7 Steps To Master Anxiety

Through a spiritual psychology lens, anxiety is a kink in your hose to your connection to your power, your life force energy.  Your mind is the controller of whether your connection stays open or starts to close.

Anxiety is a sign that you are either a) in danger and need to move away from the situation or get out of the situation that you are in or b) that you are thinking in a way that is cutting you off from your power and it is not the most skillful way to be thinking. 

Since anxiety is a useful signal in situation a, it’s a valuable response.  In situation b however, anxiety is destabilizing and can block you from having a skillful response.  We are going to hone in on what to do about situation b.

When you are in situation b, the only way to get yourself out of it is to first know that you are in situation b.  You must turn the light of awareness on to notice the content of your thoughts.  Anxious thoughts can sound like, “Am I going to get fired for that?”, “Am I being annoying?”, “Why haven’t they texted me back?”

Do these sound familiar? Hello, anxiety!  The key here is to recognize that these thoughts are your fears being projected into the unknown as a way to try to have a false sense of control.  And, they are not helpful.

What would be helpful is to consciously choose your response - rather than letting your ego spiral into a dark tunnel, seeing scary things that aren’t really there.  The number 1 way to zap these fears is to grab your flashlight (conscious awareness) and look around at what is actually there (the facts). 

One way to support your ability to become aware is to start a mindfulness meditation practice.  Even just sitting for 5 minutes a day while focusing on your breath, is powerfully transformative.  Noticing when your mind goes off into the past or the future and bringing it back to the present over and over is how you train your mind. You will begin to identify more with your conscious awareness and less with your thoughts. 

Creating this kind of space between who you really are (conscious awareness) and your thoughts, allows you to notice the content of your thoughts. This pause diffuses any automatic reactions, and allows the wiser part of you to choose your response.  Now that we understand the value of mindfulness, let's explore specific steps to help manage anxiety in real-time.

7 Steps to Master Anxiety:

1.     Recognize, this is anxiety. 

2.     Notice the content of your mind.

3.     Ask yourself, is this true?

4.     Ask yourself, what are the facts? Not the fears.

5.     Ask yourself, what do I think about how I showed up? This is you taking your power back.

6.     Notice that anxiety is just trying to protect you when you go unconscious, but that when you become conscious you no longer need anxiety, you need your SELF to be anchored to your own sense of the situation and rest in the present moment.

7.     Resist the temptation to project unhelpful thoughts into the future, let those thoughts go, and trust the present moment.

Notice that when you follow these steps, you feel a sense of coming back to a calm state. This means that your mind is no longer constricting your connection to your power and has relaxed into an open relaxed state. You did that.  Not a pill, not a substance, just you taking control over your mind.

You got this!

(If you need extra support on this or want to dive deeper into this process, feel free to book a 1-on-1 session with me in the contact section.)