how to overcome anxiety | Cherie Roe Dirksen

Simple Complexity — The Dichotomous Nature of Our Reality

I’ve just finished the painting I used in the header picture above (you can click on it to see the whole image). It’s a new style I’m dappling in.

When I stepped back from the painting — after I had downed my brush — the first thing that smacked me was the complexity of the background.

When I do my backgrounds it’s just mindless doodling, so, it takes me a while (and some physical distance) to actually ‘see’ what I’ve created. In this case, I knew immediately what this represented.

You are looking at the physical representation of what’s going on in my head…lol. This is what my binary code looks like all fleshed out.

Seriously, this is what it feels like to be Virgonian me. It’s frightening and beautiful at the same time.

To Think or Not to Think

Thinking can also be both exquisite and terrifying simultaneously.

‘Thoughts create things’ and there is so much man-made beauty in the world — there is also much insidious creation. Then there is also the fact that overthinking everything can lead to anxiety, stress and dis-ease.

I read somewhere that the more in the NOW you are, the less you age. You become, essentially, timeless (if you haven’t read any of Eckhart Tolle’s books yet on present moment awareness, I suggest you get cracking!).

There is nothing that ages us more than thinking too much. This can also be translated as worry.

To worry is to future project a negative outcome, did you know that?

Read related article: 6 Essential Steps to Manage Stress

Pearls of Wisdom

A friend of mine told me the other day that she devotes time every day to thinking and then, after the allocated time, she tries to just be thoughtless (as in being present with what she’s doing and not being a frivolous fool).

I breathed a sigh of relief as I am very guilty of staring at my wall, sometimes for an hour before I ‘catch’ myself!

I’ve come to realize that it is perfectly okay to zone out in this way. After all, that’s what meditation is. Read related article: 5 Easy Steps to Meditating (No Lotus Position Required)

Meditation is just the ability to stop the monkey mind from swinging about the jelly-brain jungle. Read related article: How to Stop Monkey Mind Manifesting

In Conclusion…

Thinking is clearly essential to our existence and creative expansion but the art of not thinking can prolong our corporeal sojourn. I want you to not think about that (only joking).

Go stare at a wall (or a flower, or the cloudy sky, or the stars 😉 ).

Other articles you may enjoy:

Keeping the Dream Alive

Why ‘The Echo’ is Important on Your Evolutionary Path

Community Power Groups are Reshaping the Way We Think

Cherie Roe Dirksen is a self-empowerment author, multi-media artist and musician from South Africa.

To date, she has published 3 self-help and motivational books and brings out weekly inspirational blogs at her site www.cherieroedirksen.com. Get stuck into finding your passion, purpose and joy by downloading some of those books gratis when you click HERE.

Her ambition is to help you to connect with your innate gift of creativity and living the life you came here to experience by taking responsibility for your actions and becoming the co-creator of your reality. You can follow Cherie on Facebook (The Art of Empowerment — for article updates). She has an official art Facebook page (Cherie Roe Dirksen – for new art updates). You can also check out her Facebook band page at Templeton Universe.

Cherie posts a new article on CLN every Thursday. To view her articles, click HERE.

This article (The Art of Not Thinking) was originally written for and published by Conscious Life News and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author Cherie Roe Dirksen and ConsciousLifeNews.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this Copyright/Creative Commons

Stewing in Your Juices

I’m normally quite a chilled person. Nothing phases me. Until…

I take on too much work
I get into my ‘yes’ mode and make arrangements and dates that clog my diary
I volunteer my services willy-nilly
My housework starts to mount
My ‘to do’ list grows around the garden (especially as I’m trying to do the whole sustainability thing)
I have awesome ideas but have to implement them (adding to the head clutter and time/schedule disaster)

I’m sure you can probably relate to most of the above. Then what happens is that chilled out person who thought they could take on the world in a heart beat starts to panic.

The Signs of a Meltdown

The walls of my diary close in and anxiety starts to rear its ugly head.

Panic attacks
Sweaty palms
Emotional outbursts (usually involving tears)
Temper whirlwinds
Depression
Feeling defeated and impotent
Losing it over the smallest things

We can experience the above on a smaller or larger scale, depending on the level of anxiety and what looms ahead.

Okay, so what can be done?

Anxiety Be Gone!

Well, I’m trying to give myself a well-deserved pep talk here ’cause I suddenly realized the other day that I was slipping off the cliff of the ‘work’ I had piled up.

Amid my darkest moment, I came to the conclusion that it was going to be done whether I fretted about it or not. And what couldn’t be done was just not going to be done. It’s really quite simple.

So, on a practical level, try to:

Get what’s in your head down onto paper (this works a treat!)
Now you can make a priority list
Schedule your time wisely and you’ll find you can fit a lot into your day
Don’t stress about how much you’ve got to do by getting tangled up in the future tasks — concentrate on the task at hand
Read no. 4 again.
Yip…read no. 4 and 5 again!
As Yoda said, ‘Do or do not’ — in this context, do what you must do and stop whinging about it. Have you ever stopped to think how much time we waste worrying or bitching about what we have to do instead of doing it?

Did you like this article? Don’t forget to pin it 🙂

Example: I have a mountain of clothes to pack away. Every morning I get up and look at this mountain and feel despair. It affects me greatly. I don’t like a messy bedroom — that’s where I’m supposed to go to relax, not stare at a heap of rags.

What not to do: Whine about the job. Look at the heap in deflated impotence. Complain about how much other stuff you have to do. Sit and have a cup of coffee and catch up on your Facebook feed. Or, in my case, write a blog about it, whilst — out of the corner of my eye — I can see into my bedroom and the washing pile is staring happily back at me.

Solution: Do it. A 5 minute rant could have you half way done by now. You can have that cuppa AND pack the washing away (what a novel idea!).

There is actually plenty of time in a day when you use it wisely. The above example is small fish compared to some of the whoppers we have to face in life and prepare for. However, inevitably, we are remarkable creatures with an ability to squeeze a lot into our lives when our minds are prepared well enough.

Let’s go back to no. 4, 5 and 6 of the tips list. This tip has helped me exponentially over the past few days. I’m a Virgo and a control freak. When my schedule starts mounting up and I feel like I’m losing control — it’s a blood bath! I have the tendency of looking ahead at what I have to do tomorrow, the next day and so on into infinity. This makes matters worse.

All we have to concentrate on is what lays before us today. You can deal with tomorrow, well, tomorrow! If it’s really a pickle, then set aside 10-15 minutes of today to work out a game-plan for tomorrow so you can at least get some sleep.

If there is ever something to remember about anxiety it’s this: one step at a time! You’re amazing and you’ll do it all, only if you tackle what’s in front of you now. As my dear mother used to say, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’.

And now for something completely different…a little humour to liven up your stress monster:

This article was written by Cherie Roe Dirksen for Conscious Life News – click here to visit their site.

Cherie Roe Dirksen is a self-empowerment author and multi-media artist from South Africa. To date, she has published 3 self-help and motivational books and brings out weekly inspirational blogs at her site www.cherieroedirksen.com.

Get stuck into finding your passion, purpose and joy by downloading some of those books gratis when you click HERE. Her ambition is to help you to connect with your innate gift of creativity and living the life you came here to experience by taking responsibility for your actions and becoming the co-creator of your reality. You can also follow Cherie on Facebook (The Art of Empowerment).