Ever sit on the edge of your bed or lie awake at night thinking about your life? Have you done enough? Have you reached your full potential? Are you fulfilling your life’s purpose? Why don’t you have life figured out by now?
If so – you are most definitely not alone.
“An effective way to prevent anxious thoughts from arising is to give ourselves more credit. We are exactly where we need to be, and everything is perfect the way it is right now.” ~Kelsey Olin
Before we begin, I do not refer to anyone experiencing anxious thoughts as an anxious person. We are not our thoughts, we experience them. This idea was introduced to me by Michael A. Singer in his book: “The Untethered Soul”. Singer explains that the constant chatter in our minds are thoughts that we experience. Our thoughts are just like floating clouds while our mind is the clear blue sky.
This distinction is made because we constantly have our mind, however, when we think of a thought, it stays for a moment just like a cloud passing by. Therefore, it would be inappropriate to label ourselves as the thoughts we experience because we are so much more than that.
With that in mind, I came to understand that I was turning promising opportunities into unlikely scenarios by overthinking. When I realized my thinking was the issue, I wanted to find a healthy way to deal with my problem. Dealing with my anxious thoughts led me on a lengthy, tedious, but ultimately rewarding journey. Here is one of the things I discovered along my journey: an anxious mind can be interrupted, challenged, or prevented.
Here is Part One of Three ways to help calm your anxious thoughts.
Interrupt the habit by being mindful
There are multiple definitions for what anxious thoughts are. One of my favorite and probably the simplest to process is by Mel Robbins. In an interview, she explained how anxiety is the habit of excessive worrying.
To get out of this habit, she used her “5 seconds rule”, which is to count backward from 5 to 1 and when that countdown was done, she would immediately refocus her attention on what she is currently doing. Her explanation about anxious thoughts made sense with what I was learning about the two different sections of the mind: the conscious and subconscious mind.
The former s about what you are doing right now. The latter seeks patterns, especially when it comes to our thoughts and emotions. When you experience a worrying thought with a strong emotional reaction, your subconscious mind is more likely to store that event in your long-term memory. The subconscious mind replays that anxious thought over and over to keep you protected and in your comfort zone. In general, this part of the mind is in control of our body 90 to 95% of the time.
Therefore, to break a habit, you would need to transfer from thinking within the subconscious to the conscious mind. Hence, another way to calm your anxious thoughts would be to work within the conscious mind – focusing on what you are doing right now!
This can be accomplished by focusing your breathing and your five senses (sight, touch, hearing, taste, and smell). Being present in the moment also helped me observe and recognize the thoughts that triggered the excessive worrying. Every time you catch yourself in the habit loop of worrying, think of the anxious thoughts as a cloud passing by and refocus your attention on either your breath or one of your five senses.
Try this technique as much as possible daily and you will notice other benefits such as a reduction of your stress level!!
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