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Posts tagged with “worry”

3 Simple Steps To Stop Worry In Its Tracks

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“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow.  It only saps today of its joy.” ~Leo Buscaglia

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been the worrywart extraordinaire.

Worry: verb: To give way to anxiety or unease; allow one’s mind to dwell on difficulty or troubles.

Fret, be anxious, brood, stress, panic.

If worry came with a degree, mine would be a PhD.

As a child I worried about my schoolwork. I worried if other kids would laugh, or not, as the case may be. I worried if I’d pass the test, miss the bus, make the team, or fall …

4 Tools to Reframe Stress to Feel Less Overwhelmed

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“I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.” ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Stress, strain, tension, worry, overwhelm, nerves, feeling wound up, freaking out. Whatever we call it, the effects are universal.

Our adrenals rev up, uneasy thoughts cycle on the brain’s hamster wheel, butterflies flitter in the stomach, our moods swing. There are many different ways that stress manifests, and none of them are particularly enjoyable.

Stress is basically an emotion. It’s the way we feel when things aren’t going our way. “Things” can be as insignificant as feeling annoyed because we woke up two minutes …

How to Find Peace When You Feel Scared About What Might Happen

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“Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.” ~John Allen Paulos

I was in shock for about ten minutes after hearing the news, afraid while lying on the procedure table, and relieved when it was over.

Six months ago I had a mammogram. My checkup was supposed to be for a general mammogram—the one you get when you turn forty—but when I got there and told the technician that two days ago I had discovered a small bump in my right breast, the prescription was changed to a diagnostic …

3 Ways to Transform Anxiety into Positive Energy

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“Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.” ~Proverb

A few months ago, I moved from the metropolitan east coast to rural Indiana and bunked up with my grandparents to help them sell their house.

The house has finally sold, and now I am faced with options for where to go next. In other words, my future is completely uncertain at this point, and I’m experiencing quite a bit of anxiety over it.

On the real, I’m silently, and at times not so silently, freaking out.

Anxiety is so annoying in that it can be completely paralyzing. It is …

Overcoming Anxiety: Moving from Fear to Presence

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“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” ~Nelson Mandela

When I was a trainee teacher at a Cambridge University, I attended one of the oldest, most sought-after colleges, where most of the other graduate students were astrophysicists and economists, and 90% male.

They also seemed to come from families that were in some way related to the Queen of England, whereas I was a young, pregnant, trainee high school teacher whose nearest connection to Queens was owning a Freddie Mercury single, and I was a little shy.

Formal college dinners were a …

How to Choose Peace Instead of Stressing About the Future

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“If you worry about what might be, and wonder what might have been, you will ignore what is.” ~Unknown

I was entering a completely new stage in my life. It could have been the beginning of something great, but it was entirely foreign to me. I could handle being productive, I could handle struggling to survive, but what was hard to handle was wading through the unknown.

After working for six months in Italy and six months in Brazil I was back in the US—floating. I didn’t feel any closer to having a career. I was without a car, job, …

How to Deal with Unfairness and Change the Things You Can

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“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.” ~Mary Engelbreit

Many times in the past, I’ve complained that things weren’t fair.

Sometimes I was legitimately wronged—like when I was a kid and an adult in my life regularly told people lies about me, seemingly to justify her disdain and mistreatment.

Other times, I victimized myself to avoid taking responsibility—like when I didn’t prepare well and bombed at a community theater audition but attributed my failure to favoritism.

As an indignant adolescent, I blamed many of my difficult early experiences …

How Worrying Makes Life Less Joyful

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“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow. It only saps today of its joy.” ~Leo Bucaglia

As I stood on the street corner, tears streaming down my face, I called friends for confirmation that what I had just been told wasn’t true.

My meeting with my “friend” had gone horribly wrong. And when I say gone wrong, that’s because she was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

But what if she wasn’t wrong?

What if her words, which stung so badly that I couldn’t stop myself from crying publicly, were true?

Two weeks prior to this fateful day, three families had gotten …

9 Powerful Life Lessons from Studying with a Monk

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“Doing your best means never stop trying.” ~Unknown

When I was 18 years old, I suffered from anxiety and stomach problems. A compassionate physician and practicing Buddhist referred me to a Taoist monk who specialized in meditation and martial arts. I ended up healing myself of anxiety and stomach issues by doing meditation, and went on a great journey of self-discovery.

Here are 9 lessons I learned while studying with a monk:

1. Keep trying until you get it right.

The most important life lesson I learned was trying something three times (maybe even four times) before you stop …

5 Steps to Deal with Self-Doubt and Trust Your Self Again

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“When you doubt your power, you give power to your doubt.” ~Honore de Balzac

A while back I began to feel out of sorts with my writing. It happened after coming down from the high of creating almost nonstop with my inner muse. I noticed that I began to feel down, like the feeling one gets after being at the amusement park when the excitement is over.

Creating and finishing my projects had been a wild ride. It was exciting and intense at times. But once done, an insidious feeling began to over take me.

