anxiety

Ah anxiety; that nauseous, gut-wrenching feeling that starts in your stomach and plays with your mind. The result is quite often procrastination or a paralysis similar to a deer caught in the headlights of an approaching car on a dark night. Anxiety over time stops movement.

We are the only known species to have developed a frontal lobe as an extension to a normal part of our brain. In fact for 70 million years our brains developed similar to most species before growing what science has called the frontal lobe. The frontal lobe gives us an amazing ability to think forward and develop a business plan, to start a savings plan or to eat well now so that we will be healthier later in life.

If our current situation is great our future is even better thanks to our frontal lobe. However when we hit a rough patch we see future problems. This ability causes the emotions of fear and anxiousness. Because we don’t have control of the future and it looks ugly, our fight or flight mechanism kicks in and stops us from moving forward. What a cool process for survival!! Not so when your in a state of reflux caused by rising stomach acid as a result of anxiety. This is a sign to stop and review.

If you find you get a bit caught up in the future, as opposed to living in the present then there is every chance that you will be the anxious kind. Know that all you can do is your best possible effort today and then prepare for tomorrow. You cannot control future outcomes and if you get too caught up in the future, what will you enjoy about today? I read somewhere that life’s gold nuggets are our great past memories, you can look forward to a diamond like future but the platinum moment is the present.

In times when the financial future is painted as bleak, learn to enjoy the current moment, it’s all you have right now and it is not so bad.