in any given year 40 million Americans
will suffer from debilitating anxiety
over the course of your lifetime there’s
a 1 out of 4 chance that you’ll have an
anxiety disorder that is such a
staggering rate it suggests that we have
entered into a new realm
we’ve acclimated to a new norm one of
mass disquiet anxiety exists in epidemic
proportions in our culture if 40 million
people fell mysteriously ill on a
physical level the Center for Disease
Control would be searching for the cause
and looking to find the solution as a
practicing psychotherapist it’s never
made sense to me that the best we can do
is try to manage this disorder typically
through medication so I’ve been
searching to understand why we struggle
in this way now I’m not talking about
normal levels of stress which are
typical in our lives I feel some stress
standing here right now
that’s the stress of engagement of being
productive and generative moving forward
but when stress turns into distress it
impedes that blocks our ability to live
our lives well with joy to be present in
our relationships so I’ve been searching
to understand why we are entrenched in
this epidemic of anxiety here’s what
I’ve learned I find that primarily the
cause of such anxiety is due to our
relationship with our thoughts
you see when our thoughts are constantly
seeking certainty wanting to know the
future in advance we get anxious we get
fearful we can’t know that future in
advance is unknowable but we still
continue to search for it it sets up as
the struggle to actually engage in the
flow of life rather than experiencing
life we’re trying to war law
the uncertain this induces fear in our
lives
ask yourselves think to yourself what
causes stress fear and anxiety in my
life does it have something to do with
my need to know the future number of
years ago I was working with the woman
who came to see me around her
relationship her marriage and her
anxiety disorder she shared with me that
she was unhappily married in a loveless
marriage her husband had refused
marriage counseling and she said they
were very disconnected and conflicted
they were both financially independent
and they had no children so I asked her
why do you continue to stay married she
shared that it was around her
uncertainty about who would I be if I
got divorced what would my life be like
if I were not married I was incredulous
at first because the known in her life
was setting up such despair such anguish
such depression and such anxiety but
there it was her need to know who she
would be in the future
precluded her from moving forward and
kept her stagnating in life and stuck in
the way she was the need to know who
would I be kept her mired in an unhappy
if not miserable relationship I see this
phenomenon occurring on so many levels
in our lives so how did we get to be
this way how did we get stuck requiring
certainty after all we seek uncertainty
when we go to sports events movies read
books but in our personal lives we try
the thwart and lock uncertainty I
tracked the cause back to the great 17th
century scientist Sir Isaac Newton
Newton proposed that if we had enough
information today what we might call
data that we might reasonably predict a
future event this became known as
determinism but we took it to an extreme
it led us to slicing and dicing our
options godling getting a stuck in our
lives
it created a fear a fear of making the
wrong move it’s almost as though we are
living our lives as though we’re playing
at
chess match sitting back and
deliberating but afraid of making the
wrong move if you have problems making
decisions if you get stuck and moving
forward in your life you probably have
an issue with around your fear of
uncertainty here’s the good news it
turns out we’ve been living from the
wrong gameplan over the last 100 years
remarkable discoveries in the field of
quantum physics have revealed that the
universe reality is nothing like what we
imagined it to be it’s not Newton’s
reality reality is not fixed
deterministic or predictable nothing is
in earth it is a flowing moving bubbling
sea of possibilities infinite
potentiality and we too can jump into
that game plan and live our lives that
way once we can reframe our relationship
with uncertainty think about it
embracing uncertainty allows you to
start to navigate and craft your own
life decision I use this concept with
that woman who was stuck in that
troubled marriage I asked her to close
her eyes and imagine that she was
standing by the bank of a river I
explained to her that the river
metaphorically was going to resemble the
flow of her life the current of life
particularly the middle of the river
where the currently gets strong she
closed her eyes and I let a few seconds
passed and then I asked her what she saw
she said to me she sees herself in the
middle of the river where the current is
strong but there’s a large rock let’s
call it a boulder and she’s grabbed
ahold of that Boulder and they asked her
