Anxiety and curiosity: how to face uncertainty?

Counseling has been jokingly referred to as a modern religion. This analogy is not without merit. Both religion and counseling offer a way to confront inner turmoil. In the West, confession is a common practice in which people confide their inner secrets to a cleric and receive forgiveness from God. Put in another context, how similar this behavior is to counseling. The Chinese, on the other hand, are more inclined to go to temples to ask for divination and seek guidance from the gods when faced with major life decisions.

When I worked as a school counselor, I often saw anxious students come to me, like devout joss-stickers in a temple asking for a sign, and they saw me as the one who interpreted the sign.

"Teacher, I'm facing a big choice right now and I don't know what to do, I'd like to hear your opinion."

These big choices are usually not what to have for lunch, but whether to go abroad, go to graduate school or work. Many students start agonizing over them from the moment they enroll in school, while others start getting headaches only after they have received multiple offers. I can't give definitive advice when faced with these questions because everyone's situation is different and there are no absolute good or bad choices. Most students actually already know the pros and cons of various options, and they come to counseling more for a peace of mind.

Counselors sometimes play the role of a sign box, jumping out at the right time when the visitor needs a "top sign". If a student wants to go abroad, he or she will discuss the outside world and good academic environment; if he or she wants to go to graduate school, he or she will talk about the convenience of familiarizing himself or herself with the environment; if he or she wants to work, he or she will talk about earning money and learning on the job. However, some visitors need more than that.

"But if I go abroad, what if I can't adapt to being alone? If I go to graduate school, what if I can't write my thesis and graduate? If I choose to work, what if I meet a terrible boss?"

They want some kind of reassurance that their choice is the right one, that they won't regret it in the future, that there will be no difficulties along the way. At this point, we need to look beyond the pros and cons of the options and talk about the "angst" itself.

There is a famous "cliff view" experiment in developmental psychology. The experiment involved having infants climb over a clear glass platform that appeared to be a cliff and observing whether they would continue to move forward. The experiment found that infants would stop at the edge of the "cliff" and look at their mother's expression. If the mother smiled, they continued to climb; if she showed fear, they stopped. This suggests that from infancy, we seek validation from others to feel safe.

However, as the complexity of choices increases, we no longer have a mother who can predict the future and give hints. No one knows what the future holds, and no supercomputer can predict all the variables and output the best choice. The truth is that the path unfolds with each choice, and that path is full of all kinds of contingencies. We must learn to live with uncertainty.

But uncertainty also holds something positive. The movie Groundhog Day is about a weathercaster who doesn't like his life and is stuck in an infinite loop of the same day. Even though he can predict the future and get anything he wants, he remains unhappy. The world of certainty becomes a perpetual nightmare. On the contrary, uncertainty, while it brings anxiety, also means more possibilities. In the face of uncertainty, we have two choices: anxiety or curiosity.

Counselor Yvonne Agazarian suggests a way to cope with uncertainty anxiety. She suggests that when you're worried about the worst possible outcome in the future, try standing at a fork in the road and pushing yourself into the future, imagining all the possible dangers. Then, come back to the present, recognize that you can't predict the future, and stay curious about it. The road ahead may be full of unknowns, but you may also encounter good things.

So, my friend, you are perfectly capable of enhancing your Heart Flow through a set of methods based on Eastern philosophy, aesthetics, and Feng Shui Flow. You can wear jewelry that contains the following materials:

• Placer Gold
• Freshwater Pearl
• Ruby

And the following Chinese Feng Shui Patterns:

• Phoenix Pattern
• Coiled Dragon
• Four Gods
• Bajixiang Pattern

These patterns are rich in strong protective power and can enhance the energy of the jewelry, while choosing this group of traditional oriental colors:

• Red Violet
• Dynasty Yellow
• Purple Haze of Sunset Mountain
• East Dawn Break
• Autumn Lotus Silk

This is a powerful group of lucky colors for you to create the Heart Flow!