Do we take ourselves too seriously?
Occasionally I feel my shoulders rounding forward, my heart picks up its pace, and the monkeys in my mind bounce around as if there’s a banana tree just outside of their reach.
Lots of things cause anxiety…change, expectations, too much to do, uncertainty, a comment from another human that pulls our strings of insecurity.
Here are a couple references I’ve stumbled across that help me put my anxious self into a different frame of mind:
Nothing in life is more remarkable than the unnecessary anxiety which we endure, and generally create ourselves. ~Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81)
The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard later proposed that anxiety is the price we pay for (this) freedom to choose. (I’ve borrowed this from an AEON article…Can our self-conscious minds save us from our selfish selves? If you have a few extra minutes, the article is a thought provoking read.)
“I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”
Mark Twain is often given credit for this quote, but Quote Investigator calls the attribution into question.
Is receiving credit something you’d worry about?
Why? or Why not?