It's Okay to Say "Me First"

Today, I wanted to talk about something that seems to have grown in our society more than anything we’ve ever seen. At least anything I’ve seen in my lifetime: Anxiety. 

I like to think of anxiety, as a creature inside of us that’s always hungry, and is always buzzing, and is like fire—it just has to run, it has to keep going. It has to worry, and it just spins and spins and spins inside itself. That’s how I like to think of anxiety. Like a little Goblin. I know it sounds silly, but I personify everything. 

Here’s the thing, many people who have severe anxiety can’t sleep at night. They feel this big fear in every part of their lives. They wake up with it, they go to bed with it, they wake up in the middle of the night with it. It’s this sense of obsession where we’re just constantly going over and over the problem, over and over. And we feel like it takes so much energy to keep that wheel going inside of us. We feel like we’re doing a lot, but actually we’re not. We’re inside a bubble. 

I’m very familiar with anxiety because my mom lived with an incredible amount of anxiety. And my ex-husband had an incredible amount of anxiety. And I saw what it did to their lives. I saw how they didn’t ever want to step out of any sort of comfort zone. I saw how the worries started taking over them. Meaning even if there was nothing to worry about when life is totally peaceful, they have to actually find something to worry about. This is why I personify it. There’s this little Goblin who says, “Wait, what do I do? I need to worry about something…” And then it starts all up again. I have another brother who’s in another part of the state, and I remember one day I said to my mom, “oh, he’s doing fine. He just needs to rethink a few things.” And she says, “Oh, now I have to worry about him.” I said “Mom, he’s 50 years old. I don’t think you have to worry about him on this. He’ll figure it out. And plus, is your worrying gonna help?” She goes, “I don’t know, but I’m gonna worry about it anyway.” That was my mom. 

Anxiety is not something we have to suffer with if we learn the warning signs that it’s coming on, and we have tools to deal with it. And I find more and more, when you start to connect to your higher self, you truly don’t have that anxiety because you’re guided. And any problem, no matter how severe, is answered, in the best way. But that takes conquering that hungry Goblin inside you, and if you’re used to feeding that worry Goblin, we’ll call him or her—how do you pacify that? How do you get it to actually eventually leave you? It’s really important because when the worry takes over, it can ruin your life. It can shorten your life. It can cause you this incredible fear where you start to develop symptoms. You get adrenal fatigue, where the adrenal glands are not working right, which then causes a thyroid to go out or a heart problem, or white blood cells to be produced way too much and start causing all kinds of problems. There are some scientists that feel that stress is a very big part of cancer. 

Sometimes the anxiety is so severe that medication is necessary to be able to manage it. Definitely, exercise helps too. Exercise exudes energy, it gets rid of frustrations, it loosens the muscles, it gets the energy flowing, and that’s good. But what happens when you’ve got the frightening idea or the problem that really keeps looming over your thoughts or that obsession that feeds the hungry little Goblin? Before you know you’ve got an all downright panic attack. 

Step One: Step Away For a Moment

When anxiety strikes, let’s step away, do something fun, do something different, do some work, do whatever you like, do some gardening… then when you come back, you get fresh ideas because your mind has left the problem alone for a while. And guess what the best part of this is? You feel more in control of the obsession. And you’re not obsessing and that hungry little goblins going, “huh? What should I do?”  But we don’t care. 

Step Two: Make a List of Things You Can and Cannot Control

So what can I control in a situation with my child who just seems to not listen to me, and I just can’t deal with it anymore? (For example)

Well, I always like to first step away from what I can’t control. Why? I think I like to set those boundaries for myself because I’m not going to waste my time over here with what I can’t control if I can’t control it. Here’s what I can’t control: I cannot make my child into another person. I cannot force my child to become something they are not. What I can control is what that child does in my house by setting boundaries. I can control my attitude in how I want to deal with this. Do I want to be a screaming banshee, or do I want to sit down and really talk? I can control my open mind and listen to my child as to why this is happening. I can control the procedure that I present to the child. 

Step Three: Do a Meditation Before Determining Action

Before confronting the issue directly, I  do a short meditation. I will sit there and say, “Okay, so this is what I have. And I just want to get clarity…” So I just sit with it. And I don’t obsess. I think, “What is my plan of action? What is my action plan?” And then I listen in stillness and peace, and I hold space for clarity to take place.

You might find with some of the issues weighing you down, that what you can control is NOTHING. That’s what I call worrying about stuff that we don’t even need to worry about. When it comes to situations where you have no control and don’t know what to do, sometimes the BEST thing to do is NOTHING. Sometimes doing nothing is very difficult, but in situations that you can’t control, it’s quite often the correct thing to do.

And if that’s the case, my solution is to let it go. Exercise, and let that energy just seep out of you. I have had so many successful results with clients who seem to suffer from anxiety when they commit to exercising when they feel their anxiety creeping up. And it just gives them something solid. And of course, this isn’t the only thing we do, because not one shoe fits all. But this is a really good start.
I hope you have success with this. I hope it gives you something solid when you feel like you’re starting to enter into that obsession. 

When you join Soul Manifesto, a very strong, beautiful community that is here to help you, we’ve got Soul Talk every Tuesday and Thursday. We’ve got Inevitable U, that helps you to find the solutions and design the life you want…You know, we’ve got the tools, and we’ve got many ways to help. But in order to join, you have to go to soulmanifesto.com. And if you feel that you need more than that, then go to the contact page and reach out to me! I’m very accessible, and I don’t wanna see anyone ever have to deal with anxiety. It’s crippling. I saw my mom. I saw what it did to her. Even as she was so afraid to die, and she was passing over, and that’s a horrible feeling when you’re so scared— and you know, that’s what is happening to you.  She was so scared beyond any reason…That’s a horrible place to be. 

Let’s nip that anxiety in the bud, at least as far as giving us some tools to be able to deal with it and have that little hungry Goblin be very, very bored. I do love you all. And I’ll tell you what Spirit is love. And when we can bore that little worry Goblin and have the tools to create peace in our mind, where we can sleep, where we can feel good, then that worry is replaced with love. Isn’t that cool? And when we have that love, we are more aligned with Spirit. As always, Namaste. Stay connected to yourself, stay connected to spirit and stay connected with others.