5 Proven (by me) and Unconventional Ways to Use Meditation

enefits and Unconventional Ways to Use Meditation.

1. To pass time in a boring meeting. Let's face it, not all meetings are created equal so when you find yourself in one that’s wasting your time, use it to get your daily meditation in. The beauty of meditation is that it is available whenever you want. If you get in the routine of focusing on your breath while keeping your eyes open, you can be looking at the person who’s speaking, be meditating, and impressing your boss for paying attention at the same time!

2. To ease into the day when I'm tired. My routine for a while now has been to get up at 5am, feed my dog, and do my meditation (with my morning coffee. You can read about that here). On most days I am okay with that routine. Actually, it’s pretty darn good. But there are definitely days when I'm sorry I allowed my dog’s breakfast expectation to be so early! On those days, when I'm a bit sleepy and resistant to embracing the morning, my meditation time eases me into it. If I happen to lose focus on my breath and doze off, well, I get a few bonus zzzz’s and call it good.

3. To get out of running when I don’t feel like running. Meditation has such strong scientific backing regarding its benefits that I am totally okay with substituting a long meditation for a long run. I must admit that I miss the runner’s high and the nice feeling of a physically worked out body, but other than that sometimes it is just the ticket I’m looking for!

4. To feel like I’m kin to all the great meditating ones that came before me and all the great meditating ones that are practicing here today. I know, that is so ego-filled that it almost hurts to write...but it’s true. Sometimes the extrinsic motivation I get via comparison works for me. So I go with it. The people I most admire and aspire to be like have regular contemplative practices and, well thanks to my healthy ego, so do I.

5. To know what I’m talking about and be better at my job. I help people overcome their anxiety. It’s my passion and my job. Awareness of our inner dialogue is key to making massive changes in this area. So, I encourage people to do this by starting a meditation practice. And because sooo many people have no desire to have a meditation practice, I need to know what I’m talking about so I can really sell it!

There you have ‘em. 5 unconventional ways to use meditation. I share them because the more creative we are in cultivating a meditation practice, the more likely we are to continue it over the long run. And over the long run is where it’s at!

Overcoming Anxiety Isn’t an Intuitive or Creative Process. So What Do I Do?

A Plan

Overcoming anxiety isn’t an intuitive or creative process. And it doesn’t come from digging deep or having an “aha!” moment that explains everything.

Overcoming anxiety like most things in life we want to change, takes deliberate, consistent practice of targeted strategies, repeated over time.

Not so glamorous I know. It would be so much more exciting if you, after spending months visiting a comfy overstuffed chair in my office working to uncover various childhood ups and downs, remembered that one incident that totally explained everything about your anxiety. And then, knowing that, your anxiety would plead, “Uncle!” and then disappear. It wold be like winning the recall lottery! The promise of that alone would be a compelling endeavor.

Unfortunately, that isn’t how things work. I wish I could spice up what is actually needed to help you overcome your anxiety, and I’ll try. But before we get to the targeted strategies and consistent practices we really need to check two things.

First, let’s check in with your thinking around having anxiety in general. Pause and try to identify what your thoughts are about having anxiety. What does having anxiety mean about you?

The second part is to take a moment and really become aware of your thoughts about how you get rid of anxiety. What do you think needs to happen in order for you not to have your anxiety any more? Is it even possible?

Your answers to these two questions will literally make or break your anxiety.

Your Belief System

Are they positive or negative? Set in stone or changing? Permanent or temporary? For example, do you think you are a flawed, weak human being because you have anxiety? Do you think anxiety is impossible to get rid of without some really good medication?

Here’s an example using a different struggle. Say I’m fat and think it is because I am weak, ugly and lack willpower. Let’s say I also think I’m always going to be fat because it runs in my family and on top of that, I’m big boned and have a stressful job. Can you see how I am going to have an uphill battle with losing weight with those two belief systems in place? I can tell you for sure that losing weight (with these beliefs) isn’t going to happen.

