Interrupt Anxiety

I found this quote from Danielle LaPorte that caught my eye – it said “Interrupt anxiety with gratitude.” I just thought that was perfect! I’ve been talking with clients lately about how to handle that “monkey mind” that gets going and creates and perpetuates (and keeps us stuck in) anxiety, depression, fear, anger and other lower vibrational emotions. (All emotion is valid, and you should always feel your feelings, you just don’t want to get stuck in the lower vibrational ones!)

The “monkey mind” is that chatter box inside your head that just goes around and around in circles never taking you anywhere productive. It is that voice that worries and lives in the future in the “what if this happens” world. While I understand the human need to plan for the future, at least to some degree, I do not think there is anything productive in spending all of your time in that “what if this happens” place and “catastrophizing” and playing out worst case scenarios over and over in your imagination.

So, what can you do to quiet that frenzied and all too insistent voice once it gets going? Well, I love the advice of interrupting it with gratitude. When it revs up, stop. Pull out a piece of paper and start writing what you are grateful for. If you do this consistently, you will find that the anxious and worried voice in your head will calm down dramatically, and will surface less and less frequently.

Other ideas to interrupt the voice: find inspirational quotes to share on social media (think about brightening someone else’s day!), write a letter of thanks to someone who has been there for you, recently or in the past, find a special project and invite your kids or someone who is lonely to work on it with you or find a person who needs some help and help them (there are organizations who can match you with people in need). Really anything to get you out of your own head will help! Going into a state of gratitude or into a place of asking “how can I be of value” to someone today, is a PERFECT way to interrupt those lower vibrational feelings and elevate your thoughts and feelings and to move you into a state where you can create positive outcomes in your life, instead of spiraling deeper and deeper into the emotional states and situations that create the outcomes in your life that you don’t want.