According to Osho, anxiety comes from trying to avoid risk and postpone decisions; life is inherently risky, and seeking guarantees paralyzes you. Choosing—even if you err—transforms fear into aliveness, learning, and maturity. Decision is the only way to move; falling and getting up grows awareness. Indecision breeds chronic tension; embracing choice, uncertainty, and possible mistakes releases anxiety’s grip and lets life flow.
When you stop waiting for perfect safety and just choose, the fear shrinks and you grow.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
I have a belief that in order to grow I have to take risks, and in order to take risks I have to make decisions. Then when I try to make decisions I am filled with anxiety that I will make a wrong choice, as if my life depended on it. What is this craziness?
Just a small sannyasin, Dheeresh, was going back to London. I gave him a box and told him not to open it. He said. "Yes, I will not open it." And then I talked to his mother, and again I told him, "Remember not to open it." He said, "I will never open it." The mother said. "He has already opened it!" It is God who tempted. When he said to Adam, "Don't eat the fruit of this tree." there is no need for any devil. God is the greatest tempter because he wants you to go, to experience, to move all over existence. Even if you go astray you cannot go out of him. Where can you go? Even if you do wrong, what wrong can you do, because he is and only he is? You cannot do anything against him. There is no possibility. It is just a…
There is a constant fear in everybody, in almost everybody, of Really getting high. The fear comes because the moment you get high you cannot remain in your ego. When you get high you cannot remain in your finite, limited world; it starts being shattered. When you invite the infinite and it starts coming -- and it comes like a torrent, a flood, you start feeling 'I will be washed away' -- then you start clinging to the past and stop doors opening. It is the fear of the infinite, it is the fear of god himself -- but the fear will continue unless you look directly into its face. If you want to remain the way you are, then it's okay. Nobody is trying to change you; why should anybody try to change you?
In the beginning you told me what I had to do. It was hard. Now you tell me that I can decide for myself, that I can do what I feel. This is hard too. I am afraid of making a wrong decision. Please explain.
THESE are the only two possibilities: either you surrender -- and in that surrender you stop thinking about decisions, consequences; in your surrender you have surrendered the responsibility itself, and you are totally free... free to move without any worry, without any burden on your mind.... But that is difficult because of the ego. You cannot surrender totally. You would like to control your life on your own. It becomes hard for the ego. The second possibility is that you take things in your own hands -- do whatsoever you like to do. Again the problem arises, because you don't have any awareness. You don't know what to do and what not to do. Then you are afraid of making a wrong decision. Then you are afraid of moving in a wrong direction.`The ego is there, and with the ego, the shadow of the ego -- the ignorance -- is…
No, Osho, what happens is that our mind is in one of two states. Either I feel I will be able to solve it, or I’m afraid that I won’t be able to solve it...
Because of that ignorance, we create many problems we don’t even suspect. For instance, in India almost everyone assumes that the sexual act is devastating. Physiologically that is absolutely wrong—completely wrong. In fact, sexual inactivity is devastating. Activity is not devastating. And it is also interesting that anyone who thinks he can go to extremes in sexual activity is mistaken. The body has checks. You cannot go to extremes; there are bodily checks. Nature has arranged it so you cannot expend surplus force beyond what the body allows. But one can misuse it, right? Even misuse is not possible—if you use full understanding. As far as sex has been understood, misuse is not possible. Misuse is impossible. Then not just sex—by that argument you can’t misuse anything! If we extend that very argument, you can’t misuse anything! No, no—you can misuse many things. Why not sex? Because the entire arrangement…
But the mind is a dissipation, it is continuously leaking your energy. Once the mind is turned off, once you are no more in the trap of the mind, no more a victim of the trips of the mind, when you get off the mind, you are turned on to a new reality, absolutely unknown to you, of immense vitality, of tremendous power. It is a great explosion, and only in that explosion does one come to know who one is, being is revealed. Sannyas can be reduced to a simple message: turn on, get off and be! That being is deathless. It is always there, it has always been there with you for millions of lives, but you have never looked within. Now the moment has come to look within. And all that you have been seeking outside and have not been finding will be found.