#secondfirsts

It happens in your whole beingness, deep down and within every layer of your body.

It pulls from inside out and your whole world around you spins like a maze feels when you step into it.

Your life becomes fearful. Out of control. Unlikable.

This feeling overrides any goodness that comes your way.

It becomes the primary experience because it is a physical manifestation of your emotions. Everyone you know has it. Yes everyone has anxiety.

Everyone you meet has experienced it at some point in their life.

It is this quiet feeling that lives inside of you and gets activated with the smallest things.

It lives inside the most successful people. It resides with the intelligent mind.

It is grief’s roommate and life’s child.

ANXIETY IS A PART OF OUR HUMAN NATURE ESPECIALLY WHEN WE EXPERIENCE NEW LIFE. When we have new relationships, new responsibilities.

The anxious feeling wakes up. And we are all surprised about it.

So today, I am going to tell you that I have this feeling inside of me too.

And from what I am discovering is that anxiety likes to hang out in the midst of the most beautiful gardens, in the midst of incredible lives being lived.

In the midst of new beginnings.

The people you see holding it together most likely suffer from anxiety every day.

My own anxiety shows up in the most unexpected times, like the supermarket, or when I am driving my kids to school. And surprisingly when my life is as good as it gets.

When everything is going well, anxiety wakes up and spins me around.

I am sharing this with you so you stop comparing yourself with the perfect versions of your friends and people you see in your life looking in control.

NOBODY IS IN CONTROL. They have anxiety within them too. Especially if they are starting over.

So next time you wake up with anxiety don’t panic, or feel fear, just know that you have lived a big life.

Know that it is a part of your humanity.

Know that it is part of a new beginning.

A part of leaving the waiting room.

But most of all believe that you can start taming it.

How?

By not letting it stop you from living again.

In my book and in the work I do I ask people to not face their fears.

I ask people to not leap. Or even dream big.

I ASK THEM TO TAKE A VERY, VERY SMALL ACTION WHICH I HAVE CALLED A 5% PLUG-IN. A plug-in to the life that is waiting for you.

But a tiny one.

I realized early on that our society scares us so much by their words of fearlessness and jumping without the net kind of motivational speeches that we live in a scared world.

Well, I am here to tell you to not jump, to not risk, but to slowly take a 5% plug-in towards a new experience.

Anxiety is a part of life after loss, let’s not pretend it’s not there and make things worse by throwing ourselves into the abyss of fearlessness. (Click to Tweet!)

I am not fearless, I don’t take big leaps, but somehow I have managed to find my way to a life worth living.

I know you can too.

With love,