Welcome to the Gathering Pod, the audio version of my weekly gathering room broadcast. I'm Martha Beck.

Thank you for joining me here. I love this place in this time. And today I'm talking about the

subject is outloving your fear, which is kind of, we've talked about it many ways, but with anxiety disorders at an

all-time high, the whole world round, I think it's worth talking about a lot. And I'm writing a

book about it. So I talk about that because I've been working on it. So I got a chance to practice

what I preached this week, because I had a very full week, I shall say.

I mean, I had projects to finish that I really had to focus on.

We were trying to learn better technicals for our podcast.

Rowan and I, you know, like trying to make the machines work is a whole other thing where you have to go back and forth

record things and listen and get, yeah help and I had presentations to give and classes

to teach and then I had to meet a bunch of new people which hasn't happened since the pandemic began

I mean except here which is safe because I can run if y'all get, I'm out that door and there is nothing you can do

to catch me in the short term. There were, oh my gosh, we had visitors who were wonderful, but in the

busyness of it all, it was like, oh, I want to pay attention to my visitors and I'm doing all

these other things. So it all added up to stress. And for me, stress goes to

anxiety. And if it gets bad enough, it goes to other emotions and physical breakdowns and

everything. But the first thing I do when I'm anxious, when I'm stressed is I feel anxiety.

So I'm like, okay, I've been writing about this.

I better be able to fix it, right?

Way of integrity.

If you can't live it, don't try to give it.

So I started to see this as an opportunity.

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