It’s Your Choice: Are You Victim or Victor?

Action cures fear.

Anxiety creates fear.

Action then also cures anxiety.

By action I don’t mean occupying ourselves with busywork as a coping mechanism.  Action as a cure is action taken to achieve an outcome in direct opposition to the fear or anxiety we experience.

So our action needs a direction. It must have purpose.  That purpose we can find by reflecting on our fears, our sources of anxiety.

If we are anxious about having enough to eat, then maybe we decide to fast.

Then maybe we think about how to feed others who have less food than we do.

Then maybe we go to work, or we go looking for a job, and if neither of those choices is available we seek out someone who can help.

If we are anxious about money, then maybe we decide to give more away and try to live on the rest.

Then we figure out how to help others who have less than we do.

Then we work more hours (if paid hourly), or get a job, or get a second job if necessary, but not out of anxiety or a fear of not having enough.

Then we get rid of the extra stuff in our lives, the stuff that takes up space without having a purpose.

Then we get rid of cable so we aren’t watching so much television and filling our minds with images of unrealistic lifestyles and other crap that makes us anxious about what we don’t have.

Clutter amplifies anxiety.

Three Takeaways

“As he mused about these things, he realized that he had to choose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief and as an adventurer in quest of his treasure.” Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist (p.45)

We all have the power to choose to be a victim or a victor.

“And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?”  ?Luke? ?12:25-26? ?ESV??

We are more likely to lose an hour of our lives by being anxious than to add one. (See Google search results for the effects of anxiety on life span.)

“And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.”  ??Luke? ?12:22-23? ?ESV??

Life is more than food and clothing, money and possessions.  Worry less about these things and choose to start living.

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