Post-it Question by Jenny Blake
That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? . . . Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Identify one of your biggest challenges at the moment (ie I don’t feel passionate about my work) and turn it into a question (ie How can I do work I’m passionate about?) Write it on a post-it and put it up on your bathroom mirror or the back of your front door. After 48-hours, journal what answers came up for you and be sure to evaluate them.
Bonus: tweet or blog a photo of your post-it.
(Author: Jenny Blake)
The anxiety is like flames crawling up from the inside of my throat, threatening to eat me alive. It’s weird how it manifests itself lately, how it finds places to live in my minor phobias, like being in a crowded elevator or an el train that stops unexpectedly way down in tunnels, where I can’t see the sky.
The anxiety finds a sweet little spot in my brain and curls up there and starts to nudge, starts to nudge at doubts and fears, until it becomes a pounding pulse and a sensation of choking and a tingling, almost a dissolving feeling, in my legs. I guess this is what they call a panic attack.
It comes on now because of the life decisions I’m facing, because I’ve become too old to pretend anymore, pretend that if I say or do things in a certain way, a just-right-kind-of-way, that everything will work out how I want it to. I’ve become too old and tired to pretend and chase the illusion that I have control.
So two options remain: One: I can let this anxiety eat away at me every day, in everything I do, until it takes over. I can give in to the parasite. Until I’m completely paranoid and terrified of the chaos and disorderliness of the world, and my pointless attempts to put it in order.
Or two: have more faith. Have more faith that there is a reason for both the things that do and don’t work out, reasons that I might not understand this week or this month or even this lifetime. Have more faith and hold onto it tightly, like a rope, like a lifeline, when the anxiety creeps in.