Anxiety is the same way. Your belief systems are critical in overcoming your anxiety. You’ll need to establish accurate and growth-focused foundational thoughts and beliefs about the fact that you have anxiety and that it is possible to overcome it before you will be able to make any headway in stopping your anxiety.

Tomorrow we’ll break down how to establish accurate and growth-focused foundational thoughts and beliefs. For today, just keep noticing your thoughts and beliefs about why you have anxiety and if you think it is possible to make go away.

3 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Meditating

Calm will come. Seriously. You wouldn’t expect to lose weight after one day of trying, would you? Likewise, you wouldn’t expect to get that promotion after one day of hard work. Same with meditation. Keep trying. Anyone who leads you to believe otherwise isn’t a meditator.

Baby steps. Start with a short period of time in a comfortable position. Your couch? In bed? At your kitchen table? 1 minute? 4? Nothing is off limits. If you make it too unappealing or don’t have the time, you aren’t going to do it. Period. Set yourself up to succeed. This isn’t the place to explore your purist roots.

Lower your expectations. Don’t even let the word bliss enter your thinking. Blank slate? Forget about it! You will have a constant stream of thoughts, I guarantee it. Don’t expect anything but what you get. Sorta like telling a tantruming child, “You’ll get what you get and don’t throw a fit!” I’ve always been sorta bothered by the fact that those words don’t really rhyme…but tough love to the rescue!

3 Habits to Help You Find Confidence Out Of Nowhere

Confidence

Becoming more confident isn’t a creative, intuitive or mysterious process. And it’s not something that is only available to certain people and not to others. Confidence, if you want it, is a skill that is yours for the taking. You provide the curiosity and determination and these 3 habits will provide the blueprint.

Scientists are still trying to determine if there are specific biological markers for confidence. As of now, although there is some evidence that confidence may come easier to some than others, the overriding evidence appears that it is available to everyone for the taking.

The reason? The development of confidence is largely a learned quality reinforced and perpetuated by habits. And we can all practice good habits.

Confidence, like many other qualities we admire in people, is the result of thousands of small subconscious thoughts, beliefs, decisions and behaviors made over the course of years. They become such a habit most confident people don’t even realize they are doing them.

If you lack confidence, then, it isn’t because you didn’t get the “confidence gene” or are broken in some way. Although sometimes it can feel that way. It’s that you haven’t been practicing the right habits.

Take note that confidence, real confidence that spans your lifetime, isn’t built on how you look, how smart you are, or what type of job you have. Those things fluctuate too much to tie your confidence to. If you get into the practice of the 3 habits below, you’ll create a stable anchor that you can hitch your confidence to.

But first, a little warning. The most common mistake that people make when pursuing change is setting their sights on a particular event, a massive transformation, or an overnight success they want to achieve, rather than focusing on what it takes to make it happen. It’s okay to be excited about the new skills you’ll be developing but it is also important to treat any type of change as a journey. Or in another way, see it like a marathon and not a sprint. Forming habits and routines takes practice and repetition. So plan on confidence taking a little time to cultivate and you’ll set yourself up for long-term success!

3 Habits of Confidence

Habit #1: Don’t Wait, Do

We can’t just think ourselves into being confident, we must take action. All-too-often, however, people are stuck with the thought that action follows confidence. As in: I’ll take action when I’m confident. When I’m definitely ready. 100% ready. And not a moment before.

We convince ourselves that if we watch one more webinar on a topic or listen to one more podcast THEN we’ll be ready and have the confidence needed to achieve our goals.

Do any of these sound familiar? It is easy to fall into that way of thinking. After all, no one likes to not be good at something. But in the world of building confidence, this type of thinking is counter productive.

So how do you change this way of thinking? One action step at a time. Or as Aristotle once said, “Do good, be good.” It actually isn’t about how you’re feeling about something or how much you know about something that determines your confidence, it is your ability to act.

