Myths of Life – Identifying and Removing the Myth of Limitation

Existential angst is an experience that leaves the person asking the bigger questions of life e. What is the point?  What is the purpose of living? Is there any meaning or just that I or others make of things?  A person facing this experience can find themselves caught in the grip of questioning everything that may have believe about life now or in the past.  Norms, social expectations and individual and collective belief systems are questioned as the person truly realises, maybe for the first time, that they alone are the only ones who can make sense of their lives and the world in which they live.  Even if others offer solutions, it is each individual who must choose to belief one thing or another, without any real sense of objective rightness in that decision.  Existential angst leaves us at the crossroads in our lives – we can either shrivel and withdraw from the headiness of our freedom to choose our own meaning (and being itself) or grasp the challenge and live in an awareness of ‘not knowing’ but taking full and complete responsibility for our life choices.

Rejection is a Myth. Think about this. Someone might fear doing something because they believe they might get rejected. e.g. asking someone for a date, seeking a promotion or asking someone to buy their product or service. Before asking for whatever they want, they do not have it, so even if someone turns them down, they still don’t have it, In reality, nothing has changed.

However, what has the potential for change is the story they attach to the denial of their request. If they ending up saying ‘I am no good, my product is not wanted or I feel embarrassed’, they havecreated this. The Myth of Rejection is another example of our co-creation of our Being with our environment.

Existential angst is the name given to the awareness (through lived experience) of one’s existential condition. One who experiences existential angst comes face to face with the existential limits of their existence. For example, through the experience of eg. uncertainty, meaninglessness or endings or death, the resultant anxiety reflects their aloneness in making sense of their existence. As each of us proceed through our lives, we are bombarded with challenges to the fixed ways in which we define ourselves and our worlds. The unpredictable nature of others’ behaviour or our own challenges us to embrace the co-constructed nature of our phenomenal selves. We can either choose to resist through unrelenting attempts to restore the status quo or we can choose to see ourselves as ‘works in progress’.

Resisting the existential nature of our existence can lead to breakdown whereas embracing the anxiety of our unfixed selves offers breakthrough to a life well lived.