why why are you holding on to the
boulder and she said well the river is
bending to the right up ahead and I need
to know where it’s gonna take me let’s
presume that that’s going to be her life
as a divorce to sing a woman she needed
to know I explained to her she needed to
let go of that boulder and enter into
the flow of life and that once she did
she’d be free to navigate along the way
but she had to let go of that Boulder
how we accomplish this how do we have
this shift of mind to allow us to make
these changes in our lives first we have
to change our relationship with
uncertainty you know typically what we
fear we resist we go like this we push
it away and when we do that it imposes
that it makes it greater it makes us
more anxious paradoxically what we need
to do is invite what we fear in when you
invite it in in this case invite
uncertainty and the fear starts to
dissipate it starts to retreat think of
it this way if reality is uncertain and
we cling to seeking certainty we’re
going to dysfunction we need to change
our game plan of how we engage life next
think about your relationship with your
thoughts if you still see your thoughts
are seeking certainty you need to notice
those thoughts try to release them
essentially see the thought but don’t
become the thought if you don’t become
that thought you can release it it’s the
moment you have a thought the thought
summons up the accompanying emotion they
work in tandem so if you have a thought
seeking certainty you’re going to feel
fearful you’re going to feel anxious in
the nanosecond between your thoughts you
exist in the state of pure potential
that’s the universal reality but if you
keep having thoughts that are seeking
certainty garnering fear you’re never
going to transcend anxiety the most
report the most important relationship
you’ll ever have in your life is it with
your parents it isn’t with your children
it’s not with your spouse the
relationship that’s going to impact you
far more than any other relationship you
have ever had is with your thoughts you
need to learn to choose them with care
turn your thoughts into your ally when
you do that you can begin to write the
script of your own life
think of it this way uncertainty can be
the wind in the cell of your life that
generates your ability to move forward
and experience your life without fear
without anxiety and with joy and the
ability to be present embrace
uncertainty it can be your best friend
[Applause]
will suffer from debilitating anxiety
over the course of your lifetime there’s
a 1 out of 4 chance that you’ll have an
anxiety disorder that is such a
staggering rate it suggests that we have
entered into a new realm
we’ve acclimated to a new norm one of
mass disquiet anxiety exists in epidemic
proportions in our culture if 40 million
people fell mysteriously ill on a
physical level the Center for Disease
Control would be searching for the cause
and looking to find the solution as a
practicing psychotherapist it’s never
made sense to me that the best we can do
is try to manage this disorder typically
through medication so I’ve been
searching to understand why we struggle
in this way now I’m not talking about
normal levels of stress which are
typical in our lives I feel some stress
standing here right now
that’s the stress of engagement of being
productive and generative moving forward
but when stress turns into distress it
impedes that blocks our ability to live
our lives well with joy to be present in
our relationships so I’ve been searching
to understand why we are entrenched in
this epidemic of anxiety here’s what
I’ve learned I find that primarily the
cause of such anxiety is due to our
relationship with our thoughts
you see when our thoughts are constantly
seeking certainty wanting to know the
future in advance we get anxious we get
fearful we can’t know that future in
advance is unknowable but we still
continue to search for it it sets up as
the struggle to actually engage in the
flow of life rather than experiencing
life we’re trying to war law
the uncertain this induces fear in our
lives
ask yourselves think to yourself what
causes stress fear and anxiety in my
life does it have something to do with
my need to know the future number of
years ago I was working with the woman
who came to see me around her
relationship her marriage and her
anxiety disorder she shared with me that
she was unhappily married in a loveless
marriage her husband had refused
marriage counseling and she said they
were very disconnected and conflicted
they were both financially independent
and they had no children so I asked her
why do you continue to stay married she
shared that it was around her
uncertainty about who would I be if I
got divorced what would my life be like
if I were not married I was incredulous
at first because the known in her life
was setting up such despair such anguish
such depression and such anxiety but
there it was her need to know who she