You can think of it like playing tennis. In order to gain confidence in your ability to play tennis you can read all the books you want but if you want to improve your tennis confidence, you’ll need to actually get on the court and play!

In order to “get on the court” so to speak, you’ll need to regularly make choices that put you outside your comfort zone. So don’t wait, go out there and do something, anything today.

Habit #2: Fake it Until you Learn it

Let’s face it, change isn’t always comfortable. Even good change.

But it’s not you. Humans have a tendency to take the easier option in any situation more times than not. Researchers now say this may actually be ‘hardwired’ in our brains. A recent study has found that the more mental effort something requires, the less likely people are to do it. They say it is so powerful, it can even change what we think we see in order to make the easier option more attractive!

Improving one’s confidence definitely isn’t the easier option for most people. Talk about having our deck stacked against us! But just because we may have an obstacle in our path doesn’t mean there aren’t ways around it. For ways around it, we look no further than the cause of our obstacle itself, our brain.

Introducing, “Fake it until you learn it.” Researchers have found that “acting” a certain way allows your brain to “rehearse” a new way of thinking and can set off a desired chain of events in the future.

Professor of organizational behavior Herminia Ibarra writes in the Harvard Business Review that one highly effective strategy you can use to improve your confidence as you “fake it until you learn it” is to mimic someone else around you who displays the skill sets you are desiring, even if your first inclination is to worry about appearing like an imposter. 

So, figure out someone who has what you want. Then mimic away. Seriously, this is how we learned as children, you definitely have it in you!

Habit #3: Fall down 5 times, Get up 6

Overanalyzing everything you do is a terrible habit to fall into. We all are guilty of it at times. Our feelings of uncertainty drive us to overthink and doubt ourselves, especially when we make mistakes or don’t succeed. Many times our overthinking makes us not want to try again when we fail.

When you have a setback or failure, all of your past difficult life experiences, pains, and stressful circumstances want their ‘voices’ to be heard. They want to remind you that you’re not good enough. In a counterintuitive way, they are doing this to protect you. They don’t want you to get your hopes up because you might get knocked down again. 

Interestingly enough, successful people have that voice too. It’s normal. But, the difference is successful people know how to turn that voice off early and often. Or they just power through.

How you deal with those voices is based on your mindset and sheer repetition. Fortunately, those are two qualities are available to everyone. Mindsets can be changed, cultivated and created any way you choose. Successful people know this, and have worked hard to make sure setbacks don’t become their Achilles heel. You can too.

If you choose to have a ‘growth’ mindset, meaning you start to view your ability to grow and learn from mistakes, you will be able to see setbacks as just part of your journey. You’ll quiet those over analyzing, self-critical voices because they won’t have fuel anymore. 

It is as easy as choosing this new “growth mindset” way to tackle setbacks and reminding yourself that that is what the pros do. They’ve fallen down 5 times and gotten back up 6!

Mindfulness When Your Life Stinks Part 3: Maybe You're Doing It Wrong

Mindfulness and Feelings

When you think of mindfulness what do you think of? It’s a trendy word these days and I find there are a lot of misconceptions regarding how it actually looks in real life. Most people misunderstand the concept of mindfulness and how to do it. Most think to be mindful is to dwell on, wallow in, and be absorbed by how you feel in a particular moment.

But it doesn’t and that’s where you may be going wrong.

The purpose of being mindful is to touch on the moment you’re experiencing, in the here and now, and do so as a neutral observer, without wallowing in feelings of good or bad.

This means you recognize what’s going on, you acknowledge what you’re feeling about it and then you disengage from judging it good or bad.

Easier said than done? Definitely. But mindful people do it all the time! And you can too.

Would some examples on what it does and doesn’t look like help? Let me elaborate with some situations you may (or may not) think make your life stink. If they don’t particularly fit, and I’m not saying the examples I’ve chosen automatically equate to a stinky life btw, then just insert your own example.

