by Connie Habash | Feb 4, 2019 | Anxiety, Overwhelm, Presence, Stress
Everyone has been talking about bucket lists for years, but I find they just create more anxiety. Here’s what I do instead.
It’s all over social media. Just checked one off my bucket list, as they post an amazing selfie from the Himalayas or while scuba diving with sharks. People have jumped on the bandwagon of this trend to create a list of all the things they have ever wanted to do before they “kick the bucket.”
I like lists, too. I have my to-do list, my goal list, my list of classes that I would like to take someday, etc. But the idea of a bucket list bothers me.
It’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself; to have these 10, 50, 200 things that you want to do before you die. When I was in my 20’s, that was a cool idea. I hadn’t done that much and hadn’t seen that many places. So it made sense to me back then (although the term hadn’t come into use at that time).
Having that bucket list feels anxiety-provoking. What happens if you get older, and things still aren’t checked off? A competition begins with others who are ticking off their items – will you feel that you’re behind? What if your fear about trying some of those things holds you back? What if you spend so much time planning for fulfilling X amount of bucket list items per year that you aren’t really appreciating what you have? The idea of a bucket list should be fun and exciting, not stressful and overwhelming.
by Connie Habash | Nov 1, 2018 | Anxiety, Perfectionism
excerpt from my forthcoming book on overcoming anxiety!
We’ve all done it. With the best of intentions, we set out on the spiritual path, ready to have our awakening, and determined to find the calm, centered, peaceful place within that is beyond our anxiety.
Often, we do find that place – for a while. But it’s the natural cycle of things to come and go. When we find that calm, courageous place we delightfully discovered beginning to slip away, we might make some spiritual mistakes.
They can be errors in our approach, perspective, or how we’re applying our beliefs. These spiritual mis-takes – for they’re just a slip-up, a miss of the target we’re aiming for – aren’t a big deal. We all get a little off track sometimes.
The problem is that we tend to make them a big deal. They can become deal-breakers, sending us down the spiral not only of more anxiety, but self-recrimination and anxiety about our anxiety.
by Connie Habash | Oct 7, 2018 | Anxiety, Nonattachment, Practice, Stress
Relief! Ever have that feeling after a big project or deadline is done? Yes, I had that last night, after my daughter’s birthday party was over.
BUT…I also noticed that the feeling of “relief” is very short lived. There is always something else ahead, another project, deadline, thing I “have to” do. And the cycle continues… stress before, relief after.
It is possible to step out of that cycle. One way to do it is from yoga philosophy – the two foundational principles of yoga, Abhyasa and Vairagya
by Connie Habash | Oct 1, 2018 | Acceptance, Anxiety, Control, Let Go
Trying to control creates anxiety – but letting go brings me ease.
A half hour before writing this blog, I fixed myself some lunch. I was making a salad, and needed to peel some cucumbers. Wanting the peels to be easy to clean up, I had a compost box in front of me and set out to peel over it, so the skins would land right into the box and there’d be no clean up.
After 3 whips of my veggie peeler, I had flung 2 of the peels onto the floor.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t present enough. I was relaxed, breathing, and focused on my task. It’s simply the fact that you can’t control everything (or maybe that I suck at peeling cucumbers).
