Anxiety and its effect on Health7 min read

How to deal with Anxiety and Stress

Do you live in Fear and Anxiety?

Do you fear what will happen in the future?  Do you live in resentment about things of the past, and you had no control over it. This blog is about how to face the fear and anxiety of the uncertain future.  It is about how to move away from resentments of the past. And how to meet the Stress of today with confidence, so you feel empowered to create success and happiness at the same time.

Let’s Dive In:

Let us start from the beginning. What are your fears, and what are you afraid of?  Does it create anxiety in you?  Let us examine these things first. As we navigate through life, we build perceptions around us. They are based on our understanding of the experiences around us, and we add our meaning to them, coloring them through our eyes.  For example, ‘I am a mother because I have two kids’. This is a ‘fact.’ I am a bad mother’; on the other hand, it is my perception I have made myself to believe. And over time, it becomes my ‘fact,’ my background operating system, and puts my under stress. So that may lead me to react by spoiling my children to be a good mom.  Anyways we all make such assumptions and get bogged down by them.

We live in the past:

Now, look at the other scenario.  Since we live in the past a lot, we continually think about the past incidences in our lives.  Especially those that didn’t go well and left a mental scar. Based on this, we fear our future. We then think, what if things do not go well just like the last time, what if I will fail, or what if I can’t pay my bills, what if I fall sick, and the ‘what ifs’ never ends.  We live in fear and anxiety and Stress.

So What Can You Do About This:

 Let us start by assuming that you had this big fight with your close friend. You can’t believe that she said such mean things about you after being friends for so long.  So you just shut her out.  But this incidence plays again and again in your mind in loops.  And you can physically feel this burden on your shoulder.  Well, that’s how your mind and bodywork. It attracts past negative thoughts and replays them in loops, equally affecting your body and mind. And now you live in resentment as you cannot let go of that incident from your mind. Have you had a calm conversation with your friend, conveying that you were so angry and explaining why? Did you ask for her point of view? Did you give her a right ear even if you disagree with her beliefs? Sometimes it’s OK to let go and agree to disagree. Sometimes it’s OK to forgive. When you forgive, you bring a lot of peace to your mind, to your heart, and maybe your friendship will become better or perhaps it will not. If it does not, at least you tried, and it is time to place a full stop and move on. I call this acceptance. Once there is an acceptance, there is so much peace instead of Stress. The self-awareness is a good place to start, to make the positive change.

While it is easy to talk about forgiveness and to let-go, let me tell you it was not easy for me. There was a situation in the past, and initially I couldn’t forgive this person. I kept repeating the incidence again and again in my mind. Even during meditation the thoughts kept re-playing itself, making me more upset and stressed. One day when I was walking in the garden, in a relaxed mood, I recalled the troubled event.  I concluded that I tried, the other person cannot see my point, and being an moral issue, I could not agree and I decided I was ok this way. That moment of acceptance just hit me. It gave me immediate peace and I could feel it in my body. This feeling is well worth letting-go rather than holding-on to a negative thought. It makes you feel lighter and attributes to your good health.

Self-Talk of Confidence and Self-Esteem:

As I said, it is always the fear that holds us back from trying out new things, from experimenting.  It is mostly the fear of failure, and especially you will notice, ‘what others think if I fail ‘is somehow very important to us. We are looking for external validation again. If you change the language in your mind and tell yourself, what is the worst that can happen to you if you fail, and say that ‘you can handle it.’ Once you give that self-talk of confidence to your mind, you will be better prepared to take the risk. Now take a calculated risk and try out something new. Maybe you will succeed, then wonderful. Maybe you will fail. That still means you have an ‘opportunity’ here. An opportunity to learn from your failure. Look back and see what made you fail. Check on what your assumptions were and how you can now change things to make them succeed.  It could also happen that what you wanted to achieve needs to be tinkered within the first place. Maybe it was not realistic to start with, and you need to readjust it.  This whole process of being open to change, being flexible, being curious add a lot of excitement in achieving or reaching that goal. It is a good confidence building tool, which adds to your self-esteem as well. This state of positive mindset leads to good health and prevents ‘lifestyle diseases’ like obesity, diabetes and many more.  Since I like to focus on science based research and statistics, I will share this link to check it further of the relationship between confidence and good health.  https://www.successconsciousness.com/blog/inner-strength/increase-your-confidence-to-improve-your-health/

Focus on the Process:

You can easily change Stress and positively impact your health and wellness. Focusing on the process rather than the result is an excellent way of going forward and moving from a stressed way of living to a happier way of living where you are excited about doing things.  You are no more resentful. You don’t have that much fear or anxiety because you now know that no matter what happens, you can handle it. And that enthusiasm comes from within. It is an excellent confidence-building tool. And like Elon Musk says, ‘you fail when you do not take a risk.’  This process of being the positive change, in itself leads to a robust physical and mental health and wellbeing.

Wellness Brain Hacks:

 I want to leave you with some easy brain hacks which will help your mind be more comfortable trying new things, experiment with the change, and transcending your fear.  It will take you one step closer to your overall wellness.

1.        Brush your teeth with the non-dominant hand.

2.        Solve crossword puzzles.

3.        Try doing Sudoku.

4.        Learn a new language

5.        Take up a new skill like gardening, cooking, or any handicraft like crochet, knitting.

What these activities do is, fires different parts of your brain. Especially those areas which we rarely use, being busy making the same old, same old habits.

In Conclusion:

I hope you now have a better idea of handling your fears and anxiety to navigate your life more towards excitement. It builds up your confidence level,  empowers you to be successful in whatever you seek. This mindset change from Stress to enthusiasm positively impacts your work output and your professional life. In turn, your personal life, your health, and overall wellness are also positively impacted.

Practice, practice, and practice your new learning till it becomes a part of you.

This is Coachgeeta signing off.

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