The feeling starts. A tightness in your chest. A racing mind. A knot in your stomach.
And then the thought comes, “I am an anxious person.”
We say it all the time. “I am anxious.” “I am a worrier.” We take a temporary feeling and we turn it into a permanent identity.
This is the most powerful and the most painful illusion we live under. We have mistaken the weather for the sky.
The Wave and The Ocean
Here is the truth: You are not your anxious thoughts. You are the awareness that is noticing them.
Think of it this in a different way:
- Your anxious thoughts are the WAVES. They are temporary. They rise up, they look huge and powerful, they crash, and then they disappear back into the whole.
- You are the OCEAN. You are the deep, vast, calm awareness underneath the waves.
The wave is made of water, but it is not the whole ocean. It’s just what the ocean is doing in that moment.
When a wave of anxiety appears, we point to that single, temporary, crashing wave and say, “That is me. I am that wave.”
We identify with the most chaotic part of ourselves.
The Art of “De-Illusion”
This is the entire art of de-illusion: learning to separate your identity from your temporary feelings.
The “illusion” is “I am anxious.” The “reality” is “I am the ocean, experiencing a wave of anxiety.”
This one, small shift in perspective changes everything. Why? Because you stop trying to fight the wave.
You can’t “defeat” a wave. You can’t argue with it. The more you fight it, the more you get tossed around. What you can do is dive underneath it, where the water is calm.
How to Be the “Ocean”
The next time you feel that knot in your stomach, do not fight. Do this instead:
- Stop. Do not say, “I am anxious.”
- Label it. Say, “A wave of anxiety is here. I am feeling a wave of anxiety.”
- Observe it. Get curious. “Ah, there’s the tight chest. There’s the racing mind.”
This is the shift from “driver” to “passenger,” a state of being I explore in my work. You are no longer the wave. You are the observer of the wave.
You are the whole ocean. You are big enough to hold any wave that comes. You are not your anxiety. You are the space that it is passing through.
