Is anxiety becoming the new normal state of being?

It is true that anxiety is rampant. Everywhere you look there is someone else bemoaning how overwhelmed and exhausted they feel.

We are so disconnected from one another that we need to have a special day in Australia, called the R U OK-day, just so we remember to ask someone else how they are. Isn’t it sad we require a day to remind us we are all human, we all have feelings and we all have a fundamental need for interaction?

“We cannot re-write the chapters of history already past, but we can learn from them, evolve and adapt. The new normal may even be a better normal, certainly a different normal”~ Unknown

Pondering our current society, and how removed we are from living as a community, made me wonder what has changed from when I was younger …why is everyone rushing to get somewhere without ever really getting anywhere? Why are we here and what is “normal” anyway?

When Did Anxiety Become the New Normal?

Once I asked the question, “What is normal?” this reflection came:

• Normal is an illusion we have been sold as something to attain
• Being normal makes us non-offensive and non-threatening while blending into the background
• The idea goes against everything that we are actually meant to be

We are meant to be unique. 

We are born to shine.

We are born with unique gifts and we are here to discover and share them.

When we buy into the belief that we are supposed to push and force ourselves into being normal, we suppress those gifts. We suppress ourselves. We actually push away from the whole purpose of our journey through life.

This New Normal is An Illusion

Normal does not exist, and that’s why it feels so uncomfortable when we let ourselves be put into a box in order to contain who we are.

Trying to be normal is what creates disease and suffering.

Trying to be normal is what creates wars, separation.

Normal is what religions have been built upon. What you should be “religious” about is knowing who you are and why you are here.

How do you want to feel?

How do you want to make others feel?

How do you want to show up in the world?

How do you want to leave the world?

How do you want the world to remember you?

You Have All the Answers Inside You, None of Them Are “Normal.”

Every new normal has been done over and over and over again, and it’s gotten us nowhere.

And I know, as you are reading this, you believe – you know deep down in your bones – that you are anything but normal. But you may be trying to suppress yourself, and force yourself into this illusion, into this lie that you should conform to what’s normal.

Normal does not exist.

We are everything but normal.

When we aspire to be more than we are right now, to be who we were meant to be, the difference – the gap – makes us feel uncomfortable. This creates a certain kind of anxiety, which lessens as we take action to close that gap.

When we fight against that pull for growth and give in to the push to be normal, we create an anxiety that expands and haunts us.

Be present and ask yourself, “Does this feel like my life? Am I trying to be something I’m not just to please someone else, so much so that I don’t even recognise myself anymore?”

Persevere in being brave and being yourself – and know the anxiety will pass, because it is not the new normal.

Comments