The topic of today's short article is to
understand a simple anxiety reduction technique
Let's do some ruthless gardening today and discuss an easy way to experience less anxiety in your everyday life, to do this we'll need to understand some of the differences between the concepts of -
Want and Need
Need at the end of the day is associated with survival, there are very few things that we actually need in life. We need some food, we need water, we need some measure of safety and shelter and living in society we need some money to acquire those things.
Beyond that there's not much that we need. So, the concept of need is related to survival. That means that it's psychologically associated with dissolution and death, on the other hand the concept of want or desire being related to acquisition and growth is psychologically associated with assimilation and life.
In many respects need and want are kind of like two sides of the same coin, however which side you choose to focus on can make an enormous difference in the experience of your everyday life.
For instance, A person might harbor the belief “i need to be rich”
If you feel into this statement, you can sense a low-grade anxiety permeating this belief, and that's because when we use the concept of need ; there is an implied threat that if it doesn't happen something very bad will occur.
You can almost imagine this like mental slave driver whipping people into shape in order to avoid the imagined catastrophic outcome. Now, contrast that with this belief ;
I want to be rich
The truth is that you don't have to avoid a negative like poverty in order to want to make money, rich people want to make money. I like this reframe because it doesn't require it doesn't invite in the negative as a necessary motivating force.
There is no ill to be avoided just a good to be acquired, by transforming need statements into want statements we learn to focus more and more on the positive things in life that we want to secure as opposed to negative things we want to avoid.
This is important because what we focus on becomes the content of our consciousness the stuff out of which our reality is constructed moment by moment. If we focus on ills to be avoided by misapplying the concept of need then reality becomes a dangerous place full of bad things lurking around every corner, and how would that not exacerbate a form of generalized anxiety.
On the other hand if we focus on the good to be acquired by utilizing the concept of want, then reality becomes an abundant place full of resources and opportunities. So, instead of looking for what you need to avoid, search for what you want to find and a good way to do this is to become increasingly mindful and intentional in our use of these important concepts.
What do you think ?
#hollowins on #hive