Unlike everyday anxiety, which typically relates to imagined outcomes, existential anxiety can emerge when we wrestle with life’s bigger questions. The ‘why am I here?’ and ‘what is the purpose of my life?’. These often come in response to big life events and changes, e.g., bereavements, leaving school, job changes, or divorce, and can leave you feeling anything from a dissatisfaction with the lack of meaning in your life, through to a crippling fear of death. You are not alone. Grappling with these worries is part of being human, and there are ways to live comfortably with the uncertainty of life’s events, and the certainty of its ending.
Actively engaging with, and reframing existential anxiety, can bring a sense of calm. One of the most powerful ways to achieve this is to live a life that is fulfilling for you, as you are now. If you experience life as unfulfilling, it may be because you are not living it on your own terms, instead your choices are shaped by the expectation, imagined or otherwise, of others. There is no one ‘right’ way to be, or a single ‘correct’ choice to be made. Life is not already mapped out with a path you need to find to be happy. There is only neutral choice, where outcomes remain invisible until we embark on them.
Consider what brings you joy. If it isn’t that university course or taking the new job offer that looks great on paper but leaves you numb, then take a different route. If it all goes pear shaped, then you will have learnt something truly valuable – what doesn’t work for you! Now you can try something else. Once you let go of the idea of a single purpose, of a single destiny that you have yet to fulfil, then the pressure to achieve it, by an imagined deadline, fades away, leaving you to focus on what works for you now, today. This may be very different to what worked for you a decade, or even a year, ago!
If you would like to read further into this topic, I highly recommend ‘Staring at the Sun: Being at peace with your own mortality’ by Irvin Yalom.
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