would be in the future
precluded her from moving forward and
kept her stagnating in life and stuck in
the way she was the need to know who
would I be kept her mired in an unhappy
if not miserable relationship I see this
phenomenon occurring on so many levels
in our lives so how did we get to be
this way how did we get stuck requiring
certainty after all we seek uncertainty
when we go to sports events movies read
books but in our personal lives we try
the thwart and lock uncertainty I
tracked the cause back to the great 17th
century scientist Sir Isaac Newton
Newton proposed that if we had enough
information today what we might call
data that we might reasonably predict a
future event this became known as
determinism but we took it to an extreme
it led us to slicing and dicing our
options godling getting a stuck in our
lives
it created a fear a fear of making the
wrong move it’s almost as though we are
living our lives as though we’re playing
at
chess match sitting back and
deliberating but afraid of making the
wrong move if you have problems making
decisions if you get stuck and moving
forward in your life you probably have
an issue with around your fear of
uncertainty here’s the good news it
turns out we’ve been living from the
wrong gameplan over the last 100 years
remarkable discoveries in the field of
quantum physics have revealed that the
universe reality is nothing like what we
imagined it to be it’s not Newton’s
reality reality is not fixed
deterministic or predictable nothing is
in earth it is a flowing moving bubbling
sea of possibilities infinite
potentiality and we too can jump into
that game plan and live our lives that
way once we can reframe our relationship
with uncertainty think about it
embracing uncertainty allows you to
start to navigate and craft your own
life decision I use this concept with
that woman who was stuck in that
troubled marriage I asked her to close
her eyes and imagine that she was
standing by the bank of a river I
explained to her that the river
metaphorically was going to resemble the
flow of her life the current of life
particularly the middle of the river
where the currently gets strong she
closed her eyes and I let a few seconds
passed and then I asked her what she saw
she said to me she sees herself in the
middle of the river where the current is
strong but there’s a large rock let’s
call it a boulder and she’s grabbed
ahold of that Boulder and they asked her
why why are you holding on to the
boulder and she said well the river is
bending to the right up ahead and I need
to know where it’s gonna take me let’s
presume that that’s going to be her life
as a divorce to sing a woman she needed
to know I explained to her she needed to
let go of that boulder and enter into
the flow of life and that once she did
she’d be free to navigate along the way
but she had to let go of that Boulder
how we accomplish this how do we have
this shift of mind to allow us to make
these changes in our lives first we have
to change our relationship with
uncertainty you know typically what we
fear we resist we go like this we push
it away and when we do that it imposes
that it makes it greater it makes us
more anxious paradoxically what we need
to do is invite what we fear in when you
invite it in in this case invite
uncertainty and the fear starts to
dissipate it starts to retreat think of
it this way if reality is uncertain and
we cling to seeking certainty we’re
going to dysfunction we need to change
our game plan of how we engage life next
think about your relationship with your
thoughts if you still see your thoughts
are seeking certainty you need to notice
those thoughts try to release them
essentially see the thought but don’t
become the thought if you don’t become
that thought you can release it it’s the
moment you have a thought the thought
summons up the accompanying emotion they
work in tandem so if you have a thought
seeking certainty you’re going to feel
fearful you’re going to feel anxious in
the nanosecond between your thoughts you
exist in the state of pure potential
that’s the universal reality but if you
keep having thoughts that are seeking
certainty garnering fear you’re never
going to transcend anxiety the most
report the most important relationship
you’ll ever have in your life is it with
your parents it isn’t with your children
it’s not with your spouse the
relationship that’s going to impact you
far more than any other relationship you
have ever had is with your thoughts you
need to learn to choose them with care
turn your thoughts into your ally when
you do that you can begin to write the
script of your own life
think of it this way uncertainty can be
the wind in the cell of your life that
generates your ability to move forward
and experience your life without fear
without anxiety and with joy and the
ability to be present embrace
uncertainty it can be your best friend
[Applause]
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