My thoughts began to wander …

6 Ways to Find Composure When You Feel Panicked

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“Every day brings a choice: to practice stress or to practice peace.” ~Joan Borysenko

I had a terrible morning. I needed to make a short YouTube video to promote my therapy practice, and I thought it would take twenty minutes at the most.

The technology was more complicated than I thought. I struggled on, wanting to do it by myself. Half an hour later, I surrendered and asked my husband Kaspa for help.

Two hours later, we were still trying to make it work.

I started thinking about all the other things I was meant to be doing that morning. …

Be Stress-Free: Eliminate 5 Common, Unnecessary Stressors

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“Some people think it’s holding that makes one strong – sometimes it’s letting go.” ~Unknown

The human mind loves to find things to stress about.

There seems to constantly be something in our lives that causes us to worry. And when the thing that caused the worry disappears, we feel happy, but only for a short period of time until we find something else to stress about.

I’ve witnessed this pattern many times in my own life. As soon as I was able to solve one of my problems, my mind found me a new one.

Compared to other …

7 Healthy Ways to Deal with Incessant Worrying

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“I vow to let go of all worries and anxiety in order to be light and free.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

When you think about the future, are you filled with hope or worry? If you are like most people, it’s probably anxiety. You have largely been experiencing worry. Your mind feels unsettled.

Worry arises because you realize that you cannot predict what is going to happen tomorrow and know that you cannot have full control over how events turn out. You are uncomfortable with not having absolute certainty.

Incessant worrying happens when you find it hard to let go. You …

3 Steps to Make a Bad Day Good

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“To a mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.” ~Chuang-Tzu

The beauty of life is that we constantly have the opportunity to change it.

We always have the power to recreate it. We can change our thoughts, remember how to live instead of planning each moment, forgive the past, be present for the now, slow down the speed, and push the reset button on a day that has escaped us.

I recently had one of those days.

This past Saturday was wonderful, or so I thought it would be when I woke up.

I’d been invited to a traditional …

The Gift of Anxiety: 7 Ways to Get the Message and Find Peace

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“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” ~Pema Chodron

If there’s one thing that has led me the greatest amount of re-invention, it’s anxiety. By anxiety I don’t mean worry or concern. Anxiety is a different animal that grabs a hold of you and halts you in your tracks.

We tend to reject its milder forms and are really terrified by its intense moments, like with panic attacks. It’s difficult to see when we’re fighting with anxiety that it can have any benefit, but it does.

Anxiety comes with some great treasures hidden …

Our Shared Fears & 5 Ways to Overcome Them

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“Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me.” ~Isabel Allende

In life, we experience two kinds of fear: real fear and psychological fear. Or, as I prefer to think of the latter, ego-fear.

In the words of Immanuel Kant, the ego is “our precious little self.” Or as Eckhart Tolle calls it, “the voice in the head.” It isn’t who you really are, but the you that you think you are.

Each day, what you see in the mirror is the reflection of your physical being, and within, you may get glimpses …

6 Tips to Deal When You Feel Out of Control: When Your World Gets All Shook Up

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“Why worry about things you can’t control when you can keep yourself busy controlling the things that depend on you?” ~Unknown

I celebrated an anniversary recently. It was the night I experienced my first, and hopefully last, earthquake.

My husband and I had retired for the evening as usual—said our goodnights and went to sleep. I was jarred awake at 2:30 AM by him trying to pull me from our bed. At the same moment I heard the most deafening roar. Could a freight train be barrelling through our loft?

Our attempts to escape the upper level were hampered by …

50 Things You Can Control Right Now

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“Why worry about things you can’t control when you can keep yourself busy controlling the things that depend on you?” ~Unknown

CNN reports that psychic businesses are thriving in this challenging economy, and the clientele has expanded to include more business professionals who are worried about their financial future.

According to Columbia Business School’s Professor Gita Johar, who studies consumer behavior, the greatest motivation for visiting a psychic is to feel a sense of control.

Sure, there are lots of things we can’t control: businesses may fold, stocks may plummet, relationships may end—the list is infinite, really. But wouldn’t we …

5 Pieces of Advice That Aren’t Cliches

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“It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.” ~Aeschylus

Earlier this year I got some feedback from the ‘tween magazine I wrote for: “It sounds like good advice, but kids probably won’t do any of that.”

In my head it all sounded logical but I didn’t consider whether I’d have taken that advice as a kid. Or now, for that matter.

People do it all the time: look at a situation from a removed, non-emotional place and hurl suggestions that are far easier said than done. And sometimes, just plain unrealistic.

I’ve listed five …

Worry Serves No Useful Purpose

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“Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose.” ~Eckhart Tolle

Tomorrow is my thirtieth birthday. For two hours earlier this evening, I felt certain I’d start the day hooked up to an IV in intensive care.

It all started two weeks ago when I visited my family. Shortly after I arrived home I began feeling chest pains, something I experienced frequently in my youth.

Back in the day, I spent hours in the high school nurse’s office while my peers were in lunch, study hall, or gym class. Though it was intense and frightening, I wonder, in retrospect, …