There is no doubt that we all live in a world filled with lots of options, confusion, and moves at a hectic pace.  It seems to whirl by at such a rapid pace that I frequently question my own place in this world.  Do you ever have questions about “what is this all about?”, “why am I here?”.

I know that many of us do and in my interview with Tim Burkett about his new book “Zen in the Age of Anxiety” he helps to provide sound advice and solutions on how to deal with these age-old questions and challenges we all face daily.  His book focuses on many of the topics we question, such as money, sex, desires, failure and humility: and he does it from the Zen perspective which I personally believe it wonderful.

I think a very important point Tim makes in the book is that fear and fear-based thinking is evolutionary.  It is called negative bias and scientists believe it originated as an adaptive mechanism to help humans survive. We all are aware that our need for this fear-based thinking in the type of society we live in today is not as necessary as it was during the times of early man.  But, we still have this fear trigger and it ends up making us overly or passively aggressive, conflict avoidant or frozen by indecision.

What Tim teaches is that during meditation, while our awareness if focused on the breath, or fear-based patterns begin to reveal themselves.  When discomfort arises in the form of physical or emotional pain, we usually respond in one of three ways: we fight it, becoming agitated or irritable, we try to escape the discomfort through fantasy and then feel guilty or ashamed that we are wasting our time in meditation; or we freeze up like a stone, holding our mind in a state of rigid, unfeeling blankness.

Tim teaches the art of meditation and how to release our anxiety.  If you are looking for a way to adapt, and thrive in our ever increasing world of complexity then I highly recommend reading Tims’ new book “Zen in the Age of Anxiety“.

If you want to learn more about Tim you can check out his website where there are resources for reading and listening too.