The Source of our Anxiety — It’s NOT what you think.

It’s simple and it’s agonizing. There is an unresolved question, a decision we must make, based on a set of conflicting requirements we struggle to reconcile, deep within us.

We must find that question, that decision, then find the courage to answer it.

Do you ever feel like …

• you’re trying to get somewhere, but keep ending up where you started?

• you’re searching for something but can’t find it or even really articulate what it is you’re searching for?

• you’re frustrated, anxious, confused, but you don’t really know why and find yourself reacting over and over?

I heard a great metaphor shared by His Holiness the Dalai Lama — I’m paraphrasing here:

Imagine you’ve lost your car keys and you’re searching your living room.

You’re absolutely certain you lost them in the living room, after all, they’ve always been there in the past, they couldn’t possibly be anywhere else and everyone would think you a fool if you explored another room.

You’re in a hurry, you have places to go, appointments to meet, you’re in a panic.

You turn the room upside down, you search everywhere, under the sofa, under the cushions, in the drawers of furniture, under the rug, in the corners of the room. You tear the room apart, certain you will find the keys any moment, but they never show up.

Now you’re late, you’re tired, you’re frustrated and confused — you are absolutely certain the keys are in that room, but they allude you.

You now have a decision to make, an inner conflict — you are trying to reconcile your commitment to your solution (the living room) with the reality you have found (no keys) — do you let go of your firm belief and search elsewhere, or do you cling to your certainty and the acceptance of your peers keeping you in that living room?

You can’t bare to give up on your commitment, and you have proof you can’t solve your problem there.

Now you have a choice, maybe a very subtle one — continue with your commitment, or focus on solving your problem.

Of course this is a simple example, but a useful illustration — if we are deeply committed to our ideas, customs, processes, beliefs, culture, identity, committed to the expectations of others, or of our selves, committed to keeping favor with peers, afraid of being rejected by our tribe, we may be choosing to stay in the living room, and we may not even realize it, regardless of the proof we find. In fact, we may work to undermine our own efforts by ignoring and avoiding the problem all together, to keep us where we believe we should be.

I suggest that, we are actually trying to solve an intractable problem. In the above example, we can maintain our commitment to the living room (our perceived boundaries and requirements), OR we can be committed to the problem, finding the keys, regardless of where that takes us.

We can NOT have both — we already have proof the keys are not in the living room, so now, we have a gap, now we have inner conflict — we cannot find our keys AND stay in the ‘known’ safety of the living room at the same time. We must choose either the keys, or the living room. This can be an agonizing decision, we can struggle endlessly trying to reconcile it, trying to have both requirements met without giving anything up.

What if that struggle comes down to a simple, but irreconcilable problem — we want both requirements but can only have 1.

• We want to avoid what we fear, and we want to overcome the anxiety our fear creates.

• We want to take action and we fear the consequences.

• We want to change ourselves and we fear being rejected by our friends, family, employer.

• We want a loving relationships, but we fear being vulnerable and trusting others.

• We want to be our authentic selves, but we fear we’ll be rejected if we expose who we are.

• We want to assert ourselves and we fear the consequences of doing so.

• We feel an emptiness but fear seeking to understand and solve it.

Often the decision isn’t obvious, it’s buried deep beneath lots of competing and equally valid points. Regardless of WHY we struggle with the decision, it’s the decision we must identify and solve.

All too often, we sit, in the middle of this inner conflict, bouncing back and forth, trying to reconcile it. We struggle and agonize — there is no easy answer.

There’s no judgement here. It’s not about where the competing requirements came from or right and wrong. There are lots of legitimate reasons for the struggle we find within.

In the end, it’s about self awareness, going deeper, understanding the source of that inner conflict, the competing requirements, objectives and fears you are trying to reconcile and having the courage to fully commit to one, while letting go of the other(s).