18 Vital Reminders For Anyone Who Refuses To Let Anxiety Eclipse Their Dreams
Everyone has anxiety. You are not a unicorn. You are just someone who is more self-aware of what you do and do not want to feel.
1. Anxiety affects how you feel, it does not negate your ability or your potential. You are not less capable of doing what you want to do because you have anxiety, you might just feel less willing at times.
2. Many incredibly successful people struggle with anxiety. This is because the part of the brain that’s linked with creativity also controls rumination, or in other words, worry.
3. People who are more sensitive and impressionable are, over time, also more changeable. This means that your ability to feel things deeply will translate into more profound growth over the course of your lifetime.
4. The correlation between sensitivity and success is why so many masters and thought leaders began their lives with such intense emotional turmoil.
5. Everyone has anxiety. Everyone has anxiety. You are not a unicorn. You are just someone who is more self-aware of what you do and do not want to feel.
6. Anxiety does not always mean that there is something wrong with your life. More often than not, means that there is something wrong with your neurochemistry, or the way that you think.
7. Feeling anxiety intensely makes you more capable of identifying its source and responding to it accordingly. Most people feel anxiety lightly, and then do what they can to suffocate that feeling, leaning on coping mechanisms to make sure they don’t have to change who they are or how they behave.
8. Anxiety is not a joke, but it is manageable. Ask anyone who has struggled with it at some point and still been able to thrive.
9. Trying to figure out how to never feel anxious again is setting yourself up to fail. Instead, work on being willing to feel anxiety, but keep showing up regardless.
10. You don’t need to feel great all of the time to create the life you want and need to be living. You aren’t supposed to be happy all of the time. What’s most important that you keep doing what you need to do, even if it’s uncomfortable.
11. During any significant period of change in your life, you should feel anxiety. This means that you’re stepping into the unknown. This is a sign of real progress.
12. You need to employ a whole toolbox of strategies to respond to feeling tense or worried. This, ideally, should be a combination of CBT, physical activity, a healthy diet, meditation, and working consciously to rewire your thoughts and not be reactive to scary ideas or feelings.
13. You can use your anxiety to your advantage. That surplus of energy can be used to fuel creativity or motivation to make positive change.
14. Feeling anxiety does not mean there is anything wrong with your life, or that there will be something wrong with your life. Anxiety is not a crystal ball. It is not always reflective of reality. This is absolutely essential to remember.
15. Your feelings are valid, but they are not always real.
16. Your brain is wired to seek out that which seems scariest, and to do something in order to protect yourself. This is not a fundamental flaw, this is how human beings were designed for survival. Remember this, and cut yourself some slack.
17. When you have a lot of anxiety, it’s easy to actually create the circumstances you most fear, only because you are so focused on them all of the time. This is called confirmation bias, and it’s the way your brain seeks and filters out that which it already believes.
18. You need to connect with the space within you that most people refer to as “deep down.” They say: “I feel worried, but I know that deep down, it’s all going to be okay.” That deep down place is your center, and it is the truth. It is the place with which you must reconnect to remind you that no matter how you feel, you are okay, you will always be okay, and you already know that to be true. 