{"id":170,"date":"2015-02-12T23:53:23","date_gmt":"2015-02-12T23:53:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elasson.com\/?p=170"},"modified":"2015-02-12T23:53:23","modified_gmt":"2015-02-12T23:53:23","slug":"associating-with-anxiety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themajestysmen.com\/elasson\/associating-with-anxiety\/","title":{"rendered":"On associating with the anxiety too many feel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes my least favorite part about the process I feel I’m going through<\/a> is learning to associate with the anxiety that small<\/del>\u00a0all\u00a0business owners go through.<\/p>\n

It’s ridiculous. It sucks. It’s stupid! Yet it’s too often normal<\/em>…<\/p>\n

Plus,\u00a0it affects everything…\u00a0if we let it…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I have days, like today, in which I feel “everything” in my business is going wrong. Is\u00a0everything<\/em> going wrong? No. That’d be dumb to actually believe. Does it feel like it though? Yea<\/em>!<\/p>\n

I have over 10K in bills from unpaid clients that I can’t seem to get to do jack<\/em>! I had some crazy accident I can’t understand in which\u00a06 major ads are somehow missing in my last publication – what the!? Luckily it’s still in revisions, but it’ll cost me hundreds of dollars to fix this with the design folks. I have clients that want out of their contract for no apparent reason or fault of mine! I could go on…<\/p>\n

I could list probably twice as many good things happening… but does it\u00a0feel\u00a0<\/em>like it? Nope!<\/p>\n

Is it good for me to feel this? No. Because I know if my intentions and purposes are good and honoring then God is going to take care of me as he promised, and because he promised to, he\u00a0commanded\u00a0<\/em>me to not worry.<\/p>\n

Yet… here I am.<\/p>\n

I wouldn’t really call it angry – though there’s a twinge. I wouldn’t really call it worried – though there’s a smidgen. I wouldn’t really call it sad, frustrated, \u00a0defeated, depressed, overly emotional, dramatic, or anything like that.<\/p>\n

I think it’s just what we call, “anxiety”<\/em>!<\/p>\n

Just some weird, unfocused, restless, unnamable edgy state of being<\/em> that’s hard to get a grasp on.<\/p>\n

Sometimes it manifests in ways such as the paralyses of apathy; sometimes it triggers control-freak-engage; sometimes I want to seek out quick and temporary pleasures of varying\u00a0sorts (i.e. tea, movies, sex, retweets, new tech, bagels, cleaning and organizing… with bagels)!<\/p>\n

Sometimes, it makes me just want to write and think… pray and reflect… “be calm and know that He is God.”<\/p>\n

And I hate learning this lesson!\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet it reminds me: How many people live in this state ALL. THE. TIME!<\/em>?<\/p>\n

No wonder people\u00a0seek so many pleasures. All meant to be “fixes”, they actually only add destruction to our constantly decaying state of wanna-be-god!<\/p>\n

When we don’t get a sense of great fulfillment in our soul, we’re left feeling even more wanting! Even less god-like! More in need of “success” and “victory” and “fulfillment” of some kind – any kind!<\/p>\n

It’s a vicious cycle of despair. Like some sorta doom-vacuum; sucking out our life!<\/p>\n

I hurt for people who live like this constantly. No work or relationships can have enjoyment\u00a0if you’re in this state.<\/p>\n

Even those skilled at stifling it will still inevitably have\u00a0eruptions… Anxiety turns us into carnivorous beasts on the inside.<\/p>\n

My wife will be home in ten minutes and if I’m not satisfied in God when she gets here, I’ll soon seek to devour her spirit\u00a0for the sake of mine. But, mine was made to only be satisfied by one Spirit.<\/p>\n

So was hers.<\/p>\n

So is yours.<\/p>\n

So is everybody’s.<\/p>\n

We can’t help each other, or do anything of any lasting value, apart from that value being fulfilled first and foremost.<\/p>\n

I am to help her have that. I am to help others have that.<\/p>\n

So, I must have that.<\/p>\n

This Spirit must. saturate. everything.<\/em><\/p>\n

Then I can work hard, trust The Spirit to make mine stronger, relax and enjoy this existence of not being God! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

I want to close this thought\u00a0with a\u00a0quote\u00a0from a guy’s blog I read today<\/a>. He, Eric Dodds, is running a company I love, a believer, and I feel we’ve been on the same wave length recently in our writing and thinking. He rightly called this quote by American author, Christian Wiman, a “salient account of the intersection of technology, anxiety and spiritual things”. It is that for sure. An apt description – of C.S.Lewis style discernment – on what we can feel in these fits of anxiety. I want to save it and share it:<\/p>\n

\u00a0At dinner with friends the talk turns, as it often does these days, to the problem of anxiety: how it is consuming everyone; how the very technologies we have developed to save time and thereby lessen anxiety have only degraded the quality of the former and exacerbated the latter; how we all need to \u201cgive ourselves a break\u201d before we implode. Everyone has some means of relief\u2014tennis, yoga, a massage every Thursday\u2014but the very way in which those activities are framed as apart from regular life suggests the extent to which that relief is temporary (if even that: a couple of us admit that our \u201crecreational\u201d activities partake of the same simmering, near-obsessive panic as the rest of our lives). There is something circular and static to our conversation, which doesn\u2019t end so much as fizzle indeterminately out, and though\u00a0there is always some comfort in comparing maladies, I am left with the uneasy feeling that my own private anxieties have actually increased by becoming momentarily collective\u2014or no, not that, increase by not becoming collective, increased by the reinforcement of my loneliness within a collective context, like that penetrating but enervating stab of self one feels sometimes in an anonymous crowd.\u00a0It is a full day later before it occurs to me that not once, not in any form, not even with the ghost of a suggestion, did any of us mention God. – Christian Winman, “My Bright Abyss”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes my least favorite part about the process I feel I’m going through is learning to associate with the anxiety that small\u00a0all\u00a0business owners go through. It’s ridiculous. It sucks. It’s stupid! Yet it’s too often normal… Plus,\u00a0it affects everything…\u00a0if we let it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10,11,47,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-170","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-development","7":"tag-anxiety","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-relationships","10":"tag-work","11":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":358,"url":"https:\/\/themajestysmen.com\/elasson\/facades-and-online-ministry\/","url_meta":{"origin":170,"position":0},"title":"Ridiculous facades and online “ministry”, plus better metrics","author":"Riley Adam Voth","date":"February 15, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This weekend I fell down a rabbit hole by accident and this Monday morning I feel like I'm climbing back out as I begin my week... and I'm disgusted by it. 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