Why You'll Never Be Small Enough

Have you ever had a day when anxiety dominates?  The thoughts, the physical sensations... I had a day recently with an overwhelming pressing feeling on my chest, causing me to have to pause every once in a while to take some deep breaths. 

As a relative newcomer to the world of anxiety, you will not be surprised to hear that 5 years in, my own anxiety management is in its infancy. 

So when I found myself courting anxiety and driving on the motorway with nothing but my thoughts, I used the opportunity to dive below the surface for a glimpse of what was really going on.  And do you know what I found?  A teeny tiny little voice that said "I feel so small". 

Really?!  Small?  Yes, small.  I'll skip over the incredibly tedious and boring part of the conversation with myself and cut straight to the breakthrough... the thought that broke the spell of anxiety like swiping a magna-doodle: 

I am, in fact, incredibly small.  

I am small and you are small.  We are all incredibly small.  You are one in 8 billion people. That is, only 8 billion out of the 117 billion who have ever lived. And that 8 billion is so small that collectively we can’t even be seen from space. And our planet is so small, it can’t be seen from the other side of the galaxy.

Somehow, it soothes me to remember this. Our smallness. My smallness. That my life is but a blink in the vastness of time.  Anything that I think is big in my life is minuscule.  

There's a phenomenon called The Overview Effect, which explains the unexplainable awe that astronauts feel when they look out through a rocket ship's window back at our beautiful green and blue planet. Suspended in space. Small. Fragile. This view of Earth and with it the new perspective, is said to forever alter an astronaut's view of the world and life.

Maybe what I was suffering from wasn't anxiety, but a slightly wonky view of the world and my place in it.

HERE'S THE SQUEEZE

We get to be everything without requiring others to be no-thing. As tiny as you are, it's essential that you take up all the space necessary to be you. We need you to turn up as you - undiluted, undiminished and unapologetic. Instead of a race to the bottom of how small we think others need us to be so that they can continue the thought error that they're "everything", how about you take up the space that you need and represent everything you have to bring to the world.

Surrendering to how small I am challenged my mind's unreasonable bid to be "big".  I surrendered the illusion that we are separate and found the connectedness and therefore plugged into something greater than anything I can imagine - and that is why you can never be small enough: Because you're EVERYTHING AND TINY all at once.

The mind fixates on the "everything" and doesn't realise there's a thought error in forgetting about the "tiny".

The anxiety I was feeling that day led me to a precious perspective and I'm reminded that by asking the right questions, it's possible to transmute my suffering.  

Mauri ora / behold the sneeze of life,