Is your mind filled with anxiety? Maybe you’re suffering from sleepless nights and feeling nervous and upset all day. Perhaps you worry all the time, imagining the worst-case scenarios.
Maybe having an anxiety-free mind sounds impossible. Maybe you think anxiety is helpful and necessary. That it helps you solve your problems. But if you’re honest, what you really want is to relax and calm down.
You want to be free of anxiety.
It is truly possible to become anxiety-free – no matter what your situation is.
A few years ago, I was an anxious mess. A family situation had me in knots. I hardly ate, couldn’t sleep, and was consumed with worry all day. In the midst of my misery, I decided to do something about my anxiety. The journey to become anxiety-free was worth it!
Here’s what I discovered…
Your Mind Can Fabricate Things That Aren’t Actually True
It’s true! You can’t believe everything your mind tells you. Thoughts are just thoughts! You don’t need to trust every one of them. Not all thoughts are equal.
What to do: Examine your thoughts carefully.
Awareness of Your Thoughts Is Key
It’s important to be aware of your thoughts. This means pausing long enough to become mindful of the thoughts rolling around in your mind. Take a break from your whirlwind of thoughts. Stop long enough to sort out your thoughts and feelings. Identify the ones causing your anxiety.
What to do: Pause and identify the thoughts that cause anxiety.
It’s Important to Analyze Where Your Thoughts Come From
This is a reflective process that takes a bit of time but helps you understand the root of your thoughts. Thoughts come from a lifetime of experiences that have formed impressions or unconscious ideas about how life works and your place in the world. For example, individuals with anxiety might have unconscious thoughts like:
- I will always be a worrier.
- Life is unsafe and scary.
- I’ll never be able to calm down.
- Something must be wrong with me.
What to do: Figure out where your thoughts originate.
Core Beliefs Affect All Areas of Your Life
Unconscious thoughts affect everything you do. They influence your thoughts, feelings, decisions and actions. Why? Because they form the foundational system of beliefs by which you live.
They are called CORE BELIEFS. For instance, someone living with the core belief that anxiety is the way to cope with problems, experiences a mind automatically filled with anxious thoughts and feelings when something happens.
An event could even be neutral but those of us with anxiety will interpret it as being negative and dangerous. While someone else operating from a different set of beliefs might interpret the event as a positive opportunity.
What to do: Consider how your core beliefs affect your current situation/mindset.
Limiting Beliefs Cripple Us, and We Must Change Them
Core beliefs become LIMITING BELIEFS when you trust and act on them. Hanging on to the core belief, for instance, that life is unsafe and scary, holds you back in life. Fear and anxiety control your thoughts, feelings, decisions and actions.
The key to reducing limiting beliefs that cause anxiety is to allow and accept them. Be aware of your limiting beliefs and decide to do something about the ones that cause anxious thoughts.
What to do: Identify your limiting beliefs and actively eliminate them.
Remember: You don’t have to believe everything your mind tells you!
Change Is in Your Hands
You always have a choice to change negative thoughts and limiting beliefs into positive thoughts and empowering beliefs. Here’s how.
Replace old beliefs with new beliefs. For instance, someone with the old belief, “I will never be able to calm down,” could change it to the new belief, “I can calm down. I can do what it takes to calm down.”
Repeat the new belief to yourself every day! Even several times a day. Make it a habit. This will start to reprogram your mind and create new neural pathways in your brain.
You can reprogram your mind and become anxiety-free!
I hope you follow these 5 steps to become aware of your limiting beliefs, change them to new empowering beliefs and repeat the new beliefs often.
If you need some help on your path to becoming anxiety-free, check out this video.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
What limiting beliefs cause you anxiety? Where do they originate? Have you taken a pause to analyze your thoughts?