To obsess too virulently is to walk alone in anxiety. But to obsess too little is to wall oneself off from one's own creativity.
Well, in the first place, it leads to great anxiety as to whether it's going to be correct or not. . . I expect that's the dominating feeling. It gets to be rather a fever. . . At age 60, when asked about his feelings on discovering the Dirac equation.
When a patient tells a doctor that every symptom is the most horrible ever - and the physical exam and labs are normal - we often suspect something psychological is going on. The symptoms aren't fake. They're physical manifestations of anxiety, depression, and stress. So while I'm always on the lookout for a serious underlying disease.
The renowned seventh-century Zen master Seng-tsan taught that true freedom is being "without anxiety about imperfection.
If you're going to live in the anxiety of the surface of this world, you're never going to find the depth, the source. If you want calmness, you've got to go deeper.
The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion-these are the two things that govern us.
Loss aversion is a really disproportionate anxiety about stuff that doesn't matter very much. So for instance, if you lose $5, you feel really bad about the $5 you've lost. You're cursing yourself. You're going through it again and again. If, on the other hand, you find $5, you go - hey, great, five bucks. And you've forgotten about it really quickly.
Anxiety projection can and does occur - in myth, in music, in fiction, and in the doctor's office too. That doesn't make it the basis of everything.
Don't try to steer the river.
A child in its greed for love does not enjoy having to share the affection of its parents with its brothers and sisters; and it notices that the whole of their affection is lavished upon it once more whenever it arouses their anxiety by falling ill. It has now discovered a means of enticing out its parents' love and will make use of that means as soon as it has the necessary psychical material at its disposal for producing an illness.
I am touched by your beautiful anxiety about life.
One thing, all things: move among and intermingle, without distinction. To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about non-perfection. To live in this faith is the road to non-duality, because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind.
Relativity was a highly technical new theory that gave new meanings to familiar concepts and even to the nature of the theory itself. The general public looked upon relativity as indicative of the seemingly incomprehensible modern era, educated scientists despaired of ever understanding what Einstein had done, and political ideologues used the new theory to exploit public fears and anxieties-all of which opened a rift between science and the broader culture that continues to expand today.
If anyone is unhappy, remember that his unhappiness is his own fault. . . Nothing else is the cause of anxiety or loss of tranquility except our own opinion.
Anxiety is the fear that one of a pair of opposites might cancel the other. Forever.
I have come to see that our problem is that we don't know what happiness is. We confuse it with a life uncluttered by feelings of anxiety, rage, doubt, and sadness. But happiness is something entirely different. It's the ability to receive the pleasant without grasping and the unpleasant without condemning.
Our whole life is taken up with anxiety for personal security, with preparations for living, so that we really never live at all.
To venture causes anxiety. Not to venture is to lose oneself.
I think it has other roots, has to do, in part, with a general anxiety in contemporary life. . . nuclear bombs, inequality of possibility and chance, inequality of goods allotted to us, a kind of general racist, unjust attitude that is pervasive.
Risk, then, is not just part of life. It is life. The place between your comfort zone and your dream is where life takes place. It's the high-anxiety zone, but it's also where you discover who you are.