Believe it or not anxious feelings and anxiety are not something that is rare… In fact many people battle with anxiety every day. Anxiety can come at different levels and can cause a ray of emotions and physical effectives, it is very different for each person and each situation. Just because you don’t experience anxiety like someone else, does not mean that you are better or worse off. It just means that you process these emotions differently.
Regardless of how you experience anxiety, there are some ways to help reduce anxiety. Again, it is different for every person and this list serves as suggestions to try to help reduce anxiety and anxious feelings. These all may work for you, or none of the work – but navigating anxiety is a learning experience at its finest. Learning what works, what doesn’t, what helps, what doesn’t, what increases feelings, what decreases feelings, is all part of each individual’s journey and for everyone’s own discovery. So wherever you are, I hope this list can help provide some value and some help in reducing anxiety.
8 Ways to Reduce Anxiety
Begin a Meditation Practice
Meditation is a way to disconnect from what surrounds us and reconnect with our physical being. Removing distracts and disconnecting with what doesn’t serve you works wonders on an anxious mind. Practicing this disconnection can help aid in reducing anxiety because you become more aware our your physical being and in touch with why certain emotions are present. Your body reacting in certain ways, anxiety included, is your body’s way of communicating with you. When you disconnect to understand the underlying reasoning you can being to release some of the anxious tendencies.
Release Emotions Instead of Holding onto Them
Holding in past emotions, from all experiences, aid in anxious feelings. Whether we are aware of it or not of past experience shape us and until we acknowledge all emotions and the feelings/behaviors that are tied to them, we won’t be able to fully embrace life in the now. Anxiety plays a role as we are constantly nervous or scared to walk down roads or experience pain that we have felt before. Releasing these negative emotions to make room for positivity can help reduce anxiety and also makes rooms for more positive energy and experiences to fill the void that these negative emotions once filled.
Add a Morning Routine to Your Day
Starting your day with a plan, a routine, creates structure. For me personally, the unknown is a major driver of anxiety. Not know what is next or what to do is a trigger, especially when I have a lot of things on my plate. I worry that I can’t balance them all, and cue all the anxious feelings. Adding a morning routine provides a pattern of structure to follow, every morning the routine is the same and sets your day up on the right foot. This routine can incorporate daily tasks, self-love practice, hydration, physical activity, really anything that helps you focus on yourself and put yourself in the best headspace to start the day. Morning Routines do not prevent bad days, but they sure help create more good days!
Get Active
Physical Activity is known for producing serotonin. Positive energy and physical activity are was to reduce anxiety. Physical activity can be anything from a brisk walk to running a marathon. For some people it’s an hour long gym session and for other’s it’s a five minute walk during their lunch break at work. The point here is you do not need to compare your physical activity level to anyone else’s and any level physical activity and getting active can help reduce anxiety.
Daily Entries in Your Bullet Journal
Journalling is a practice that has helped more than just my anxiety, but has been vital in my own self-love & spiritual journey. Bullet Journalling is even more valuable because of the minimal time investment and lack of intense short. It’s brief, concise, and to the point. A three line entry will do the trick. Journalling is a great way to acknowledge and get in touch with your emotions, including anxiety. Acknowledging what causes your anxious emotions is the first step to addressing them. Once you are aware of your triggers, you can work to identify what has worked in reducing them and even what increases them – A bullet journal is a great place to document this information!
Make To-Do Lists for the Next Day
Those hard to fall asleep nights are usually cause by anxious feelings and can be tackled by simply getting thoughts to paper on the next day. Similar to a morning routine, writing out a to-do list for the next day before you go to bed is a great way to build structure. It can help reduce those anxious thoughts a fear of forgetting items or tasks that need to be done. I always feel that a written to-do list is more effective than writing one on your phone, but both are great options to help ease and calm your mind before sleep.
Use Affirmations
A great body builder, Kai Greene, once said “thoughts become things” and I couldn’t believe in this more. When dealing with anxious thoughts and anxiety, it’s important to remember that you are in control of your own thoughts, which in turn means you are in control of what becomes from your thoughts. That can be positive energy that is needed in all facets of live, motivation that’s needed to accomplish your goals, or even working on your physical appearance. Using positive affirmations that support abundance, success, self-love, and positivity, can help shape your thoughts and reduce anxious feelings.
Talk to Your Friends & Family
This ties to one that was mentioned before, but it is worth mentioning twice. Your friends and family all love you and support you, they are you pillars that are there to help. If you are experiencing negative emotions and anxiety, talk to them about it. Opening up about how you feel to a trusted source is therapeutic in its own right, and helps you put words to the emotions that you are feeling, which helps you address what they are, how they got there, and what you can do to help minimize their presence. It can also be a relatable conversation – People tend to hold in anxious thoughts because they feel alone, but at the end of the day every person often experiences some degree on anxious emotions. Talking to friends and family can make you feel that you are not in this fight alone, they can offer some great pieces of advice also!
Teena Fey 