I learned to live with my anxiety by developing what the guy who helped me learned to modify my behavior called a tool box. Not a real tool box of course, more like a fig newton of the imagination. But in the toolbox is knowledge – what causes anxiety, and tools like rhymes or songs that help pull you out of the anxious moment and keep you centered.
I have developed a similar toolbox for life – knowing when I have to just pull away because I feel like a dull hammer continuing to miss the nail’s head each time. And for those occasions Mother Nature is the only respite for me.
Finally able to return to step class, my instructor decides to take the week off – just when I need to exercise the most to pull myself out of the mental churn I’ve been in – and so I hemmed and hawed over the alternatives to step class – too windy for a bike ride, running seemed boring, and so I drove to the lakefront and got out and walked into the sunset.
Perspective – that’s when the bayou is too small and you need Lake Ponchartrain. Or when the world seems cramped and you need wide open spaces. Or when time seems limited and you watch the sun setting for the umpteenth time in your life knowing it will rise in the morning. And there it is, tools to salvage a day where chasing your tail seems hellbent on messing with your joie de vivre.