How does one deal with anxiety?

Following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Questioner: Acharya Ji, how does one deal with anxiety?

Acharya Prashant: Be with the anxiety, don’t fight the anxiety. You know what, anxiety too has a certain deep joy contained in it. If you do not know anxiety, then you do not know life. So, when anxiety arrives, welcome as one welcomes any guest who is about to leave in a day or two.

A guest arrives and you know that he would be there only for a couple of days, right. So, you welcome him in, you serve him with all your means. Anxiety is one of your guests. So are pleasure, and delight, and hope, and sadness.

Questioner: Acharya Ji, so there are no other methods to do that? You just let it be?

Acharya Prashant: Yes, of course, all methods too come and go. So, methods too are mental things, are they not? Do you retain any of your methods after you go to sleep when your mode of consciousness changes? So, methods too are just one of those mental toys. One plays with them, and then leaves them aside, the things you take too seriously.

Nobody ever survived to take anything too seriously for too long. You see, the Universe is a wide open space.

It’s like an infinite playground.

One has all the liberty to be here, to play here, to do here, to try all kinds of antics and acrobatics.

One is fully equipped, allowed and licensed.

It’s just that one must know that none of that is a substitute for the real thing.

When anything becomes too important for you, that is when you really get disturbed from within.

Don’t mind. Just don’t mind whatever is happening and keep playing the game.

And if you do mind, then let it be. You will play, and if you will play then sometimes you will meet defeat, sometimes you will be frustrated at your performance, sometimes you will suddenly have delightful moments, all of that is welcome. None of that is to be specially promoted, none of that is to be especially suppressed.

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