12 Tools To Calm The Anxious Mind (#8 Works Every Time)

The word Everything on a To-Do list on a dry erase board

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4.  Affirmations

These don’t work for everyone, but for those who do use them, affirmations can really help. An affirmation is a simply short sentence that you say to yourself to calm your mind and make yourself feel better. Anything that works for you is fine. For example, you could try “No one has died so it’s really not so bad.” Or “I have a great life and I will move forward.” Or even “This is just anxiety, nothing I can’t work out.” These are only examples. Choose words and phrases that work for you.

 

5. Defuse the Situation

Try to think of your anxious thoughts as just data passing through your mind and not as objective facts. Like music that passes through your ears, you decide if you like a song or if you don’t. You can look at each thought and decide whether it is worth bothering with or not. Some of our thoughts are nothing more than reactions that are fed to us automatically because our brains have either been conditioned since childhood to think this way, or, it is your brain being overly sensitive to threats and danger as a means of survival. Whichever is true for you, you can choose to see thoughts as things passing through and not absolute truths.

 

6. Get Up and Get Moving

Sitting there worrying about something and going over and over it in your mind when you cannot reach a conclusion or solution only makes the problem bigger and more difficult to solve. In fact, dwelling on a problem for long periods of time tends to get you stuck in one place, unable to decide anything for fear of “what if.” You know: What if I choose A and it all goes to hell? But what if I choose B, and that would be even worse … What if I make the wrong choice? What if everyone blames me because of this? Blah blah blah. When your mind gets stuck in this kind of loop, you can cut it short by getting up and doing something. Anything! Do something that forces your brain to think of something else. When you come back to the problem, you should have a new take on things.

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