After this research first emerged, remember that I made a beeline for my therapist’s office. I knew my
life was out of balance, and I wanted more of what I was learning about in my study. I also wanted to
figure out why I was having dizzy spells whenever I got really anxious and stressed out. I would
actually get lightheaded, and the room would start to spin. A couple of times, I literally fell over.
The dizziness was new; the anxiety was not. Before I started learning about Wholehearted living, I
had always been able to manage the competing priorities, the family demands, and the unrelenting
pressure of academic life. In many ways, anxiety was a constant in my life.
But as I started developing an awareness about Wholehearted living, it’s as if my body said, “I’m
going to help you embrace this new way of living by making it very difficult for you to ignore
anxiety.” If I became too anxiety ridden, I’d literally have to sit down or risk falling.
I remember telling Diana, my therapist, “I can’t function this way any longer. I really can’t.”
She replied, “I know. I see that. What do you think you need?”
I thought about it for a second and said, “I need a way to stay on my feet when I’m really anxious.”
She just sat there nodding her head and waiting, like therapists do. Waiting and waiting and waiting.
Finally, it dawned on me. “Oh. I get it. I can’t function this way. I can’t function in this much anxiety
anymore. I don’t need to figure out a way to keep going with this level of anxiety—I need to figure
out how to be less anxious.”
That silence thing can be effective. It’s a pain in the ass, but nonetheless effective.
I used my research to formulate a plan to lessen my anxiety. The men and women I interviewed
weren’t anxiety-free or even anxiety-averse; they were anxiety-aware. They were committed to a way
of living where anxiety was a reality but not a lifestyle. They did this by cultivating calm and stillness
in their lives and making these practices the norm.
Calm and stillness may sound like the same things, but I learned that they are different and that we
need both.
CalmI define calm as creating perspective and mindfulness while managing emotional reactivity. When I
think about calm people, I think about people who can bring perspective to complicated situations and
feel their feelings without reacting to heightened emotions like fear and anger.
When I was pregnant with Ellen, someone gave me a small book called Baby Love: A Tradition of