Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life's PurposeFrom bestselling author, life coach, and sociologist Martha Beck comes a new path to overcoming anxiety by awakening the creativity within. AN OPEN FIELD PUBLICATION FROM MARIA SHRIVER Most of us assume that the key to overcoming anxiety is to think our way out of it. And for a while, it works. Meditation and mental exercises offer us relief, but there is always something—a work deadline, a family emergency, a particularly distressing newsbreak—that disrupts our sense of peace and sends us right back inside the same anxious spiral we’ve been trying to climb out of. Is there a way to reduce our anxiety, not just in the moment, but in every moment after that? After a lifetime of struggling with anxiety, Martha Beck studied just about everything there was to know about how to calm down. What she realized is that the analytical part of our brain—so valued in Western culture—is the same structure responsible for amping up anxiety. In other words, we cannot logic our way to relief. In Beyond Anxiety, she reveals that to find calm, we must activate an entirely different part of our brain, one responsible for curiosity, wonder, and, most of all, creativity. Drawing on social science, Eastern wisdom, and the latest research in neuroscience and psychology, Beck shows how to move from anxiety into purpose through the power of creativity. Using techniques tested first-hand on hundreds of clients, she teaches us how to activate the creativity spiral by approaching problems with a sense of curiosity, making pleasure a priority, and inviting play and spontaneity into our every day. Anxiety does not have to keep us from finding our life’s purpose. Beyond Anxiety invites us into a new way of being, one filled with greater abundance, joy, and possibility. |
Contents
The Nuts and Bolts of Why | 3 |
Anxious Creatures in an Anxious Culture | 43 |
When Anxiety Creatures Get Stuck | 77 |
The Creature United | 113 |
Activating Your Creative Side | 155 |
The Secret Doorway | 191 |
Making Your Sanity Quilt of a Life | 223 |
Freeing the Magician | 263 |
Part Three Part Three | 299 |
Constellating an Ecosystem | 345 |
Dont Know Mind | 381 |
Deep Green Self Deep Green Earth | 415 |
Acknowledgments | 453 |
Other editions - View all
Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life's Purpose Martha Beck Limited preview - 2025 |
Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life's Purpose Martha Beck Limited preview - 2025 |
Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity and Finding Your Life's Purpose Martha Beck No preview available - 2025 |
Common terms and phrases
activity amygdala anxiety creature anxiety spiral anxious Art Toad asked autopoiesis awakened begin believe body brain clients coach connect consciousness crea create creative genius creativity spiral culture danger David Sedaris defense cascade ecosystem energy everything example exiles experience fear feel felt fight-or-flight response firefighters focus glimmers green-light happen hemi hemisphere's horse whisperers human ideas imagine inner interest curiosity keep kind left hemisphere Lin-Manuel Miranda living look magic Mann Gulch fire mind mission move neocortex nervous system never Nicky notice once peace physical play podcast pull ragbag Ram Dass relax remember Richard Schwartz right hemisphere sanity quilt sense situation skills social cells someone squirrel stay stop stories talk tell therapist there's things thought tion told trigger trying WEIRD what's whole wonder worry writing yellow-light Yvonne