How to overcome anxiety

www.anglophonie.fr
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How to Overcome Anxiety: How to Set Priorities in Life
(YouTube, 2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN2SfNUEsJE&feature=email
Should life consist only of work? Or only of problems or demands? Or things that we can interpret as sabertoothed tigers? Of course not.
Essentially the human experience consists of - let’s say for the sake of argument - two areas.
One is work, where we have to put out energy, where there are demands made on us, where we have to answer
someone else’s questions perhaps, or when we’re in our own business, our own questions, how to survive, how
to make a living and things like that.
And the other side is pleasure. Pleasure is like the relaxation part of living. Pleasure is play, things where we
might put out energy but it feels good to do that. Playing a game, often sports can do this for us. Exercise,
playing with children, having a pet and spending a little time with a pet.
That’s one of the reasons we can often get home from a hard day’s work and do a thing that immediately brings
the stress level down, to where we might like it to be like that all day, but that’s a whole other story.
Playing with a cat or playing with the children, taking some time to go into the back yard and throwing a ball
around with a child. Relaxing in a bath, spending time with a family member, with another family member.
On weekends, one of the risks of the active western life is often our work continues on at night, when we’re
away from the workplace, on the weekends, sometimes even when we play our sports. If I play racketball to the
death the same way I drive myself at work, well, I’m still working, I’m not playing anymore.
So if we consider that life balance means having enough pleasure and relaxation to offset the demands of our
daily ‘grind’ - which we may enjoy for the most part, but it’s still a demand - is very important.
Taking a look at what we do evenings, on weekends, whether we have enough real vacations to make up for the
time that we spend putting out energy is crucial to physical and mental health.
So sitting down with a pencil and paper and making a list of things that I would like to do in my life and how to
fit them in. How much time to spend doing a variety of things that are demands on me and what might help
relieve the stresses of that is critical to lowering stress.
Vocabulary
1. to overcome anxiety
2. saber-toothed tigers
3. to put out energy
4. to make a living
5. exercise
6. a pet
7. a hard day’s work
8. a whole other story
9. the back yard
10. to the death
11. I drive myself at work
12. to offset the demands
surmonter son anxiété
tigres à dents de sabre
user de l’énergie
gagner sa vie
l’exercice physique
un animal domestique
une dure journée de travail
une autre histoire
yard (US) = garden (UK)
jusqu’à épuisement
je me surmène au travail
pour compenser les exigences
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13. our daily ‘grind’
14. whether we have real enough vacations
15. to make up for
16. to fit them in
17. relieve
notre ‘corvée’ (boulot ou autre) quotidienne
si oui ou non nous avons suffisant de vrais congés
pour ratrapper le temps
de les inclure
soulager