Want to Transform Anxiety?
It is totally possible. You can learn 6 key skills and you will see how they transform your anxiety!
I don’t think there is anybody that would say anxiety is a choice. If we could choose how we feel, we most certainly would not choose anxiety.
And this is true. We cannot choose how we feel, but we can shape our minds and brain in a way that makes it easier for us to feel good, and less likely for us to feel anxious.
Some of the most common mistake I see people living with anxiety make is trying all kinds of things, like yoga, breath-work, meditation, self-care etc. etc. to get rid of anxiety. The mistake does not lie in the activities, it lies in the intention as to why we do these activities. As long as we want to get rid of how we feel, we are not going to succeed in transforming anxiety.
So what does help with transforming anxiety?
It helps to know about and practice 6 skills. These skills are already inside of you, you just might need to strengthen them a bit. When you learn these skills you will learn about the mind and how it can feed or weaken anxiety. You will learn that it has nothing to do with ‘getting rid’ of anything, but about allowing and not getting caught up.
What do I need to learn to transform anxiety?
Here are the 6 skills:
- Focus – Learning to calm your mind and body by focussing your attention and using your breath
- Awareness – Becoming aware of your own mind-mechanisms and how they are (unwittingly) feeding anxiety; and how you can step out of these mechanisms
- Appreciation – Dealing with challenging situations differently by opening up to them (in stead of running away) and steering your mind towards all that is good
- Kindness – Possibly one of the most important of the skills, learning to be kind to ourselves and our experience + nourishing yourself with bringing kindness to others.
- Values – the skill of knowing and living your values.
- Action – become aware of what actions support you in feeling less anxious and which actions do not. Learning to make day-to-day choices that are good for you.
So how do you train these skills?
There are a couple of things you can do:
- Meditation – by far the most effective technique I know to train your mind. Not just to find calm, but also to start to see what is happening in your mind and body + using meditation to navigate the mind towards appreciation and kindness
- Exercises – doing daily cognitive exercises like identifying your thought habits, writing down your good experiences at the end of each day, doing acts of kindness are all super powerful when it comes to transforming anxiety
- Learn – increase your knowledge about the workings of the human mind and start to understand that anxiety is normal but can easily get the better of us if we allow our mind to fall into certain habits. Knowledge is power.
Want some support to transform anxiety? Check out how!
