Pick An Activity And Commit

As told by singer-songwriter Jewel

When anxiety and depression hits, it isn’t easy to overcome them. Often, we find ourselves stumbling down a void that feels like it’ll never end. There is an end, you know this, but when you’re in that void, it’s nearly impossible to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

In her youth, Jewel was homeless, addicted to shoplifting, and thought very low of herself, often suffering from anxiety and depression spells that prevented her from thinking clearly and moving forward with her life. To change this, she remembered a quote that said:

After recounting this quote, Jewel figured that her hands were the servants of her thoughts and deduced that if she wanted to learn what she was thinking she’d detail everything her hands did in a journal. With no goal set in mind, she did this for two weeks. After those two weeks, she realized her panic attacks went away. She dedicated her time to being in “the moment” so much that she wasn't able to make time for her anxious thoughts.

Get a journal and either write down what a part of your body is doing like Jewel or observe a pair of birds frolicking in your backyard. Devote yourself completely to this one task and stick to it for two weeks. Before you know it, you’re bound to notice that anxiety has loosened its grip on you.

Jewel continued to journal long after those two weeks passed. She did it so much that she soon deduced that our bodies only have two basic states of being: dilated and contracted. Open and closed. And every thought, feeling, and action you have is going to lead you to one of those two states.

With this in mind, anytime she felt her body was closed and anxious, she’d ask herself what she was thinking, feeling, and doing that led her to that contracted state.

After doing this for two months, she noticed that joy, observation, curiosity, reading, sleeping, and exercise helped her reach that dilated state of being. On the other hand, fear, jealousy, greed, and lack of sleep led her to that contracted state.

At the end of the day, Jewel’s deduction of a dilated being and a contracted being was a practice of self-awareness. Whenever she was anxious and contracted, rather than casting aside the issue — letting it fester and worsen in the long run — she stopped what she was doing and dedicated time to analyzing everything she was thinking, feeling, and doing. She dug deep into her soul, into dark corners of herself she didn’t want to see, and broke anxious and depressive patterns that were keeping her from moving forward in life.

Challenge yourself. Practice self-awareness. If you’re in that contracted state, take the time to stop what you’re doing so that you can analyze your thoughts, feeling, and actions. So you can notice and break negative anxious and depressive patterns that are keeping you from leveling up in life.

Jewel practiced self-awareness so much that she could feel when a panic attack would strike. At one of those moments, she realized that the body could only be in one state at a time: contracted or dilated. Relaxed or tense.

With this in mind, she wondered if she could convert her body from a contracted state to a dilated state by participating in an activity she knew would relax her. Since gratitude fell under her dilated state of being, Jewel tried to figure out what to be grateful for at this time of her life.

She was homeless. She felt insecure and incredibly anxious that day. She couldn’t find anything to be grateful for. So, she withdrew to other dilated activities: observation and curiosity. She scanned her surroundings, feeling the sun’s rays peering through the leaves of a palm tree kissing her skin and leaving a pattern on her clothing that transported her back in time.

Back when she was a kid in Alaska laying in the meadows and watching the trees around her, completely lost in the moment. She felt alive and overcome with such gratitude for life that she burst into tears at that very moment and cast aside the panic attack that was about to consume her.

When all feels lost; when you’re deep in that contracted state and you’re desperately trying to unlock that dilated state, lean into observation and curiosity. Observe your surroundings. And discover one thing that sparks your curiosity and invokes a strong emotional response from you. Something that could transport you back in time just like it did Jewel. Something that casts aside your anxiety because you're just so grateful for this gift of life. For the gift of you.

Without really having any intention of doing so and before I had even stumbled upon Jewel’s wisdom, I had gone through a similar journey of overcoming my anxiety and depression. However, rather than writing in a journal as Jewel did, I created an audio one instead that I used religiously.

With my audio journal, I practiced self-awareness, improved my emotional intelligence, and came up with methods that would help me break out of a contracted state of being. Though, I just referred to those ‘contracted’ states as ‘shitty’ ones. Or simply anxiety. Or depression.

Like Jewel, exercise, reading, and writing helped me break out of my shitty moods. Nevertheless, in my experience, when exercise, reading, and writing doesn’t work for me, I’ve noticed that I often resort to gratitude. Or, the way I like to coin it: finding the beauty in the day.

More often than not, all it takes for me to find the beauty of the day is feeling the warm sun on my skin. It transports me to a memory of mine on the sunny beach of Carmel, California where I had my most intense episode of gratitude and bawled my eyes out like a baby in public. Gratitude for my family. My best friend. And for the opportunity to be given the chance to live this short but special life.

We’re not in this world for a long time, ladies and gentlemen. If we’re given the chance, we can make it to ninety or one hundred. And those hundred years go by in the blink of an eye if you put things into perspective of the cosmic timeline.

Anywho.

I always like to end my articles on a personal and intimate note. I mean, the very nature of mental health is personal, emotional, and turbulent, therefore, it must be treated with the utmost care and sensitivity possible. Statistics are great. A strong and authoritative voice like the one I used at the beginning of this article is great, but, at the end of the day, don’t you want me to talk to you like a friend? Like someone who sees and treats you like the beautiful and rare flower that you are?

Yeah. Me too.

I hope you found wisdom in Jewel’s story that can help you overcome your anxiety and depression. If you’ve already kept a journal and have been practicing self-awareness, great, keep it up. You go, Glen Coco!

But if you haven’t, don’t beat yourself up. And don’t compare your self-care journey to others. Every journey must have a beginning. This is yours.

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