How to Climb Out of Anxiety and into Genuine Purpose
Do you ever feel as if the pull of your responsibilities feels too heavy, and some days, you just want to set it all down and give up? Do you find it difficult to reconnect with your sense of purpose—why am I doing all of this again? Sometimes our anxiety, depression, frustration, and simply burnout can leave us feeling disconnected to our why—and our sense of ambition toward our goals.
Reconnecting with our purpose—and allowing ourselves to feel the call of it—can help us get realigned with where we’re going and where we want to go.
Feeling the Call, or Pull, of Genuine Purpose
When we feel called to do something, we are pulled toward it. Following this pull-force gives our lives deeper meaning and fortifies us to fulfill that goal. Those who have a calling, something that gives significant meaning to their life, transcend the slings and arrows of failure, disappointment, and setback, because they are being pulled by something greater. This doesn’t mean there aren’t moments of letdowns and frustration, but it does mean that there is an abundance of high hope that drives their journey.
So let the pull-force influence you. What do you feel drawn to accomplish, create, express, be, do? How do you want to mold your purpose? Angela Duckworth, author of Grit, offers this parable as an aid: “Three bricklayers are asked, ‘What are you doing?’ The first says, ‘I am laying bricks.’ The second says, ‘I am building a church.’ And the third says, ‘I am building the house of God.’ The first bricklayer has a job. The second has a career. The third has a calling.” What is intriguing is that to an outside observer, all three bricklayers are doing the same thing. It is their perspective on what they are doing that makes the difference.
The bricklayer who has a job sees his work as a means to an end. He is more pushed to do it than pulled. Are your life chores, job, or roles like this? Do you feel you have to do them, more out of necessity than out of true passion? Perhaps you are more like the bricklayer who has a career. Are you in your roles because you are good at them and they are part of your identity? While this can be more motivating, it is still derived more from push than pull.
Imagine arriving at your job site every day invigorated and inspired. Imagine feeling that the activity is effortless—even joyful. As Nietzsche said: “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” Soon I’ll guide you to find those things that call you to do them with a force that can pull you into the future that you long to live.
Small Ways to Create Big Possibilities
Micro-goals can be used to pull us out of negative thoughts, beliefs, and behavior. We can learn to make decisions that push away destructive beliefs, untangle us from negativity, and move us toward purpose and meaning. Finding ways to not get into a depression rut in the first place is crucial.
What are the early signs of depressive thoughts and actions? Recognizing and catching the first signs of low mood goes a long way toward staying clear of depression. The clinical view is that anxiety often precedes and accompanies depression. Perhaps you’ve noticed that if you feel anxious for too long, it tends to sour into a depression. This is most often how it goes—some form of anxiety about our situation bubbles up and leads to a depression.
It’s hard to think about meaning and purpose in our lives if we are constantly fighting off anxious or depressed feelings. We want to deal with these thoughts early because being in a painful condition too long can cause us to feel hopeless, like things will never be any different.
One micro-goal is to interpret certain bodily functions differently. The sooner you can derail a decision to choose a negative interpretation of your physical experience, the easier it is to activate feelings of hope. Oxford’s David Clark taught people how to reinterpret their bodily sensations more productively by reframing their anxious fears with such phrases as “exam nerves help focus attention” or “a little extra adrenaline makes for a better interview.” He changed how subjects thought about their bodily reactions to fear, and once they did this, they reframed their symptoms into assets—keeping themselves from becoming increasingly worried and panicked. They didn’t activate the helpless switch, which led to much better results.
Anxiety as Simply Preparation for Difficult Tasks
When you train your body to reinterpret anxiety symptoms (restlessness, racing thoughts, trembling) as indications that your body is preparing you for the upcoming task, you move toward challenges with a strong readiness to meet them and succeed. By not letting your belief system interpret your reactions as negative, but rather as preparatory, there’s less to hold you back.
I’ve trained a number of actresses in preparing for auditions in this way. Instead of their bodily reactions being interpreted as worry, they interpret them to mean that they are getting ready to do their best. Inevitably, this way of thinking helps them during their performance. This can work for you too, once you identify what pulls you toward a life of purpose.
