So, can mindfulness help with anxiety? Well, in my experience and thousands of others, yes. I’ve practiced mindfulness for years now. Mindfulness has helped me to reconnect with myself when I was in a serious state of anxiety and confusion.
It’s a non-invasive way to refocus on the present moment which is something that those who suffer with anxiety struggle with everyday. I know that was the case for me for many years.
The reason I like mindfulness for anxiety is because I’m passionate about finding natural ways to reduce anxiety and brain fog that you can do on your own and on your own terms. It’s also something that many people with anxiety still do now know about.
Some people are still not sure if mindfulness is just a new fancy word for meditation. Well, mindfulness has it’s own powerful ways to reduce anxiety.
Scroll to the end of the article to see the mindful audiobook I recommend
How Has Mindfulness Helped With My Anxiety?
Here’s a breakdown of how practising mindfulness has helped to reduce my anxiety levels overall.
- Allows me to live in the present moment
- Understand when I become anxious before it stikes
- Allows me connect with the current moment
- Realigns your mind
- Keeps your mind level
- Let’s me turn off my autopilot
If you’re suffering with generalised anxiety, brain fog or anything of the like, I’d like you to bare with me if you’re new to the idea of mindfulness and listen in! It could seriously change your day to day life…
What Is Mindfulness?
I’m no hippie or new age trend guy that jumps on the latest trend of staying healthy. I’m far from it. You can read my story here if you’re not aware of my anxiety background. What I am is a recovered anxiety sufferer and I owe a lot of how I feel today to the practise of mindfulness.
Why do I love mindfulness? It’s aligned with what Projectenergise.com is all about, ‘re-energising’ your mind back to an aware state and living in the moment.
Mindfulness is a simple practise. Allow me to give you a simple breakdown of mindfulness;
- Focus your mind on what YOU want without letting it wander.
- Become aware of your actions and how you do them
- Give your actions purpose
- Stop re-living the past
- Ignore thoughts of the future
- Become aware of smells, tastes and actions around you
- Understand the motivations of actions around you
- Stop passing judgment
For someone like me who suffered most of my life with daily anxiety, mindfulness allows me to reign in my thoughts when they forward onto the next worry and pull them forward when they’re lurking into past experiences.
For me, mindfulness also allows me to live in the moment and just feel current feelings with judging whether they’re good or bad, they just come to me and then they leave me. I feel at ease when I give my thoughts no weight.
Can Mindfulness Help With Anxiety?
So this is why you’re here right? I want to tell you that with practise, mindfulness can help with your anxiety big time. The reason I say practise is because it’s something that you should try and consciously do each day. Hey, this will require some will power at first, but not a lot.
Once you get used to the idea of mindfulness, it all comes very naturally after a few weeks. You might even end up doing it unconsciously! I guess if you practise anything long enough it becomes part of your natural daily habits.
The main reason it helps with your anxiety is because it not only slows down your thoughts, but it allows the many rowdy thoughts that bombard your mind to flow through you without getting stuck.
When you’re able to neutrally observe your surroundings, you can come out of your own head and realise that not everything is about you and not everything that happens is important. Things just are what they are.
Not Every Anxious Thought Holds Weight
Because of my own experience, I know first hand that anxiety can make you feel like every thought you have has some weight to it. Mindfulness is great for dissolving the ‘weight’ you give to these negative thoughts.
When you can detach yourself from the emotion that goes with these thoughts, you can see them for what they are – irrational.
Because you can remove your emotion from many of the irrelevant worries you carry, you can start to really focus on the things that you actually DO care about and thus worry less. Mindfulness is something that you need to do everyday until it becomes habit.
I’ll never tell you that you can do something once and ‘cure’ your anxiety. You have to have the motivation to take matters into your own hands. That’s exactly what I did. The great things about mindfulness is it allows you to see the world in a different light. When you ‘wake up’ from a foggy view of the world, you can start to double down on the things you enjoy and want to focus on
Switch off the autopilot.
Switch Off Your Autopilot Button
Okay – time for some heavy stuff…
Mindfulness let’s you live your life on your own terms. It allows you to turn off your ‘autopilot button’.
We’re on autopilot every second of the day. We have been since we were packed off to school. We were told to go to school, get good grades, go to college, get more good grades so we can get a good job. Get that good job like everyone else, live 9-5, retire and drink tea all day until we finally kick the bucket.
Hey there’s nothing wrong with this. 95% of the world are living this way. The problem is, we’re on autopilot the whole time. We’re just doing this because we’re told to. Between these life steps, we’re on our phones, flicking through our news feeds, reading the news, watching other people do things on the TV and the list gos on…
When do we ever stop and think about why we’re doing these things? Are we self aware of what we’re even doing half the time?
There could be many reasons for different people but normally the answer is, ‘because everyone does.’
These things are just normal, right?
What if you stopped for a moment in your busy day and came out of your head? Most people’s heads just chug along. The clogs are always turning and do so into the late hours of the night.
If you sat down for even 5 minutes and practised mindfulness, stood next to yourself and asked yourself, ‘what are you doing right now? why are you doing it?’ without passing any judgement.
What if you consciously asked yourself why you were there in that moment doing what you’re doing? You probably wouldn’t know. Try and stop and take in that current moment and allow yourself to connect with your surroundings.
What does the air smell like? What actions are taking place?
Let your thoughts pass through you without sticking emotion to them. I’d bet you’d feel 100% more free. The problem is, most people that have anxiety feel bad if they don’t capture each thought and give them emotion and a reason to be a worry.
Practise makes perfect, that’s why I want to recommend the below audio book which you can download for free right now that will help towards changing the way you think about your worries.
It’s called 10 minute mindfulness and it’s great if you’re new to mindfulness. It’s clearly presented and does a great job of explaining how to practise this technique.
With Audibles free trial you can get two free audio books with no obligation so you can always pick another audiobook of your own choice.
Check it out, let me know what you think. It helped me and I know that it can help you too. Sign up with audible and get it for free.
>>Try Audible and Get Two Free Audiobooks<<
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This post was previously published on ProjectEnergise.com and is republished here with permission from the author.
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