Anxiety Dilemma: In 10,000 years the sun will not provide enough heat to warm our planet. I just thought I would give you one more thing to worry about. The sun, which is the center of our universe, is kind of important, after all we would not be here if it wasn’t for its influence on our planet. If you are prone to anxiety then you might as well start worrying about the loss of our sun right now. It makes sense right? Thinking about that loss just might help you realize and discover much of what we worry about never really happens, and if it does, there always seems to be a way to fix or take care of it.

There are 10,000 reasons to create anxiety in our lives. There are an equal amount of reasons to make them disappear or dissolve. Much of it has to do with how we approach anxiety, and there is such a thing as expectations. We all have the ability to expect, and we often say to ourselves or to others, “I expected that to happen.” Interestingly, rarely if ever do we expect the best. Perhaps the first way to look at the anxiety dilemma, is to understand that we create the dilemma by merely putting energy into it. Dilemmas are no riddle; they almost invariably have some predictability.

Here is something to create anxiety about or at least this created an anxiety dilemma for Pablo Picasso. He was very prone to superstitions. He was always afraid that he was going to be cursed. The way we look at his life today, he was cursed all right, but with an immense amount of artistic talent. But he had a strange habit that had everything to do with being superstitious. Pablo would cut his fingernails and neatly wrap them up, usually putting them in an envelope. The envelopes that contained his fingernail clippings were categorized by date. Why would he do this? He was afraid that if someone got a hold of his fingernails they could put a curse on him. Today we would call that being overly paranoid. But his fear created anxiety, was it debilitating? Well for all practical purposes as far as we know Pablo Picasso was not cursed in a negative way. Well, maybe the women in his life would argue that point.

Anxiety is a curse, if left uncontrolled. Anxiety can be most debilitating. It’s easy for me and others to tell you it’s all in your head. And for the most part it really is, all in your head. You might say that’s the dilemma. How do you get rid of anxiety? There’s no simple answer but there is one answer that is kind of simple if practiced on a regular basis and here it is.

No matter how negative things look you can always be aware of something to be thankful for. You can be thankful for the little things in your life. If you do this for one day and count them, you will discover that there are hundreds. The more you look the more you will find. Being thankful is a mechanism to reduce stress and anxiety that we all have within us. Count your blessings not the things that are negative. In the great scale of life the blessings always outweigh the negatives. Surprisingly enough, the more blessings you count, the more at peace you will feel and the happier you will be. This in turn will bring on good and positive things in your life. Ultimately reducing stress.

As most of all those that know me. They know I am the cohost of a podcast. And we celebrate what people love to do creatively. I’ve noticed as we’ve interviewed these various creative people, they all had one thing in common. They felt blessed that they could actually recognize they had creative ability. They also felt that everyone is creative. Guess what? They repeatedly wanted to encourage others to be creative. If you are honest with yourself and you are being creative, you’ll discover that it’s very difficult to manifest any anxiety dilemmas.

We are excited to announce the Thought Row Academy. The goal is to share positive information that can help mitigate anxiety and encourage everyone to explore all of the creative possibilities they have wrapped up inside them. Once those are released you can use them to foil anxiety. Hope you get to know our Thought Row Academy, and I hope what you learn there will help you. “Be All You Can Be.” borrowing the slogan from the United States Army.

“A good life is never as good as it could be. A bad life is never as bad as it could be. We all have the ability to make either one work for us.”

 

Rod Jones artist-writer