Awareness vs Dwelling

-If you’re overweight, mindfulness isn’t using every reflection you walk by to remind you that you’re fat in order for you to feel gross, ashamed and bad. But it is being aware that you are doing that and feeling that way when you do that.

-If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, mindfulness isn’t holding your dwindling bank statement in your hands as you allow the defining words, “You suck!” to circulate over and over again in your head. But it is recognizing when you are doing this and saying this to yourself.

-If you’re single, mindfulness isn’t slouching on your couch allowing the fact that you are still single to wrap you up in feelings of being unlovable. But it is knowing you are slouching and feeling unlovable in this moment.

-If you’re swamped at work, mindfulness isn’t focusing on the enormous amount of work you need to do in an unreasonably short period of time, all the while feeling overwhelmed and inadequate. But it is realizing that you’re swamped at work and feeling overwhelmed.

Dwelling on or being totally absorbed by how you feel in these moments, in addition to NOT being mindful, is a total set up and based on shaky ground.

Let me explain the two major reasons for this because maybe our feelings can’t even be trusted.

Reason #1 is, hmmm how do I say this? I’ll just go for it. There is a good chance that your feelings aren’t even real. Okay, that wasn’t so bad was it? What I mean by your feelings aren’t even real is that, like everything else about us, we are more creatures of habit than we give credit to, feelings included.

Our feelings are actually deeply constructed habits of association that get programmed into us from an early age. The programming comes from those people closest to us but we also pick up and take on social and cultural emotion norms too.

I know, this is a totally radical notion. We grow up, at least in the U.S., assigning sooooo much importance and validity to our feelings, as something to be counted on. We are encouraged to identify and “feel” our feelings. Which don’t get me wrong, all of this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

But we also need to learn that it is okay to question our feelings. That our feelings are subject to error too and not beyond reproach.

All of this gives us good reason for pause when reflecting on our feelings when we are being mindful.

We need to remind ourselves that we are actually being aware of how we have habitually interpreted and felt about this certain collection of data points in the past. We then remind ourselves that it may not still be the same with our current experience.

So for example, if you’re being mindful and recognize that you are feeling lonely, it’s important to realize that you’ve been socially and culturally trained to associate your current state with a non-pleasant feeling of lack or loneliness. This most likely has it’s roots in the past whenever a similar state was present, you associated it with this particular feeling. Now you still call it loneliness. And it still sucks.

But the mindful point is, you need to check in and see if it’s accurate. There’s a chance that you feel differently or could feel differently if you allow yourself to question your feelings as old habits.

Reason #2. We lack specificity so we often don’t even know what we’re feeling. We tend to cluster things so broadly, like either I feel good or I feel bad. It’s as if as children we stopped seeing the value in emotional details, so we kept it simple.

There are hundreds of words differentiating and fine-tuning an enormous range of feelings, yet most of us stick to just a few. And this isn’t just a Scrabble underdog issue here, this affects how we view our day to day experiences and even how we actually feel!

For example if we don’t get a job we want and feel bad, it would be easy to fall into a lengthy “woe is me” mode because our feeling “bad” is so broad. However, if we have more discerning feelings at our emotional disposal and recognize that what we feel is frustrated because we haven’t cracked the code of getting that job, we will fare differently. And better I’d argue. When we’re specific we can target a better plan than trying to target this broad, vague “bad”.

Here’s another example. Let’s take when we’re feeling sad. That’s actually quite a broad brush stroke of a feeling. We can get more specific by narrowing it down with any of these more particular words: depressed, dejected, despair, despondent, disappointed. discouraged, disheartened, forlorn, gloomy, heavy hearted, hopeless, melancholy, unhappy, or wretched.

Each of these words helps us identify more accurately what we are feeling. Labeling our feelings with broad adjectives is not helpful as it could be. Additionally, it keeps us stuck because it robs us from being able to attend to a specific feeling that we could actually do something about.

