Just thinking out loud…
Winston Churchill said,
“Your greatest fears are created by your imagination. Don’t give in to them.”
As someone who has lived with anxiety and fear since childhood, sometimes it is easier said than done. As a child, I was afraid of everything. I had a very overactive imagination and being alone in the dark with only my thoughts terrified me. It did not help that my older brother would turn off all the basement lights when I went to the furnace room to get something from the freezer! I would screech and tear out of that room and launch myself up the stairs to safety. Or he would hide in my closet at night, in the dark and jump out at me. What delighted him terrorized me!
If you are like me, anxiety can creep up and jump out at the most inconvenient times! I don’t have any specific triggers, which is frustrating. I will just spontaneously get that feeling, the tingling creeping into my centre and then an explosion of heat from my chest out to the rest of my body.
I have learned that my greatest strength is the “great pause”, that moment when I can decide my response to what my body is trying to get my brain to do. I have learned that this state of pause is where I can become courageous. Courage is not being brave or unafraid. Courage is finding the faith and the determination to move through these hard moments and survive.
After many years of practice, it only takes a moment for me to process all this and then know that I can be courageous… most of the time.
If I can listen to my heart, mind and body and learn to get them all on the same page… I can create what I want for an outcome. It is not always easy and takes practice and patience. And that is a lifelong journey. Because when I think I have got this patience thing down solid, I encounter something else that requires me to start all over again and exercise faith and patience.
“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there someday.”
A.A. Milne
