Yesterday I asked the question of whether work and busyness were the cure for anxiety. Today I woke up feeling incredibly worried about money and my job, which are not going well at the moment. This worry was probably mainly due to the fact that yesterday evening I did my accounts for the first time in a few weeks and it’s nearly always a bit of a shock to the system. It was especially this month as I knew that I hadn’t had much work come in but the reality is I only earned half of what I need to earn to cover my budgeted spending. Also, when I don’t do my accounts as often I tend to let my spending creep up, especially with food and little treats like the odd book or some stationery. I also spent a little while last night trying to do some marketing for my business and didn’t get anywhere with it. It left me with the feeling that I’m over the hill, past it, and have no hope. I’ve been left behind by technology and it’s all downhill from here! So pretty negative thinking all round. No wonder I woke up feeling worried.
I feel like there are two potential ways forwards, and I could possibly do both at the same time, but they might equally counteract each other. Firstly, I can get busy, like I talked about yesterday. I can work on my marketing every day, even just for a little bit. I can improve my website, my presence on social media, and maybe get back to a couple of universities that emailed me last year which I never got back to as at the time I thought I had plenty of work and it wasn’t worth it. At the same time, I can continue being busy working on my writing, posting on this blog as often as I can, writing 1,667 words per day in a stream of consciousness fashion, maybe even trying to write a book. I can also work on marketing this blog, putting in links, linking to other sites as well, researching SEO and other ways that people market their blogs. I could make some kind of opt-in (they’re probably not called that anymore). I can read books and watch YouTube videos on how to be a writer or start a business, or earn money from a side hustle. At the same time I can continue improving my life in other ways, by keeping up my exercise habit, tracking my weight and nutrition, continue with my no-spend or low-spend efforts, do some gardening every day, get up early, turn off my screens at a good time, avoid watching too much TV, read every day, etc, etc.
In other words, there are loads of things I can be doing to move the needle, to hopefully make things a little bit better in every area of my life, and to improve my mood and my confidence at the same time. By taking action I might also lessen my anxiety, in the knowledge that I’m taking steps to improve things. So that’s the first approach.
The second approach relates to my study of A Course in Miracles. Today’s lesson, 72, says “Holding grievances is an attack on Love’s plan for salvation”. According to Carol Howe, who has a fantastic video series on YouTube where she explains each of the 365 lessons of ACIM, salvation just means love, connection, safety and happiness. In other words, the lesson is saying that by holding grievances we are attacking our own and others’ happiness. We’re preventing ourselves and the entire world from being happy. So the other approach to dealing with the anxiety and even fear that’s plaguing me, is to let go of these grievances and ask the universe for help with this. Ask the universe what I need to do to let go of my grievances and move towards salvation, aka happiness.
I have for a long time struggled to understand whether, in order to find peace of mind, or spiritual awakening, or happiness or salvation, I need to actually drop all of these other things I think I want, like financial security, health and fitness, a nice house, fun and adventure, etc, etc. I’m still not entirely sure, which is why I say that there’s two possible approaches, the busy busy approach, and the forgiveness and dropping of grievances approach, and I think that they could possibly be applied at the same time, but I’m not entirely sure. If I was to hazard a guess right now I’d say, keep doing the work, all of those many possible tasks I listed up there like marketing and writing and gardening and getting good sleep, but at the same time, forgive yourself and others for the situation you’re in right now and while you’re at it drop the need for things to be different and accept where you are and allow yourself to see that you can still choose happiness no matter what your perceived problems are.
I think we all have areas of our life where choosing to be happy no matter what feels harder and other areas where it feels easier. For me, it definitely feels harder to look at my current financial and work situation and choose to be happy about it regardless. To convince myself that there’s no cause for worry and everything is working out for the best, that does feel harder when I’m looking at something so seemingly fixed and objective as numbers on a spreadsheet. But that’s the work, to ask for help, to ask for forgiveness, to look for happiness right here and now, no matter what.
So, for now at least, I’m going to continue with my plan to keep busy, while also working on the spiritual side of happiness. As always, it’s a work in progress.