So if you think your life stinks and you are trying to cultivate mindfulness, this should really come to your rescue! You might be going at the whole mindfulness thing based on bad intel. Try questioning those feelings of yours the next time the bad ones come up. For now, I’d leave the good ones alone…we need all help we can get sometimes :-)

Mindfulness When Your Life Stinks Part 2: Your Thoughts Aren’t Even Real

Thoughts and Beliefs

It’s funny that I’m actually writing this post because I can so vividly remember resisting this idea. My thoughts that I automatically and often subconsciously judge as good or bad aren’t even real. What thuh? I recall thinking, “If I can’t count on my thoughts being real, which btw have gotten me quite far in life, then where do I go from there? What can I even trust anymore?”

Oh, how young and naive I used to be.

I shouldn’t pretend it was so long ago! This is an incredibly complex notion to wrap one’s mind around. I routinely need to circle back to terra firma on this even though I understand it and it has my full buy in.

The notion that my thoughts weren’t real was a total bummer for me. Generally speaking, I had always really liked my thoughts. Most were funny, insightful, inquisitive, and clever, if I do say so myself. And they were a big part of my self-esteem. If you could see me now, you’d see my eyes wistfully staring off into the distance.

Oh, there were the negative ones too, but they served an important purpose. They let me know where I was falling short and, by gawd, needed me to know it. The notion that those thoughts weren’t real either just made me mad. I mean, where’s the power in beating oneself up, if it’s on false grounds? 

I couldn’t believe that the good ones weren’t real. And I needed the bad ones to be real in order for me to, well, feel bad about myself. Or to motivate me to change things or whatever bad thoughts are supposed to do.

I wish I remembered the exact thing I read or the specific thing someone said that provided my aha moment around this. But I can’t. You know when you hear something over and over and one day it so naturally clicks that it seemed like it was there all along? I think that’s what happened.

Who knows, maybe reading this will be the one that pushes you over that proverbial edge too!

Here goes.

The thoughts in our heads that narrate our lives need a serious reappraisal.

We get so worked up by them! We get so comforted by them! We get so hooked by them and think they are real. But they aren’t real. I mean, they are real in that they exist inside our heads, but they aren’t real in that they aren’t facts.

I mean, unless of course, you’re thinking of a fact. But let’s be honest, most of the time we are not thinking of facts.

Most of the time we are repeating the same subjective thoughts and beliefs over and over in our minds. The ones we constructed through a complex combination of nature, nurture, and our experiences. This combination creates a filter through which we take in all information and through which we form all our thoughts. We can’t help it.

And yet, most people never question that their thoughts aren’t real because it seems a) unnecessary b) inefficient c) weird and d) stupid. So they stay tightly bound to the ups and downs of their thoughts which lead to an emotional roller coaster of feelings.

There’s another way. And that is to acknowledge our thoughts aren’t real and get off the roller coaster.

So, if you want to go for it here are 6 things to try:

1. Notice your resistance to the notion that your thoughts aren’t real.

2. Frame this as an experiment. What happens when you have a thought and you tell yourself that it is just one possibility of that which exists.

3. What happens when you try on different filters for the fun of it? How does that thought change?

4. Allow the different filters to loosen your cognitive grip on the comfortable notion that your original thought was a real, meaning a fact.

5. See how your emotions change with the different filters.

6. Recognize that since you can choose your filter and your thoughts why not choose either neutral or good ones?

5 (Possibly) Helpful Things to Know about Therapy

Okay, you're gonna bite the bullet this year and go to therapy for that dang anxiety that doesn't seem to be going away on its own. There are a few things to know to make it easier to show up for your first appointment.

• Counselors are like gynecologists, they’ve seen/heard it all. Ok, that may have started us out on more of an awkward note then I intended, but my point is, please don’t be worried that you are showing a side of yourself that the counselor hasn’t seen before.

