Calm anxiety with this self-help hack
Modern society tends to glorify side hustles over self-help moments. Drama over deep breathing. Striving over thriving.
Yet for all of the chronic overachieving going on in the world, statistics show how all this efforting isn’t making us happier or more productive – only more anxious. As this 2023 World Health Organization report points out, anxiety has become the world’s leading mental health disorder, affecting over 300 million people as of 2019. And this 2024 Forbes article reveals how “productivity anxiety” – defined as the feeling that there’s always more we should be doing – affects a whopping 80 percent of the U.S. workforce, leading to stress, burnout, and a decreased sense of well-being overall.
So if pushing and clawing our way to the top is really only fraying our nerves instead of empowering our dream lives, then what can we do to live more joyfully?
Ancient wisdom says the answer can’t be found in doing, but in being. New Thought philosophy teaches that we don’t get what we seek; we get what we are. And so, true abundance that’s rooted in centered calmness can only well up from within when we pause. When we sit with our personal brand of chaos without judging it or trying to fix anything. When we take a “time out” even for a few minutes and focus only on deep belly breathing. And then, once we get quiet in this way, our true selves get a chance to speak to us about solutions instead of stumbling blocks.
What guidance do we hear once we really listen to our intuitive voices? Gentle whispers that, in spite of our angst over what seems so flawed, it’s all imperfectly perfect. It’s all actually working out. And if we keep listening, we keep getting the message that it’s okay to let go and allow life’s natural flow to carry us forward.
From a Chinese Medicine perspective, this natural energy flow is described as wu wei. We can begin to understand wu wei’s unhurried pace in how the sun moves across the sky. How trees grow. And how flowers bloom. It happens so subtly, so effortlessly, that we don’t often notice it’s unfolding.
Take this post’s images of budding peonies, for example. See how some buds are still tightly closed? And how some petals are beginning to open? Growth and transformation are taking place within every blossom, but each is on its own schedule, according to Divine timing.
In my novel Atlantis Splitting, fated mates Alaric and Elysia deal with anxiety after being split apart. They find they must face alone their darkest nights of the soul and truly put into practice the self-help strategies they know so well. But being in hellish conditions can make even the most evolved beings feel unable to cope. And yet help arrives for both characters in the most unexpected places – and faces – just like it does in real life.
If you could use some calm in your life right now, please pause what you’re doing. Take 10 minutes for some self-care. Breathe deeply and focus your attention on something you appreciate – anything simple that makes you smile. Maybe it’s a child’s laughter. The warmth of a beloved pet’s snuggles. How soft your socks feel or how good that morning coffee tastes. Affirm, “All is well and unfolding perfectly in Divine timing”.
By devoting even a few daily minutes to self-nurturing, we begin to relax for real once we accept how simply being brings an inner knowing that our lives are always blooming with blessings.