I’m anxious (but who isn’t??)
First of all, anyone who has listened to even one complete episode of the TEM Podcast knows that I am obsessed with Seth Godin. And you probably know that my wife, who is hilarious, refers to Seth as my spirit animal.
So imagine my surprise this morning when I discovered that he wrote a book that I didn’t even know about! And in the above clip, he actually reads the entire thing aloud! It is an ABC book for adults and it is exactly what I needed to hear this morning.
It starts with A is for Anxiety and he tells us that anxiety is just experiencing fear in advance. That really resonated with me this morning.
I am filled with anxiety right now. (Again, who the hell isn’t?)
I’m anxious for the health of my elderly parents during this pandemic
I’m anxious for what my career will look like on the other side of this
I’m anxious about how long it will be until we are on the other side of this
I’m anxious about the current state of my country and the path we continue to be on
I’m anxious for my college students and all that they’ve had ripped from them
I’m anxious for this part of my six-year-old’s childhood that he’ll never get back
I’m anxious about my finances (and I am very fortunate right now in the grand scheme of both the world and the music business)
I’m anxious about not feeling very creative musically right now (although I had a wonderful practice session yesterday for the first time in what felt like forever!)
As I said before, I’m filled with anxiety. These are remarkable times we are living in. But Seth’s comment about anxiety being fear we experience in advance really helped me with my perspective this morning.
Some items on the list above are things where I am able to take an action to help solve the problem. Some are things that are completely and totally out of my control.
By identifying which things are completely out of my control I can limit and sometimes eliminate entirely a lot of the anxiety. The added benefit of that is then being able to apply myself to the part of the list that I can control (or at least affect in some way.)
This applies to my career. This applies to how I navigate this pandemic. This goes applies to how I parent. This applies to literally everything.
Between my recent conversation with Dana Fonteneau for TEM210 and hearing Seth Godin read this book, I have been able to recalibrate my thinking about so much of life. And I have been so busy just trying to get through the day of late (and again, who hasn’t??) that I didn’t realize how badly I needed that to happen.
TEM210 featuring Dana Fonteneau
The WholeHearted Musician’s Dana Fonteneau spoke to me about resilience, mindset, arts in the time of a pandemic and how to empower artists during crisis in TEM210.