What our Anxiety is telling us about the world.

At WellBeings we have been a fan of Sarah Wilson for many years. For those not familiar with her work, formally she was the editor of Cosmopolitan as well as host of Masterchef Australia. She’s written 11 cookbooks including the international phenomenon, ‘I Quit Sugar’ which sparked a movement that has helped millions in over 130 countries, and made her a household name around the world.

Since then though that world we live in has gotten a lot more complex; climate change, loneliness, the question of how we all live more sustainably, and that’s nothing on the last few years. So what shows up for most of us is burn out, stress and of course anxiety.

Sarah is now on a mission to try and help us find a way back together, to find a way to connect us back to what matters to the life we feel we ought to be living. She did this by spending her pandemic in nature, hiking solo around the world while we were isolating at home.

The result is her new book: This One Wild and Precious life: a hopeful path forward in a fractured world. Sarah’s obviously an amazing writer but this for us almost feels like the guidebook we ALL need right now. How this communal experience we have all been going through, could be the exact thing that brings us closer together than ever before. This is Sarah Wilson.

LINK TO THE PODCAST

As Sarah talks about, we are not taught these days to feel our feelings. What is our anxiety telling us and what are ways we can not just fix the problem, but help us hold space and learn from the full human experience?

Yes the world has its challenges, but deep down that sense of despair and disconnection is ironically the thing that unites us the most – the reality is, we are feeling that same itch for a new way of living. So below Sarah gives us some practical advice on how we can use our anxious feelings to open our eyes to how we got here as well as some amazing practices to help us all reconnect again with both ourselves and the world at large:

  1. Step outside your comfort zone. Do what scares you and embrace discomfort daily.
  1. #buylesslivemore. Break the cycle of mindless consumption and in cutting back, get light with your life.
  1. Pick up a book again. Deep reading is such a powerful practice to light up intellect and reconnect with empathy with the people around you.
  2. Hiking. Just get outside and walk in nature, it helps us reconnects with ourselves, and with our true purpose.
  1. Practise activism together. An amazing fact: if 3.5 per cent of a population  participate in a movement towards sustained, non-violent protest, change happens. We can be part of the change that help us create a better world.
  1. Listen to this podcast with Sarah. She is a world renowned author with a beloved following in New Zealand and her talking about her book “This one wild and precious life” gives us a much needed sense of hope and walks us all through how we can get back to feeling connected and move towards a sense of wholeness that has been lacking in our world for so long. 

This has been an incredibly challenging time for us all, we have been looking out for each other and building community over the last two years and we at WellBeings want to celebrate all the benefits of how connection can be the most important thing we can all do for our wellbeing in the future.

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