One of my favorite quotes comes from the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. In his The Concept of Anxiety, he writes: Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
What he means is that our very freedom can sometimes be paralyzing. For example, let’s say that you’re struggling to choose a job. If you choose one career it means closing the door on other opportunities. Or think about a romantic relationship. How do you know you’ve found the right person when there are so many to choose from?
Kierkegaard was essentially laying out a simple philosophical problem: The more freedom we have the harder it can be to make a choice.
His solution? You have to take a leap of faith. You have to act and take sole responsibility for your decision. And this very choice will change you. As he put it:
“Life is not a problem to be solved, but something to be experienced”.
In other words, you can’t sit at home waiting for the time to be exactly right for you to begin working towards your dream life. Instead, you just have to start somewhere and figure it out as you go along. And this is what true freedom looks like, choosing one thing, and then going for it completely. As G.K. Chesterton once observed, “every act of will is an act of self-limitation”.
In sum, Kierkegaard’s simple advice is this: Choose one thing and go for it completely. Stop feeling anxious about the possible outcomes, stop making excuses, and take the leap of faith. It’s never too late to make a fresh start.
Julian
For a more detailed explanation, see below:
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Best advice for those of us who suffer with anxiety. Thank you for sharing this for writing this I shared it with some family members who will really appreciate it.
It’s the ‘what if’s’.
Philosophically speaking or in a clinical sense, anxiety begins with those two words: What if?