We tell ourselves all sorts of stories. The problem is, our stories are often wrong.

Anxiety can easily run away with us if we are merely reacting to it’s jitters. The best way to halt the runaway fear before it begins is to sink down, breathe, and take the reins.

We’re almost there my friends. We’re at the finish line of 2020: the craziest, weirdest, most tumultuous, contentious, painful, scary, exhausting year that most of us have ever seen.

Are you as tired of hearing and reading about this horrid virus as I am? It’s like hearing about the hurricane that’s brewing off-shore: we hear report after report, we prepare, we hoard, we hunker down and we wait and worry and watch the news and wonder if it will really hit, and when, and whether it will hit us, or just those other unfortunate people.

Chinese medicine calls viruses “Pernicious Evil Influences,” which sums it up pretty perfectly. They are all three of those things. But while viruses are nasty, the anxiety they generate is worse … much worse.

I’ve been dealing with some big issues lately, things that hurt my brain and stir my emotional pot; things that if not kept on a tight rein release a toxic tsunami of anxiety. So I picked up Eckhardt Tolle’s A New Earth to try to get some perspective.

Everyone I know is going through some serious suffering. I’m not talking about the suffering one feels watching a Tom Cruise movie, or hearing the phrase, “I know, right?” I’m talking about suffering chronic illness, staring mortality in the face, losing a loved one, being in dire financial straits: in other words, Hell.