Anxiety gets the best of us from time-to-time. In this blog post you will find five quick practical ways to manage anxiety, some takeaways to plan ahead, and other tips you can implement when you feel like the anxiety is building up.
Engage Your Senses
Often anxiety will build into sweeping thoughts and an intense emotional experience. Using the sense of touch, taste, sight, smell, and hearing allows you to escape your internal experience by using your external experience to get lost in the moment.
Breathe with Mantra
If we can remember back to the nightmare that was gym class, telling ourselves as we were running laps, “just one more. I can do this!” while controlling your asthmatic breathing, we can use the same concept with anxiety. When we focus on a concept, we can force it into existence. Calm words, breed calm thoughts. Calm thoughts, breed calm experiences.
Schedule and Follow
A lot of anxiety could be eliminated if we scheduled our day in a predictable way, to understand what emotions we can prepare for. Not just our work obligations and the exciting new restaurant we are going to on the weekend, but the boring things like laundry, and necessities like cooking, grocery shopping, seeing friends, and cleaning your home. This allows us to anticipate the future and be able to plan accordingly.
What You Eat Matters
The old saying is true, when you eat well, you feel well. When we eat healthier foods, we feel better and we can better control our anxiety, instead of our anxiety controlling us. Eating more fruits and vegetables, while lowering our sugar and carbohydrates will help you with anxiety.
Exercise
When we move during exercise serotonin is increased, which is a natural anti-anxiety neuro-chemical. Taking a morning walk and talking to a friend can help make exercise more enjoyable than a dreaded activity.
Further Resources:
Podcast – Huberman Lab: How Food and Nutrient Control Our Moods. Dr. Andrew Huberman is an associate professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, Department of Neurobiology.
Blog – Men’s Health: Eat These Food to Beat Anxiety
Drew Ramsey, MD gives several food that can help reduce anxiety.
Book – Chatter: The Voice in Our head, Why It Matters, and Hot to Harness It
National Bestseller and Conscious mind expert Dr. Ethan Kross’ book on helping calm the inner voice.