Anxiety and Worry
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“For a start, don’t be carried away by [the impression’s] vividness, but say: Wait for me a bit, impression; let me take a look at you and what you are about, let me test you. Next, don’t let it lead you on by painting a picture of what comes next. Otherwise, it is off and away, taking you wherever it wishes. Instead, confront it with another impression, a fine and noble impression, and dismiss this foul one.”
“To will to be himself is man’s true vocation ... blockages in self-awareness [occur] because the individual [is] unable to move through accumulations of anxiety at various points in his growth. Kierkegaard makes it clear that selfhood depends upon the individual’s capacity to confront anxiety and move ahead despite it.”
“It is true that life must be understood backwards. But we forget the other truth: it must be lived forwards. The more I think about this, the clearer it becomes that life can never be fully understood while we are living it.”
“I have to die. If it is now, well then I die now; if later, then now I will take my lunch, since the hour for lunch has arrived - and dying I will tend to later.”
“Freedom in its essence is the acceptance of the chains which suit you and for which you are suited, and of the harness in which you pull towards an end chosen and valued by yourself, and not imposed. It is not, and never can be, the absence of restrictions, obligations or law and of duty.”
“Not all who hesitate are lost.”
“The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all the shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of the personal centre of energy, which I have analyzed so often; and the chief wonder of it is that it so often comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing the burden down.”
Grasping at finiteness
We are attracted to freedom's power but repelled by its demands, so we draw back, deny it and 'grasp at finiteness', living as if our situation were fixed and immune to change. This relieves anxiety at the cost of growth.
“Maturity is the capacity to endure uncertainty.”
“You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.”
“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own ...”
“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more in imagination than in reality.”
“He who craves riches feels fear on their account. No man, however, enjoys a blessing that brings anxiety; he is always trying to add a little more. While he puzzles over increasing his wealth, he forgets how to use it. He collects his accounts, he wears out the pavement in the forum, he turns over his ledger; in short, he ceases to be master and becomes a steward.”
QuoteStatus anxiety and wealth comparisonAnticipatory anxiety and future worry1 more related links
Lenses
“I don't add to my troubles.”
“Seek not for events to happen as you wish but wish events to happen as they do and your life will go smoothly.”
“Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens. Some things are up to us and some things are not up to us.”
“He robs present ills of their power who has perceived their coming beforehand.”
“Everyone approaches a danger with more courage if he has prepared in advance how to confront it. Anyone can endure difficulties better if he has previously practiced how to deal with them. People who are unprepared can be unhinged by even the smallest of things.”
“Always to seek to conquer myself rather than fortune, to change my desires rather than the order of the world, and generally to believe that nothing except our thoughts is wholly under our control, so that after we have done our best in external matters, what remains to be done is absolutely impossible, at least as far as we are concerned.”
“Some things are up to us and some are not up to us. Our opinions are up to us, and our impulses, desires, aversions - in short, whatever is our own doing. Our bodies are not up to us, nor are our possessions, our reputations, or our public offices ...”