
first, we make the beast beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety

‘Asking for advice is a red flag.’ She works to green versus red flags. A red flag tells her that she’s heading in the wrong direction, that’s she in the wrong mindset and needs to stop and get a grip.
Sarah Wilson • first, we make the beast beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety
Uge tells me that we then feel where our inside peeps are at. Try saying to yourself, as he does, ‘Are we good? Are we comfortable? Is this where we should be? Is it making sense?’ ‘Don’t think or plan in this space, just check in,’ he says. Then let stuff happen.
Sarah Wilson • first, we make the beast beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety
That said, I do have one trick that I play with a bit. It accesses a sneaky portal to the gut. I flip a coin. But before I uncover it, I monitor my emotions to see what I’m hoping the result will be. There it is, my gut decision, peeking through my head clutter. This technique tricks you into thinking some divine intervention
Sarah Wilson • first, we make the beast beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety
All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.
Sarah Wilson • first, we make the beast beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety
Turns out Chalmers went on to become a leading disrupter in consciousness research.
Sarah Wilson • first, we make the beast beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety
That is, running too hard at the wrong priorities, compromising ourselves, force-fitting ourselves into ways of living we know aren’t right … all of which is highly abrasive and inflammatory.
Sarah Wilson • first, we make the beast beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety
It’s like when I have to motivate myself to do exercise when my inflammation, or my anxiety, flares and it hurts to even think about leaving the house. Gentle movement has been shown to help both. I know this. I have to do the work on this one, despite the pain entailed.
Sarah Wilson • first, we make the beast beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety
‘You don’t delete a bad habit, you build a new, better one. You feed this new habit, over and over,’ he tells me. He draws a new line, this time parallel to the first clump of lines and thickens it with more and more strokes of his pen. The new thoughts clump, layer by layer, and eventually create a habit that is stronger than the old one. You buil
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Try a Think Week. Microsoft’s Bill Gates has one every six months. He extracts himself from his chino-wearing Silicon Valley brethren and heads to a wee cabin on a hill, eliminating all distractions.