Choose to Take the Journey

Waiting can be a tortuous experience. A phone call after a job interview. A text message from a new lover. The results of your most recent checkup. Whatever the trial may be, time appears to crawl at a tortoise’s pace. You cannot force the tortoise to quicken its steps, and pining for it harder will only add weight to its shell and tar upon the road before it.

Will you be freed? Validated? Will your life be changed forever? Of course there’s no way of knowing until that decisive moment finally arrives. If something is important to you, there’s no way of getting rid of your anxiety completely, but there are certainly ways to dampen it to a manageable level:

Get ready. What can you do to prepare for this moment? Is there anything you still need to do? Go do it.

Put your house in order. A mind under stress is sensitive to the slightest provocation. So remove as many stressors from your environment as possible.

Eat well, sleep well, and exercise. Strengthen your will by strengthening your body.

Tap into your social support. Speaking candidly with others and sharing your troubles will ease your mental strain. If possible, tell your woes to more than one friend so that you don’t end up driving any one person off the deep end with you. Having more than one sounding board will also give you a more balanced perspective on the whole situation.

Finally, develop a contingency plan. I’m usually a fan of burning bridges and concentrating on a singular unshakable obsession, but some events really do lie outside of your control. Expect the best, but prepare for the worst. Figure out what your next step will be if events do not proceed as you had hoped, because no matter how much it hurts to get knocked down, you must always, always, always get back up.