by Dale Shumaker
4spirit@gmail.com
In Just Enough Anxiety by Robert H. Rosen, Rosens says, "It's time to embrace change, uncertainty and anxiety as facts of life. We can use our healthy anxiety as a positive force for growth. Just enough anxiety is the key to living and leading in our complex world. Rosen shows us in Just Enough Anxiety how this can work for us instead of against us.
Anxiety is about uncertainty. But this can be a motivator to make change for the better in times of uncertainty. After reviewing what triggers anxiety and the productive and nonproductive responses to it, Rosen gives us a powerful roadmap, a new model, and shows us how to re-wire our brain to making it a very useful tool in our lives. We must balance our need for protection and growth.
The anxiety gap is our current reality, problems and challenges,
and the distance of the gap to our desired outcome, opportunities and dreams.
If the gap is too small we may remain complacent and unmotivated and if the gap is too large we may be over whelmed and immobilized. To navigate the gap it takes an open mind of self-awareness, lifelong learning, and non-attachment. Then fuel movement through the gap with an open heart of emotional honesty, empathy and compassion, and emotional resilience.
When the head and heart are aligned emotional intelligence rises stimulating intellectual ability. We think clearly, communicate effectively, are creative, fulfill relationships and perform vibrantly. You create balance between these two desires by pushing, pacing, then taking time for rest and renewal.
Close the gap by identifying your target of change,
imagine desired outcomes, assess current reality,
analyze your ability to close the gap,
take one step at a time as you remain focused.
This gap is important to grow using uncertainty positively in your life.
Anxiety has three faces.
Too little anxiety or too much contentment, which can create boredom or stagnation.
A second face is too much anxiety which attacks change, combatant and controlling.
The ideal is the third face... just enough anxiety. You embrace change and challenges, search for opportunities, learn and grow.
Too little anxiety causes one to be detached, cautious, overpleasing, too idealistic. Too much anxiety causes one to be suspicious, a perfectionistic, volatile, egotistical. Just enough anxiety comes in the middle of these two... which is a balance. This then forms a productive energy to achieve sustainable growth. Bring the above two extremes to a middle place and there is productive action.
This creates a paradox... but a paradox of power. Learn the art of moving to the middle.
Here are some paradoxes of the middle between too little and too much anxiety.
Too little anxiety can be idealistic, but too much is cynical.
The middle power is optimistic and realistic.
You see things as they are, but have a positive path to initiate change for growth.
Too little anxiety can be complacent, too much careless or reckless.
The middle or just enough anxiety is constructive and impatient.
You choose to get on to get things done, but in a constructive well-conceived design.
Too little anxiety can be self-doubting, too much arrogant.
Just enough anxiety, in the middle, is humble and confident. Knowing you don't know everything but confident in finding other resources for gaining productive energy. Too little anxiety is ineffective energy, too much chaotic energy, but just enough anxiety is productive energy created by the synergy of paradox combined.
Just enough anxiety then is
optimistic and realistic,
constructive and impatient,
humble and confident.
These then create the power in the paradox.
Just enough anxiety leaders have an open heart which invites passion. In an age of lightening speed, they have confident humility nurturing trust. Needing something to believe in, realistic optimism focuses energy to that vision. Expanding knowledge and skills continually is vital in the frantic changing world, so the open mind fosters learning.
Constructive impatience is the fuel to ignite performance, producing results.
The organization develops around this wheel of open heart to open mind cylinder internalizing purpose and values, mobilizing productive relationships, creating shared direction, unleashing and harnessing creativity and innovation, completing the circle cycling to achieving performance excellence.
Tapping your full potential, just enough anxiety is the power force in your life as you commit to know yourself, be yourself, challenge yourself, and to love yourself.
Robert Rosen and Just Enough Anxiety are building Healthy Companies and their company of the same name has more tools and programs at
www.justenoughanxiety.com
It takes a little weirdness in our lives for us to grow. When things go well we have a tendency to become complacent and not grow.
When the Children of Israel were blessed by God, they became complacent and no longer served Him. They loved the blessing more than the one who provided the blessings. They loved the things around them, the things they enjoyed, but forget who brought them.
Too much niceness in life, takes the edge off which also eliminates the potential joy we get in victory and growth. Happiness is growth, and when we stop growing we cease having a sense of fulfillment. It takes some tension to get us to grow, and growing through challenges is where true growth and soundness of mind matures.
That's why the Apostles said that suffering brought joy.
Now that is a paradox of Scriptures.
Why would suffering, trials, struggles bring joy. Here is their take on the benefits of being challenged and it is actually good for our growth. As Rosen calls it "just enough anxiety."
Paul, the apostle, pointed out the value of struggles, just enough anxiety, in the problems we face. "We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love." (Romans 5: 3-5, NLT)
It increases our love for Jesus, the Holy Spirit and God, because it shows how much He is there and comes into our lives even more just when we need Him.
James begins his letter by saying that we should rejoice because of what trials, problems, anxieties of life, will produce in us. That we should look to its product, what it will cultivate in our lives. "Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing." (James 1:2-4, NLT)
So realize it will make us better than before, and with that we almost get excited about the idea. It takes some tension to cause us to grow... from muscle building to life attitude and mental strength building. To build muscle we must strain to lift more than we have before, then with rest, it builds up stronger for the next time. Tension, strain, then rest in Spirit, continues to build up Spiritual strength we have never had before. So we are happy with what it will bring us.
Without uncertainties of life, we don't press through the struggle to become a more powerful person. In that, even if someone has bad intentions and wants to hurt us, we can even rejoice because of what it will do for us. Making us better and stronger that without it we wouldn't have. So as James said we can consider it great joy.
Peter, the Apostle, chooses to address the same theme in the first chapter of his letter. "So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you have to endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world." (1 Peter 1: 6-7, NLT)
Our rewards are established when we prove we will endure the test. Any athlete knows he must actually perform to prove his abilities. Without the event, his skills are not proven. But when he does, the rewards are there.
The tension that challenges produce is a main ingredient for God's Spirit to accomplish the level of perfection He wants us to have in our lives. We can be glad and know that God is building this in us. And we are coming into the perfected Spirit He desires to implant in us.
"So think clearly and exercise self-control. Look forward to the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world. So you must live as God's obedient children. Don't slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn't know any better then. But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the Scriptures say, "You must be holy because I am holy." (1 Peter 1:13-16, NLT)
As you see, we will remain in His love and strength and be perfected so that we will be strong in Him. Because of these experiences, we thought were trials and struggles, we develop a inner stamina, a righteousness in Spirit that Peter refers to as Holy. We have strength in Spirit to not slip back in to our olds ways which revealed our weaknesses. We are stronger and can take on a much larger mission in our lives that God may very well be using all we have gone through to prepare us for it.
So rejoice!
He is building you up,
to be the better stronger person,
to do much more through your life for the Kingdom of God,
than you ever imagined.
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