Nine month check in...

So I've tried to get back into the Zhan Zhuang, but it didn't take.  Maybe because of the difficulty of establishing habits while I'm travelling.

I'm going to answer these questions in the ZZ workbook as a way of establishing goals and staying focussed, and seeing if it's making a difference in my anxiety levels, which are too high right now.


1. How does my anxiety show up in my life:

Usually in the form of personal insecurity, obsessions with things that were said, or unsaid, and worries about my financial and career security.

2. Are there any common patterns you see in the anxiety you feel at home, in you workplace or elsewhere. 

At home I don't sleep well, and have difficulty falling asleep.  I'm too tired these days to take charge of my life.   In work I feel vulnerable, and find myself being obsessive and sometimes aggressive with people.

3. When feeling overwhelmed and in despair:

I eat and watch Netflix.

4. Anxiety is not always obvious to those around us.  If your family and friends were asked you suffered from anxiety, what do you think they would say?

My son:  yeah, definitely.

5. Anxiety can affect our energy level in different ways.  How would you describe your energy pattern. 

I get anxious, default to bad habits, become fatigued and end up in a bad cycle. I also get manic and obsessive.

6. Anxiety can be tiring.  Do you experience a lot of fatigue. 

Enough to make basic tasks like cleaning and meal planning difficult.

7. Anxiety can lead to physical tension.  Do you experience physical tension in any parts of your body. 

Hands.

8. Anxiety can contribute to sleeplessness.  What is your normal pattern of sleep?

Difficulty falling and staying asleep. 

9. Do you wake up in the morning feeling anxious or in a bad mood. 

Sometimes.

10.  Anxiety can lead to digestive problem.  Do you experience this? 

Not really.

11. On basis of experience with Qigong so far, how would you like to use it to help you with anxiety?

I would like to build mental stability and emotional resilience.  I would like to build more stable energy patterns.

12.  What is the main challenge so far in the Qigong exercises I'm practicing. 

Maintaining the practice.  Being patient, and giving myself enough time with warmup and cool down.

Book

I'm going to get a book deal,

If I can stand for an hour a day, I can do that.  I can sit with my self-doubt and self sabotaging feelings and do what needs to be done, finish the outline, finish the overview.  Send it out. Write down the goals, schedule the time.  I know I can do that.

So now it's time to see what is stopping me.

Inner stress. Some kind of psychic stress that is awakened every time I try to make a career for myself.

Rather than try and solve this stress, I need to diffuse it a little.  Accept that writing and working is always going to be  a little painful for me.  But it's a good pain.  Like running.  Like standing.  It's a pain that's worth facing.  Because at the end of the day I have something that I can send out.  I have something that is going to connect me to the world.  And I have something that is going to bring me peace, because there is no peace than the peace of having valued, necessary and useful skills.

It's a pain that I want to avoid though.  A pain that I struggle to avoid.  A pain that I have developed avoidance habits around.  So I need to sit down and look at the obstacles that stand in the way of me sitting down to do that one hour of writing on my proposal every day.

These obstacles are:

Compulsive distractions.  My tendency to surf and avoid.

Not knowing the ending of my book. Makes it hard to complete outline.

Ah well.  I know the ending.  The book ends happily with my great book contract.

Making Standing My Default Behaviour

I've had an insight this morning.  A life changing insight.

My way out of debt, out of despair, out of this mid-life crisis really is this simple.  Make standing the default behaviour for whenever I'm feeling anxious, bored, distracted, lost, lonely, afraid.  I do that and I'm on a non stop path towards vitality and growth and power.

It's science.  It works for me.  It always works for me.  Standing makes me stronger, emotionally, psychically, creatively.  There has never been anything that I've done that has brought as much well being and pure energy into my life.  I don't have to believe in "myself."  I just need to believe in standing. Because standing put me in touch with all the energy and power that I need.

The beauty of this is that all my "negative" emotions become fuel for this positive energy.  Like fossil fuel.  Always renewable energy.  I don't want them to go away, because they are useful.  They help to feed the loop.  This is stress management, not stress eradication.

With this I don't have to imagine becoming rich, or becoming successful.  It's just a matter of course.  Just a matter of course correction.

Meaningful Goals

I'm back to standing regularly.

Not because I have an urge to stand.  Not because I believe, at this moment, that it's good for me.  Not for any of the reasons I did in the past.

I'm back because I have written this out as a meaningful goal.  To continue my morning standing practice.  It is a goal, like getting a book contract, that is important to me at a level deeper than just feeling.

For the next while, I'm going to place less trust in my feelings and intuitions.  More trust in what I know works and doesn't work in my life.  Standing works to make me feel better and stronger and more vital.  It always has.  It helps me manage my stress, and keep my body and energy strong.  It makes me feel powerful, whatever the circumstances in my life.

No let's correct that.  It doesn't make me "feel" powerful.  It makes me powerful.  If I work on the exercises and push myself, it makes me powerful. Through it I tap into power.

I am, and have always been afraid of being powerful.  Because there is anxiety in power.

I made a mistake a while back, I think, in deciding that I was no longer going to be driven by anxiety.  There is healthy anxiety and that can be a good force in one's life.  If one taps it, it can be really helpful, make you focus, get you moving.

Right now I'm feeling a lot of anxiety and I can use that to make a better life for myself and Ben.

I can use standing to manage that anxiety, and to manage the anxiety that comes with having a thriving, busy life.  I want to live quietly, but having a rich life is still important to me.  Seeing and living with life's complexity is important to me.

So, I stand.