• We are made like jack-in-the-boxes. Anything that “pops out” during counseling can be put back in. Research shows, however, that by naming feelings and identifying negative thoughts we start to feel better. But, we always have the option to just push ‘em back in.

• “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." That’s from Albert Einstein. A counselor will help add a different way of thinking to your problem. Together, you’ll be able move the needle toward feeling better faster than if you just stayed in your head and wrestled with it alone.

• Seeking help doesn’t scream to everyone that you are weak. And if you are screaming that in your own ear, get over it. You are human and it is time to fix a very human problem, your anxiety. I thought I would try the “tough love” approach to this one.  I have a feeling you would just mock me if I tried the “asking for help is a sign of real strength” route. Even though it is.

• You can stop any time. Seriously. This last one is just the permission that helps me try a lot of things that my “play on the safe side” mind tries to stop me from doing. The beauty of permission, however, is that once I try things I‘m often very glad I did.

Mindfulness When Your Life Stinks

Your job is a dead end, your relationship with your significant other is on the rocks, you’re constantly exhausted, and on top of it all, you can’t even squeeze into your Spanx anymore. I can hear you (and a ton of other people like you) sincerely and quizzically asking, “Tell me again why I want to be more mindful of the present?”

Mindfulness is a tough sell for this very reason. Why would anyone in their right mind want to be reminded of the fact that they aren’t happy with how things are?

This is the mindfulness barrier that no one talks about. The #1 reason people avoid mindfulness is that they don’t want to be more mindful, present and aware when it could make them feel disappointed, frustrated or not good enough. I totally get it.

The problem is that being more present and mindful is part of the antidote, the fix to feeling fed up and not good enough!

Let me explain because I’m not talking about pretending everything is good so you don’t feel like crap. And I’m not talking about lowering your standards and letting everything go to pot.

BECAUSE THAT DOESN’T HAPPEN WITH MINDFULNESS!

Sorry to yell, but I get pretty excited about letting people know this. It is one of the biggest misconceptions about mindfulness.

Most people glom on to the first component of mindfulness and totally miss the second one. And the second one is critical! 

The first one is an increased awareness of the here and now, as it is happening. It’s being more present or aware of what you are doing, feeling or thinking in real time, not just after the fact. The second is to be aware of your tendency to automatically classify everything as either good or bad. Everyone does it. You mentally judge everything that comes across your mind as good or bad and it puts you on an emotional roller coaster. And without being aware you’re doing it, it robs you of your ability to control your own contentment and happiness.

Now, certainly, I’m not suggesting that some things aren’t bad and should be labeled bad and avoided, and good and labeled good and encouraged. That’s part of our innate protection system for self-survival. It’s not going away.

The problem arises because we judge everything! And we get conditioned into using this judgment of everything being good or bad as a way to inform what we should do or how we should feel. It is exhausting! It doesn’t help us and it can even be argued that our judgments aren’t accurate (I’ll tackle that one in a later post).

So of course, when we are conditioned to judge everything we aren’t happy with as bad, the idea of being more mindful of that does seem like a buzz kill.

But, here’s the thing, we can learn to ditch our habit of classifying everything. 

We can learn to view most things as what they are…neutral.

And by doing so, we regain control of our emotions so that we can be in the present. Even when we don’t like certain things.

We ditch the habit of classifying everything by (1) being aware that we do that, (2) noticing the main things we think of as “bad”, (3) consciously start replacing those with a label “neutral”.

Labeling things as “neutral” doesn’t mean we are pleased with them. It serves a more powerful purpose of neutralizing the physiological response that occurs when we feel like crap because we hate something about our life. Most people think hating things or accepting things we don’t like will motivate us to change those things.

For example, when you hate how you look because of your weight, you think that hatred is going to motivate you to lose weight. But it doesn’t work that way, and if you are in this category you know this by now. Labeling things as bad and being upset about them, fires up our fight or flight response system and diminishes our ability to think clearly about solutions and take the very actions needed to change those things. 

