By Elizabeth Herman | Posted: May 06, 2020
New things to worry about keep arising with every difficult situation in the outside world. Now that there’s a global coronavirus pandemic, people in the U.S. are grappling with public health measures that require social distancing and self-isolation, and many have lost jobs, become sick, or seen others get sick.
So, managing our worries and anxieties has taken on a whole new meaning recently, particularly considering the fact that 18.1 percent of adults in the U.S. already suffer from an anxiety disorder. The current situation seems to have increased that number, based on the stories from the daily news cycle. But even milder forms of anxiety can also get in the way of a happy, thriving life.
You could approach the need to stop worrying from a variety of angles. Working on the way you think, you’d be using a cognitive strategy to dispel anxiety. Changing your active habits would be a behavioral strategy, and engaging in exercise or body work would give you a physical method for attaining anxiety relief goals.
Here are a few highly effective strategies for minimizing anxiety in each of those 3 modes:
Physical strategies
Practice yoga asanas daily. All of the postures can benefit your state of mind, freeing you from anxieties and agitation. Holding a yoga posture, or asana, requires you to place your attention on specific muscles and other parts of your anatomy, taking your thoughts away from any anticipated misfortune or calamity. Not only during your asana practice, but throughout the day, the calming effects of physical yoga stay with you.
Get 30 minutes of vigorous exercise at least 5 times a week, or daily. Walking outside, doing some gardening, or following an aerobic dance video inside your home can take your mind off of your worries. Keeping yourself physically fit will definitely strengthen your body’s resistance to illnesses, and will remove many of the thoughts about your health vulnerability from your mind.
Behavioral strategies
Do some volunteer work to help others in your community. Helping others has great effects on anxiety because it gives you higher self-esteem and shows you that your situation may be less dire than that of your fellow human beings. Every weekend, I enjoy a five hour visit to a local public kitchen where I assist a chef in cooking healthy, vegetarian meals for neighborhood residents. It gives me a relaxing sense of centeredness when people come in and pick up boxes containing food that I prepared.
Count to 10 when you notice your anxiety rising. Take some time out with a few deep breaths, so that you can stop your minor worries from escalating into overwhelming anxiousness. Hand positions from yoga, known as mudras in Sanskrit, can accompany your deep breathing for even more effective relief. I always feel more relaxed when I sit down, do some ujjayi breaths (also known as ocean breaths), and place my hands in ancient, energizing mudras.
Cognitive strategies
Ask yourself the question, “What sets me off?” Learn about the things in your life that trigger your worrying habit, and avoid or neutralize them before you start to panic. Reflecting on your own reactivity can help you choose thoughts that calm you down, instead of choosing thoughts that increase your stress and tension.
Be positive about everything, even when everything may be less than perfect. For example, if you haven’t gotten some work on the house fully done, take a few minutes to think some celebratory thoughts and praise yourself for what you were able to do. Then, when you go back to work again, you can do so happily and with high self-esteem for the progress you have made and can continue to make.
Seek out some new ways of thinking about how to maintain your own feelings of hope and happiness. For example, Art of Living is offering a free Webinar and Master Class to start you on your path towards living contentedly. Increase your ability to manifest good in your life with these helpful sessions.
I hope these suggestions will make any current challenges in your life easier to face and less daunting. The habit of worrying itself won’t overcome any challenge, but will only put your mind into a painful and tortured state, with thoughts that don’t move you toward achieving your goals.
Learning to regularly practice some daily coping strategies will bring you self-confidence in different modes of your existence, so you can start to feel, act, and think in ways that will facilitate success and happiness.
Elizabeth Herman writes, offers writing support to clients, teaches, and volunteers for a better world. She has a PhD in Rhetoric, Composition and Literature. Find her on Facebook or Twitter.
