Rejoicing in Spring with an Excerpt from The Pandemic and Hope (Ortman): Breaking Bad, Making Good

 


In anticipation of the increasing sunniness of spring and the hope that such weather brings, we include here an excerpt from Dr. Dennis Ortman's book, The Pandemic and Hope.

BREAKING BAD, MAKING GOOD

How can we overcome the grip of our fears and let our natural light shine? It is a matter of breaking a bad habit of negative thinking and acting. Just as an alcoholic can have urges and still not drink, we can have anxious reactions and not indulge them. We have a choice to live with unavoidable anxiety or depression. If we refuse to change and grow, we will become depressed with a sense of a wasted life. If we want to mature, we will move out of our comfort zone and inevitably feel anxious. But in taking the risk and succeeding, we will grow in self-confidence, creating a larger comfort zone. So we choose our poison: growth-inhibiting depression or life-enhancing anxiety. Overcoming the bad habit of an anxiety-driven life involves four steps, requiring insight, courage, and perseverance:

1.       Recognize your habitual patterns and the fears that hold you back.

2.       Accept and understand your patterns as serving survival patterns from childhood.

3.       Do something different; courageously act against your fears.

4.       Persist in making changes.

As anxiety possesses our life, it takes control and shapes the way we live. We begin to live a self-centered life focused on our own security and safety. We live on automatic pilot. Our consciously chosen values no longer guide our life. We overcome the power of our anxious self-centered reacting by living the paradox: “By giving it away we keep it.” The wisdom of Shantideva in his classic Way of the Bodhisattva (8:129 ) expresses the way to happiness that goes against our ego instincts: “All the joy the world contains has come through wishing happiness for others. All the misery the world contains has come through wanting pleasure for oneself.”

Giving up our enslavement to our desperate search for safety and security, we experience a freedom that leads to lasting joy.



For more posts on and by Dennis, as well as excerpts from his other works, click HERE.














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