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September 16 - October 5, 2025
when we feel anxious, we can take the opportunity to recognize that we have encountered a natural limit to our knowledge and control. This is not a bad thing; it is a fact of life. One that fosters humility, which also can lead to a drop in anxiety since it helps us recognize that we are only human and will always lack some degree of knowledge and agency. There is nothing wrong with us or the world when things are uncertain or uncontrollable!
The well-known Serenity Prayer asks for divine help “to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Developing
Everyone has something that they are sensitive to, something they do not like to think about. When these pain points are triggered, they make us feel supremely anxious. And let’s face it: our pain points will get triggered.
Our relative safety and security could be upset at any moment by any number of factors. Security is a complete smoke screen. One of the only things that is certain about the material world is that it is not certain or safe.
More important, transcendent faith is not merely about being positive and pretending that we’re in control when we’re not. At its core, transcendent faith is about recognizing and internalizing that we do not have control—and feeling good about that fact.
Worrywarts review the same superficial fears, which maintain perpetual low-grade anxiety, instead of embracing their most catastrophic and disastrous concerns, which would yield substantially greater tension in the moment. Worrying destines us to a life filled with chronic, perpetual anxiety—akin to a Band-Aid tugging uncomfortably on our skin forever.
Our work therefore pivoted from worries about various ailments and refocused on embracing the possibility that his kids would be left without a dad. This was a hard possibility to face but, ironically, was easier than trying to avoid thinking about it altogether.
Throughout this book, we’ve been speaking about uncertainty: our anxiety goes up when a negative situation may occur, and acceptance of uncertainty is the key to reducing our apprehension.
we learn that a critical step to avoiding suffering is to recognize that pain is tolerable.
“The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity, even under the most difficult circumstances, to add a deeper meaning to his life.”1
Once pain has meaning, people stop struggling against it and become more accepting, so the suffering decreases—and in some cases dissipates altogether. If
The process of meaning-making is highly individualized for each person, but here are a few ways to build a greater sense of meaning when challenges arise. Some of us may view pain as an opportunity to grow in our character. Others may take it as an opportunity to refocus on gratitude for what is going well. Still others may see their primary task as learning to suffer with dignity, as opposed to getting out of the suffering.
From this perspective, our responses to trying life circumstances are not just automatic reactions occurring in the context of various biological, social, historical, political, and other conditions. Human beings have the gift of being able to make choices. In this regard, pain can uniquely highlight the greatness of what it means to be human. We can choose to retain our dignity, our character, and even our equanimity, to a far greater extent than many of us realize.
Anxiety can help us identify, strive toward, and actualize our unique human potential. We can harness anxiety as a tool to help us identify and fulfill our ultimate purposes in life.
actualizing human potential—dreaming about what we have to offer the world and heroically pursuing those dreams—inherently conjures up anxiety, since all big plans carry significant risk of failure, and pushing beyond our limits inherently requires facing adversity. Therefore, when we experience anxiety in the context of self-actualization, it is an indication that we are on the right track.
Almost all of my patients between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five experience significant anxiety when asking themselves questions like: Why am I here? What’s the point of my life? Am I really special? Do I have anything to contribute to this world? Their existential tensions rise when contemplating these matters because few of them have compelling answers, due to the way they grew up.
One of my friends is a successful lawyer who feels that his real purpose on earth involves running a soup kitchen on the weekends. His legal work helps to pay his mortgage, but what really makes him tick is putting food in front of people in serious need.
if there is something we love to do and have the capacity for, and the world needs it, that’s our ticket for envisioning and actualizing our unique greatness, regardless of how much it pays.
There is something uncanny about the way that each person’s highly individualized goals, dreams, and capabilities manage to line up very well with what those around them need. Conversely, I have never seen anyone fully thrive if they don’t feel they are fulfilling their unique vision of greatness.
“You are one million times more unique than your fingerprints; there has never been anyone like you to walk planet Earth, and there will never be anyone like you ever again in the future.”
As I’ve said, this is because anxiety often attaches itself to areas of central meaning in our lives—areas in which we have unique potential to thrive.
Once we’ve used our anxiety to strengthen our relationships with ourselves and others, we can use anxiety to build a vision of our greatness.
yet-realized passion. Ask yourself: What do I love to do? [Your Notes] Which job or hobby or activity do I find the most fulfilling? [Your Notes] Are there any aspects of my life that I wish I could do more of? [Your Notes] What are my strengths as a person? [Your Notes] Note that it’s common that what we love to do is also an area of strength. This happens for a few reasons. First, everyone wants to be successful, so we are often drawn to do things that we are naturally good at. Second, and more important, many of the world’s spiritual traditions teach that human beings are preprogrammed for
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You can also ask yourself: What action or pursuit makes me feel the happiest? Note that “happiness” is not the same as comfort; typically, what makes us feel happy and fulfilled is actually uncomfortable, as we will discuss later in this chapter. Think back to something you’ve achieved that gave you the purest sense of fulfillment and purpose. It could be a singular one-time achievement, like winning a tennis match, taking a beautiful photograph, or learning about birds you admire.
Some people do feel anxious when contemplating what they’d like to do, and others may simply feel excited and invigorated thinking about their strengths, interests, and capacity for greatness. By contrast, the next step always requires a healthy dose of anxiety.
Note that this does not (yet) involve taking action; no behavior change is required to build a clear vision of greatness for ourselves. However, seriously considering the practical steps to bring our potential into reality should be stressful and even fear-inducing.
But for most of us who are not face-to-face with an overwhelming physical, political, or societal threat, daring to actualize our inner potential through developing our inner strength and discipline is the kind of heroism I’m affirming here.
It is heroic to push through the stress, fear, and discomfort that comes along with bringing our dreams into reality.
As I’ve said repeatedly throughout this book, anxiety in and of itself is not a bad thing, and it can help us to thrive. I would go as far as to say that heroically pursuing our goals in life necessitates facing stress, adversity, and fear—anxiety is a critical aspect of human happiness.
By its very nature, the processes of planning out how we want to contribute to the world, and subsequently mining our internal reservoir of strengths and abilities to bring that dream into reality, are challenging.
Discomfort is necessary to pursue real-life dreams; if we’re not anxious, what we’re chasing probably isn’t that important. Conversely, when we voluntarily accept anxiety, stress, and even fear, in the pursuit of our deepest and most important life goals, we engage in self-actualization and start thriving with anxiety.
Fear of failure is multifaceted. Much of the time it takes the form of doubts regarding the external world. Once we start pursuing our goals, new impediments become visible—ones we didn’t fully expect or envision—and these naturally generate stress and fear. “What? I didn’t realize it would take so much effort!” we say. “There are unexpected challenges here that I need to overcome,” we tell ourselves.
spiritually speaking, one of the most powerful effects of exerting heroic efforts is that doing so can increase our awareness of how little is in our hands.
exerting heroic efforts is not simply a prerequisite material enterprise to accomplishing our goals. Rather, it has the potential to be a spiritually laden process of exerting our freedom of choice in the world, while surrendering to the fact that ultimate outcomes are beyond the scope of our control.
First, recognize that anxiety is inherent and necessary on the path to self-actualization. When we envision what we have to offer the world and start to implement concrete plans to bring our dreams into reality, we will be facing risks and therefore we will feel some anxiety.
