Before You Call It Anxiety, Ask Yourself This

Before you call it anxiety, ask yourself one question: What am I trying to control right now?

I’ve noticed how often our minds are working overtime trying to create certainty where certainty simply doesn’t exist. We’re trying to predict what’s going to happen, control how someone is going to respond, prevent something from going wrong, or figure out exactly how everything is going to turn out.

We play conversations out before they happen. We prepare for problems that haven’t happened yet. We analyze someone’s tone, their behavior, what they said, what they didn’t say, and what all of it could possibly mean. Before we know it, we’re mentally living ten steps ahead of where our feet actually are.

Of course that feels overwhelming.

Sometimes that internal tension isn’t telling us that something is wrong. Sometimes it’s showing us just how hard we’re working to control something that was never actually ours to control.

There’s a difference between being prepared and trying to guarantee an outcome. We can make thoughtful decisions. We can communicate clearly. We can take action. We can plan. But eventually we reach the edge of what belongs to us.

After that, we have to let life unfold.

That can be incredibly uncomfortable, especially if control has been one of the ways you’ve learned to feel safe. Uncertainty can make us believe we need more information, another conversation, another plan, or one more reassurance before we can finally relax.

But how often does that actually work? Usually the mind just finds the next thing to worry about.

The practice for me is coming back to what is actually happening instead of everything that could happen.

What do I know to be true today? What can I actually do something about today? What belongs to me, and what am I trying to control that doesn’t?

You don’t need to know how everything turns out to be okay right now.

You don’t need every answer before you take the next step. You don’t need to predict someone else’s response before you say what needs to be said. You don’t need a guarantee that something will work before you allow yourself to try.

Sometimes peace comes when we stop demanding certainty from a life that was never going to give it to us.

Do what is yours to do. Stay where your feet are. Let the rest unfold.