ing. Thank the anxiety for the service it provided, put it in the discard pile, and resolve to embrace only those things that spark joy.

When you’re ready, there are two ways I can help:

1) I highly recommend the same 2-hour course ($150) I used to get started posting on LinkedIn (affiliate link): THE LINKEDIN OPERATING SYSTEM

2) We can work together to create a content system, tell your stories and amplify your brand: GHEIM@GRAYSONHAYDEN.COM

Genelle HeimJanuary 6, 2024Comment