How to reframe your thinking to escape the anxiety spiral and tap into your creativity

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In Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life’s Purpose, Martha Beck, PhD, writes that “anxiety always lies.” When I asked her why, she highlighted one of the book’s central teachings: When you seek the truth beneath your anxious thoughts, you discover that many of them aren’t real. This newfound awareness is transformative. It dismantles anxiety’s prevailing narrative that in order to be safe, you must live in fear. 

“So many people tell me: But, the world is in bad shape right now,” Beck shares. “I say: Yes, and doesn’t that require us to show up as our calmest, most committed, and competent selves?” 

“Anxiety does not do that, it just tells lies that say: Be in a defensive posture. Never think you’re safe. Don’t tell anyone the truth,” she says. “Scare someone and watch them behave. You’ll see that they’re not reacting to reality.” 

As a bestselling author and Harvard trained sociologist, Beck is often described as “the best known life coach in America.” Her latest book is a comprehensive guide to liberate yourself from anxiety and  rediscover your creativity.

In our conversation, Beck discusses how to calm your nervous system, reignite your joy, and discover your purpose. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

What do we get wrong about anxiety and how can we adopt a new perspective? 

It’s this very materialist viewpoint that is dominant in the left hemisphere [of the brain]. It not only says that matter is all that we are. But, also that nothing else exists. When you see a person that way, you start to treat the body and mind like machines that are broken. That’s where the medical model goes. You cut something up and see what makes it tick. You have to kill it to do that. So, you never understand what makes it alive, but you can see how it fits together. We try to pin down the mechanisms and intervene with chemicals or new habit forming—All of it is an attempt to adjust, fix, or alter the machine. 

We don’t give credit to our anxiety for being sentient. It feels. It’s not mechanical. When you say to something that is a feeling, living, being—I’m going to cut you up, drug you into insensibility, and work against you in every way I can until you’re gone—the very mechanism of life says: I’m going to ramp up my defenses. I’m going to get more frightened. We attack everything about ourselves that we don’t like. It just makes us more frightened. 

You explain that our brain interprets our thoughts about the past and future as if they are actually happening. How does this impact our mind and body and how can we decrease its potency? 

It means that we’re in a constant fight-or-flight state—Actually fight, flight, fawn, faint, or freeze. It revs up a system that is meant to be an emergencies-only system. It’s like you have a little firefighter that comes running out, puts out fires, and then goes back to sleep. But, instead of letting them sleep, you’re constantly screaming: Fire, fire, fire! The fear response is running around inside your head going: Where’s the danger? But, since there is no local danger (there’s just a thought), it can’t find the thing to fight. So, it keeps running around in fear, which means that you are constantly secreting stress hormones. 

We know that when you continuously bathe the inside of your body with stress hormones—that are only supposed to be little bursts of energy when you’re in danger—it leads to all kinds of degenerative illnesses, from cancer to heart disease to autoimmune diseases. The imagination of danger is the primary source of our stress.   

How can we approach these situations with a more generative response? 

The first step is always to notice what is happening around you, because this stress response is only meant to deal with physical danger that is present in your environment. When you look around the room and say: In this place right now, there is no bear or murderer. You take a deep breath and a long exhale, because that’s something almost every animal does when it has escaped danger.

Then, you come back to the present and start noticing the objects around you, especially if you can appreciate them. The moment that I start to think about that, I start to become preoccupied with what’s around me. Since I’m safe, what fires up is curiosity, connection, and gratitude. Suddenly, I’m in a safe, wealthy environment, no matter where I am; Instead of a terrifying place filled with monsters and constant scarcity. Presence, presence, presence. Come back to where you are.  

Tell us about the relationship between anxiety and purpose. What do we get wrong about purpose that keeps us from discovering it? 

The relationship between anxiety and purpose in our culture is that anxiety becomes a very dominant force; something that we culturally believe is going to make us safer. We are going to hang on to whatever makes us feel safe—but also whatever makes us feel anxious—because that is anxiety’s ultimate lie: Without fear, you won’t be safe. So, in order to feel safe, you have to feel afraid. You get in this tight anxiety spiral. If you’re going down a tight anxiety spiral, there’s no way you can move toward anything purposeful. 

The left hemisphere of the brain creates the anxiety spiral. If you move into the right hemisphere by doing things that are creative, sensory, and proprioceptive, then you turn toward activities that spark your creativity, curiosity, connection, and compassion. Suddenly, instead of running away from everything, you’re moving toward things. 

There’s aversion and attraction. You will not find your sense of purpose by avoiding things that frighten you. You will find it by moving toward things that give you joy and the experience of abundance. 

You share research from child psychologist Karyn Purvis that it takes approximately 400 repetitions to create a new synapse in the brain with regular practice and only 10–20 if we’re learning through play. How does dedicated play accelerate mastery?

We learn through play. It’s the same for adults as it is for kids. It’s just that kids are given a bit more room to frolic. One study they did for different groups in the 1960s identified 2% of the adults they surveyed as creative geniuses. They gave the same test to 4- and 5-year-olds—98% of them scored as creative geniuses. What is happening in the meantime? A big part of it is that we’re forced not to play. We’re forced to learn a way of learning that is rigid, boring, and monotonous. We can learn that way, but there’s no fun to it. If there’s no fun to it, you can’t remember it.  

When we’re trying to solve a challenge, you explain that we tend to zoom in and follow instructions; whereas you propose “creating the conditions that are most likely to wake up the sleeping magician in your right hemisphere. The magician will then solve problems for you in ways that will leave your left hemisphere agape in disbelief.” What are those conditions and how can we create them?

It’s always by going towards something that is kind to the self and creates comfort, joy, and a sense of gratitude. People used to come to me for coaching and I’d say: Let’s find your joy. But, they were so exhausted from living in a world of joylessness, that the first thing is usually rest; Giving yourself permission to rest is a massive step toward creating this life that you’re going to love. It’s so scary for people. They haven’t yet touched the fertility of the creative state. 

Getting people to rest is the single most challenging thing that I do as a coach, because the culture does not provide for rest. Once you rest, then you start naturally getting curious about things. You start playing, solving problems, and making things happen. Steve Jobs was obsessed with making insanely great things out of machinery. People like that, whose creativity is fully loosened, they’re the ones who everybody thinks are doing something inaccessible and impossible. It’s possible for all of us. 

You write: “I know that the most important creative project you’ll undertake—the one you were born to complete—is the shaping of your whole life. As you become more creative than our society deems prudent, you’ll make the choices that will lead to your own greatest happiness, and your best contribution to the world.” What wisdom might you leave us with to begin realizing that vision?

Sit down and imagine what you expect as a road going forward, which is probably some blend of what movies, culture, and living with your family has taught you. Think of it as having walls on each side. It may be wide or very narrow. But, see what’s there. What do you expect? Do you expect marriage, children, a job—whatever it is, what is it? 

Now, imagine that the walls are suddenly gone. You’re in this broad field of nature and history. All these resources are available to you, if you wander off the pathways. Suddenly, people go from—I feel so trapped—to—Holy crap, what am I going to do? This is too much opportunity. But, the biggest mistake that you can make is when people say: I’m going to take life as it comes. I’m not going to make anything up. No, you’re making it up. You’re making your expectations based on your experience. Make up something that makes you happy.  

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