Greg Proffit Writing

Tag: mindfulness

  • Overcoming Anxiety—Stop Making Worry Payments On A Lay-Away Plan

    Overcoming Anxiety—Stop Making Worry Payments On A Lay-Away Plan

    Overcoming Anxiety
    Photo by Uday Mittal on Unsplash

    # 72 on my, 99 Life Tips–A List is: Remember that anxiety is making payments of worry in the present for a future outcome that hasn’t occurred yet. There will be plenty of time to feel bad about that outcome when it arrives. 90% of the time, it won’t.

    The temptation when writing about overcoming anxiety is to sermonize Philippians 4:6, which starts with an imperative commandment:

    Be anxious for nothing…

    While the prohibition against anxiety is as binding as those against murder, adultery, and lying, this one usually gets a pass.

    We treat it as an affliction, or disease, more than as a volitional sin. That’s hard to even put in writing. I have such empathy for those in my life who suffer with sometimes debilitating bouts of anxiety.

    Nor have I been immune. But my tip above shows how I deal with it and to date, how I’ve successfully prevented succumbing to it.

    Recognize what anxiety is. It is present-tense worry about a future outcome. We rarely feel anxious about past events. There may be regret or even depression over some past misfortune or tragedy. Depression seems to occupy the past predominantly. But we rarely worry about events behind us.

    Anxiety about the future is the desire for reassurance and certainty that are impossible to give or receive. The uncertainty creates worry universally dominated by things out of your control. Wasting emotional energy on what you cannot control is debilitating.

    But you don’t need me to tell you that.

    Be Here, Now

    You cannot stop how you feel unless you refuse to get into the mental time capsule that keeps playing images for you of events that haven’t happened yet. 

    It takes a concerted effort to be present to right now.

    It is staying present to right now that defeats anxiety. It is the only thing that consistently does.

    Focus on the moment and the resources you have on hand to meet it. You don’t need resources for tomorrow yet, or for next week, or next month. When those moments arise, you’ll find the resources you need. Those scenes you fear, the ones playing on the future-projector in your head, may never happen. Leave room in your thinking for the possibility that unforeseen factors and forces may edit them out completely of your future.

    One thing about that verse from Philippians; it mentions Thanksgiving, or gratitude. One of the surest, most powerful tools in your arsenal against either anxiety or depression is the practice of present-tense gratitude. 

    It is impossible to be grateful and anxious, or grateful and depressed, at the same time. Gratitude is key to overcoming anxiety.

    Relish with gratitude every simple pleasure and praise-worthy thing in your life that is yours right now. That breath you’re taking might be a good starting point. You got this.

  • Ends In Themselves Hide Everywhere In Plain Sight

    Ends in Themselves Hide Everywhere In Plain Sight
    The End Is Achieved photo by Author.

    When you stretch out your feet to the incoming tide, lazily reclined in a beach chair, and the sun is a hand’s width above the water on the horizon, and the wavelets are chasing each other up the sand, and the egrets and sandpipers skitter nervously away as if they’ll melt if the water touches them, your mind isn’t occupied with what’s next..

    You soak in the moment as you soak in the sun. This…this is the reason you’re here. It’s what you came for. It’s the end sought. 

    For most of us, ends as idyllic as that described above are rarities. They are valuable in proportion to their scarcity. Beach folk may no longer hear the murmur-Roar of the waves tumbling in. They may take these marvels of sight and sound for granted, because they’re no longer novel. And familiarity breeds contempt.

    But what can we do, regardless of where we pass our lives, to extract the sublime from the familiar, eliminate the contempt, and cease taking anything for granted?

    In that light, find small “mini-ends” throughout your day. Identify the ends in themselves. Look for them every time you drink a cup of coffee or tea. Savor every conversation with a loved one. Similarly, let each meal exemplify the opportunity to reflect on more than transience. Sure, you’ve had many meals. You anticipate others. But, stop to appreciate that by some miracle you’re having this one, right now. It’s the only time you’ll partake of this meal. That’s a worthy end in itself.

    That mindset and it’s objective is what we cultivate by the practice of awareness, or “mindfulness”. To do so is to fill the mind with what is right in front of it. Extract the precious by appreciation of the obvious. Discover what is too often disguised by plain sight, and realize that if you’re still conscious of being conscious, things could always be a whole lot worse.

    Find these moments hidden in plain sight

    Acquaint yourself with moments from which you want nothing else. Recognize and log in your awareness each time you recognize a moment to which you would add nothing to make it better, or sweeter, or richer. The more these inner promptings bring you into the present, the better you will  come to know your true self. 

    You’ll see that the good life isn’t about waiting for the big, rare thing to come along. Rather, it’s seeing and appreciating the good already present in the so-called mundane grind of life. And when you can maximize happiness from the everyday, you’re living a rare life indeed