I’ve been reading Ryan Holiday’s inspiring Courage is Calling. Holliday practices Stoicism, a way of life that’s become my life credo, though I confess my frequent failure to live up to its tenets of courage, temperance, justice and wisdom.
Stoicism is a discipline requiring daily practice. It’s taught me how much fear lies behind our modern anxiety and behavior. As Holliday writes, “This is how it goes, whether you’re a billionaire or an ordinary person, no matter how physically tough or brilliant you are. Fear determines what is or isn’t possible. If you think something is too scary, it’s too scary for you. If you don’t think you have any power . . . you don’t. If you aren’t the captain of your fate . . . then fate is the captain of you.”
Anxiety with its burden of worries culminates in stress, and we know its harsh consequences for our mental and physical health.
Worry teaches you that the future is happening now.
It falsely tells you that worry will make it go away.
Worry makes you care more about what others think.
It inhibits your boldly attempting new things like falling in love again, having children, resuming your education, investing your money, traveling to new places, changing your residence, trying a new doctor. Maybe even quitting your job for something, even if for less money, but more fulfilling.
It says you can’t ever escape your past, whether a bad childhood or failed marriage, a hurtful friendship or demeaning rejection.
Fear anchors you to what’s familiar, seemingly safe. It forfeits possibility and, with it, the future.
The truth is life is inherent with risk. Loss, illness, grief, death embrace every nook and cranny of life. Its remedy is to step up and step out, doing what you can.
Paradoxically, mastering anxiety begins with acceptance of what you can’t change. Uncertainty is inherent with life. In his book, The Liberated Mind, psychologist Steven Hayes writes that “people like to think the world is ‘happy happy joy joy,’ but if you live long enough, you start running into pain and illness and loss and tragedies of all sorts. It’s just part of it. That’s part of life.”
But there are things you can change. Yes, you can master living in a temporal world of vicissitude, but you must be willing to sign the bottom line.
Take inventory of what inhibits your resolve.
It may cost you money, even estrangement, but how much better to walk away free. One of life’s caveats is knowing when and how to jettison habits and worries weighing you down.
You can be courageous in every day life in so many ways.
It takes bravery to ask for a pay raise, confront injustice, leave a demeaning relationship, find a new hobby.
Don’t let fear bully you.
Don’t let routine dictate your everyday doings.
Happiness doesn’t just happen. It requires flexibility, resilience and daily practice. Frequently, it’s a life of sips more than gulps to get there.
So much of life is living in the moment. You do what you can, attempt what you’ve wanted. You act to realize yourself, becoming agent of your own destiny.
Mastering your fears begins a new portal. Yes, you can find freedom in an unfree world.
–rj
Brimmings: up from the well 