The way we make long term, sustainable changes to live a life that we love is by neutralizing the way we classify things and by being more aware of the present, as it is happening. 

What do 6 Blind Men, an Elephant and Your Anxiety have in Common?

In some form or another, the parable of The 6 Blind Men and an Elephant has been passed down throughout the millennia, reaching every corner of the world.

Never heard of it? Well, almost every corner. Okay, so maybe it missed a place or two. If it didn’t hit your corner, here is a synopsis of the parable twitter-style. For a longer, more poetic version, definitely check out John Godfrey Saxe (1816–1887) version but this will give you the gist.

6 blind men all touch different parts of an elephant. Each get an incomplete picture of the whole but think they have an accurate picture.

Confused as to what in the world this story has to do with your anxiety?

Anxiety is like one of the 6 blind men. It touches on a particular fear or worst case scenario that has entered your mind and then thinks it totally “knows” the situation. Trying to fill out the picture with a more balanced perspective is often disregarded. Your anxiety insists it knows the real story or has the full picture already.

So what can you do once your anxiety starts to rise to help it keep a more open mind than the 6 blind men in our parable?

The next time you start to feel your anxiety, picture (an elephant and) 6 possibilities. Allow a couple possibilities be of your fearful thoughts but then also acknowledge 3–4 other non-fearful possibilities.

By practicing this strategy over and over, you start to diminish the power of your anxiety by loosening its conviction on “knowing the whole story”. By naming 6 possibilities- good and bad- you are giving yourself the chance to not get hooked by just one version of the story. By treating it like a Name 6 Possibilities Exercise, you treat it like a brainstorm and not like a frantic reasoning session with your mind.

Add in 6 deep belly breaths and you should experience something new in the way that your anxiety proceeds.

Eileen Purdy is a registered psychotherapist, author and online course creator in Boulder, Colorado. For a 3 Ways to Not Suck at Meditating Cheatsheet click here.

Try These 3 Things If You Feel Bad That You Have Anxiety.

Do you feel bad about your anxiety? Not upset that you have anxiety and that it is totally impacting your life, but actually disappointed in yourself? As if you have no justifiable reason to be worried and anxious over what you’re worried and anxious about? I mean think of all the people starving in Africa…

“What’s my problem?!?”

Does this sound familiar? Seriously, does anyone else go there or is it just me? Actually, I do often think of people in Africa but maybe it’s from my Peace Corps days in rural Ghana, West Africa. No, I was doing this way before then.

As a recovering guilt-prone person with a habit of mixing and matching feeling badly with a ton of other things, I can tell you that separating these things out is a worthwhile pursuit. And by that I mean, making sure that ‘feeling badly’ is being placed appropriately. This would exclude anxiety.

To start, there’s no use in going down the rabbit hole of why we feel bad. “Why’s” often feel gratifying to understand but rarely lead to change on their own. So let’s focus on what can actually change your guilt-prone habits.

Here are 3 things to do if you feel guilty or bad regarding your anxiety.

1. Recognize that guilt (or feeling badly) is a feeling that quickly gets called into action for you. Once you realize it has become a bit of a default (and overused) feeling, you can start to let it go.
2. Reserve guilt for what it does best. Guilt is designed to help us know when we’ve crossed a line with ourselves or others. It helps guide us in the direction of making efforts to repair what we’ve done. If you’re reading this, when you have anxiety you probably interpret it as crossing a line of your expectations that you’re a ‘better person’ than to have anxiety. Guilt won’t help your anxiety stop, so let yourself know this and keep it for the things that merit it.
3. Remind yourself you’re not a bad person for having anxiety. Anxiety is completely a separate issue from being a good person, having gratitude and appreciation in your life. Anxiety sucks but it’s not a reflection on the quality of person you are.

Try not to feel bad if you tend to feel bad because you have anxiety. Embrace these 3 R’s and begin finding a little relief in this area. You deserve it.