Freedom from Anxiety: Why the Cure Isn't Resistance, It's Turning Toward

FREEDOM FROM ANXIETY

We’ve all known anxiety at one time or another — about our health, money, work, or about the people we love. It’s a familiar visitor and so it’s worth asking what anxiety actually is, and what it does to us, in both mind and body.

A certain measure of anxiety is not without its use. It sharpens us, keeps us alert, keeps us watchful and engaged with our lives. But there’s a world of difference between the healthy alertness that serves us and the neurotic anxiety that immobilises us — that closes us in on ourselves until even simple action feels impossible.

Freedom is the antidote. To be free is to be in charge of our own life and our own destiny. It’s the capacity to be self-aware — to think for ourselves, to stop outsourcing our decisions to others, and to take full responsibility for our own actions. It is, at its root, a strong sense of Self. When we use our thought to become self-aware, to identify with the power and presence of our own Being, we become inner-directed rather than forever looking outside of ourselves for answers that were always within.

The more self-aware we become, the more we meet the possibilities that live within us, and the more fully we become an individual. To be an individual doesn’t mean to be separate from others — we still share our lives with them — but it does mean that we are, finally, our own person. Paradoxically, it’s this very individuality that deepens our relationships because we can only truly meet another once we’ve first met ourselves. It’s this same self-possession that frees us from the exhausting business of wondering what others think of us.

If we’re to live freely, we must take our direction from our own integrity, from within our own Self, rather than from an outside authority. When we hand our authority over to others — their opinions, or their approval or disapproval — we invite anxiety in because opinion is a moving target, and we become endlessly, uneasily preoccupied with what might happen next. But when we learn to live from our own intuitive Self, we come to know a settling truth: nothing can happen but ourselves.

To fulfil our potential always involves risk — a willingness to take chances, to move out into what is not yet known. The more Self-aware we become, the more readily we take those chances; and the more chances we take, the more we glimpse the great possibilities waiting within us. It’s this ongoing exploration, and our willingness to meet it, that produces our maturity, self-sufficiency, and capacity to relate honestly to others. It may mean setting aside old patterns, questioning an authority we once accepted without question, or even disagreeing and choosing our own direction regardless. All of this is simply what it means to live our Truth. Each of us is here to discover and express our own uniqueness — and that discovery will, inevitably, sometimes place us at odds with the dictates of the world.

The price of freedom is always the same: knowing, without apology, Who and What we really are, and being willing to be our own person. This can make for lively — perhaps even explosive — interaction with others. But it also brings about what some call ‘the God experience’: the experience of self-dependency, of standing in our own sovereign Being. It’s this that creates real freedom.

When we’re Self-aware, we’re free to make our own choices and to develop and express our talents fully, without apologising for our own unfoldment. In choosing to be our own person — in listening, from within, to what we’re truly about — we align with Mind, and Mind cannot help but supply everything we need to know, and begin shaping the very forms of all that we already know.

We are free of anxiety the moment we understand that our purpose is to BE rather than to get. The Law of Mind, the Law of Cause and Effect, is always faithfully creating forms that correspond to our level of Self-love and Self-expression. When we attend to the business of Being, rampant anxiety simply has nowhere left to take root.

Freedom is living fully in the now, giving the greatness of our own Self to everything we do. And once we live from that freedom — once we’re truly our own person — we’re able to reach out to others, lovingly, and to share. We can’t really share until we’ve found Self-awareness, because insecurity is always trying to ‘get’ rather than to ‘give’.

Love is the great purpose of life, its highest goal — to share, to validate others, to help them awaken to their own personhood. But that awakening in others always begins within us with our own Self-awareness, our own claimed personhood. So let’s acknowledge that Intuitive Presence within, and let It guide and direct our way.

Exercises for the Reader

These reflections are only ever as useful as the practice we bring to them. Set aside some quiet time this week — with a journal, if you keep one — and work through whichever of the following speak most directly to where you are right now.

1. Naming the Opinions That Rule Us

Anxiety about what others think is rarely one large fear — it’s usually many small ones, quietly accumulated.

• List three or four situations in the past month where you’ve felt anxious because of another person’s opinion of you.

• For each one, write down whose opinion it was, and what you feared it might mean or cost you.

• Read the list back and ask, honestly: how many of these opinions were about who you truly are, and how many were simply about who that person needed you to be?

2. Reclaiming the Power You’ve Given Away

Every time we hand our peace of mind to an outside person or event, we are, in effect, appointing them to be the author of our inner life.

• Choose one situation from Exercise 1 and ask: what power have I given this person or event over my peace?

• Write an affirmative statement that reclaims that power — for example: ‘I am the only one who has authority over my own peace of mind’.

• Speak this statement aloud each morning this week, as a short affirmative prayer, until you feel it settle as fact rather than hope.

3. Defining Your Own Person

Being our own person is not an abstraction — it shows up, quite practically, in how we handle money, work, relationships, and health.

• Write one sentence, in your own words, that answers: what does ‘being my own person’ mean to me?

• For each of the four areas below, note one decision you’ve been putting off, or handing to someone else:

• Finances — where am I waiting for permission rather than taking responsibility?

• Work — where am I shaping myself to others’ expectations rather than my own integrity?

• Relationships — where am I seeking approval instead of offering honesty?

• Health — where am I neglecting my own needs to keep the peace?

• Choose just one of these and take a single concrete step this week.

4. An Action Plan for Potential

Unfulfilled potential is one of the quieter sources of anxiety — a sense, often unspoken, that we’re not yet living as fully as we might.

• Ask yourself: ‘Am I fulfilling my potential? If not, what is really stopping me — fear, habit, or someone else’s expectation?’

• Name one talent or capacity you’ve set aside.

• Write three small, specific actions that would move you toward expressing it — one you could take this week, one this month, one this quarter.

• Hold this not as pressure, but as an unfolding — Mind does not rush, and neither need you.

5. A Daily Practice of Freedom

Freedom, like anxiety, is less an event than a practice — something we return to and strengthen, day by day.

• Each morning this week, spend two or three quiet minutes affirming your freedom in your own words — for example: ‘I am free, I am whole, I direct my own life from within’.

• Notice, throughout the day, any moment when you feel your peace being handed away — and gently, silently, reclaim it in the moment.

• At day’s end, note one moment when you acted from freedom rather than fear, however small.

6. Helping Others Awaken

Real freedom does not close in on itself — it reaches outward, because Love is always seeking to share and to give.

• Think of one person in your life who seems anxious, uncertain, or dependent on others’ approval.

• Without offering advice or trying to fix them, consider: how might I simply reflect back to them their own worth and capability?

• Look for one small opportunity this week to affirm that person’s own strength, in a word or an action, and let that be enough.

In gratitude.

Neil

This week’s post is accompanied by two podcasts: “Staying Soft When the World Feels Heavy,” which explores Pema Chödrön’s book, The Places That Scare You. This book serves as a practical manual for cultivating fearlessness and compassion during times of personal instability. In “Stop panic attacks with DARE,” we examine and discuss the book DARE by Barry McDonagh.