Meditation for a Peaceful Mind

There are so many reasons why you should try meditation! You'll find that you have less anxiety, less depression, better health, and better relationships. How many practices can claim that? Would you rather take a pill for anxiety or learn to calm your mind and body in a more natural way?  There may be many unwanted side effects from medication (such as feeling "hung over" for hours, not being able to function with normal activities, and developing a dependency on the medication.) Meditation gives you calm and peaceful feelings without the side effects.  And having a peaceful mind is a form of stress protection that can help you to clear your mind of worries.

Greater Resilience

This is not to say that you won’t worry about things ever, but you'll find that worry decreases in both intensity and duration. In addition, you will develop a more effective way of dealing with the stressful situations in your daily life; you'll become more resilient. You will be able to understand situations in a different light and be able to see the situations for what they really are. When your mind is not at peace, it is hard to be happy even under the most pleasant circumstances. In some forms of meditation, you can analyze the thought processes that pass through your mind. When you concentrate deeply on the thoughts and situations of your life, you can reach the point at which you find your own answers to your problems.

Psychological Benefits

Today many types of meditation are recommended by health care professionals as a way of cleansing the mind and emotions of negative thoughts. By meditating, you can benefit from improved concentration and memory. It also helps to help you develop a greater understanding of stressful situations in your daily life so that you can have a greater understanding of the real cause of the problem. Anxiety is reduced dramatically. This helps you approach your problems with less stress because you do not impulsively react with fear, panic, depression, or anger. This, in turn, helps you get along with others much better.

Physical Benefits

Your body also benefits from meditation. When your mind is clear, you are better able to bring healing to the parts of your body that are ill. Meditating helps to improve the overall functioning of your immune system so that your body can fight off disease.  As your body becomes more relaxed, your blood pressure lowers and your heart can pump the blood to the organs of the body.

Morning Meditation

The aim of meditation is to give you a sense of inner peace that you will use throughout your day in all your dealings. This is why it is recommended that you meditate in the morning as soon as you wake. The positive feelings that you bring into your mind and body will then help you cope with your day. I highly recommend meditation for all of the above reasons.

Try it!

Start with a few minutes of silence each morning. It doesn't have to be long. In order to start a new habit, researchers tell us that you're better off doing your new habit a minute or two a day consistently for three weeks than an hour every once in a while. Once the habit is established, you'll want to keep this new habit because your physical and emotional health improve so much. Like anything else worth learning, you'll improve with practice. Let me know how it goes for you!

Stop Worrying–A Dozen Practical Tips

Here are some of my favorite tips to eliminate worry, stress,  and anxiety from your life.

Worry is nothing more than a bad habit. And habits can be changed.

Worry Time.

Establish a 10 to 20-minute period of time to list all your worries every morning at the same exact time. This should be before noon every day.

• If you start worrying during the day (other than worry time), yell "STOP! and save your worries for tomorrow. During that time write down all your worries.  At the end of your worry time for the day spend a few minutes planning more realistically for the future.

• Recognize and eliminate “what if” statements. If you hear yourself thinking “what if,” you’re on the road to worry.

• When you hear yourself saying or thinking worrisome thoughts, imagine a stop sign. Say to yourself, “STOP!” Say instead, “I’m OK.”

• Distract yourself with something else.

• Talk to a therapist or trusted friend who can help you to dispute your thoughts.

• Write down your negative thoughts. Examine them for truth.

• Avoid the overthinking trap. Stop focusing on the minutiae of a situation. Let it go!

• Ask yourself, "What's the worst thing that can happen?" Then confront that worst thing by asking yourself, "And then what?" Continue asking these same two questions.

• Ask yourself whether what you are worrying about will really matter in a year's time. If the answer is "yes," then focus your thinking on what you can learn from the experience.

• Take action in solving the problem. Every small step that you take to solve the problem will be a step toward greater well-being.

• Examine your beliefs that cause problems. Question those beliefs.

• Learn to visualize positive outcomes rather than predicting negative outcomes for events. Become an optimist!

Anxiety–The Traits That Keep You Stuck

People who are prone to anxiety tend to share certain personality traits. Some of these traits are positive--such as empathetic, sensitive, creative, intuitive, and amiable. These are the traits that endear these people to their friends and relatives.

Other traits tend to aggravate anxiety and interfere with relationships. These traits are:

• Perfectionism
• An excessive need for control
• A tendency to ignore the signs of stress
• An excessive need for approval

Let's look at these traits more closely. Perhaps you can start to identify, work with, and change these traits that provoke your anxiety.

Perfectionism

Perhaps you're overly concerned with small flaws and mistakes in yourself and/or others. You may have expectations about yourself, others, and life that are just unrealistically high. When anything falls short of those expectations, you feel disappointed and perhaps become critical. Nothing is ever good enough. And you perhaps drive yourself to the point of stress, exhaustion, and even burnout. Your self esteem suffers. You don't value yourself.

Tips for Perfectionists:

• Recognize your thinking errors. Are you using the words "should, must, ought, have to, or got to" in your thoughts (e.g., "I should be able to do this." "I must not make a mistake."
• Let go of the idea that your worth is determined by your accomplishments. You're not a human doing, you're a human being.
• Stop magnifiying the importance of small errors. We all make them. Let it go!
• Focus on what's right. A positive point of view can really help in this area.
• Make your goals realistic.

The Need to Control

You want life to be predictable. This is the opposite of faith; trusting the process of life. And you probably have very good reasons for not trusting the flow of life. But, if you want to eliminate anxiety and be more happy, you're going to have to let go of this need to control.

Tips for Control Freaks:

Here are some practical strategies that can work for you. Keep in mind that the cultivation of these strategies take time.

• Cultivate patience. When I'm in a hurry, out shopping and in a long line, I use this silent affirmation: "I'm practicing my patience virtue." For me, this is a good time to check the voice mail on my cell phone, read a magazine, tell myself positive thoughts, and perhaps think about what I'm going to prepare for dinner.
• Trusting that most problems eventually work themselves out. We don't know what the future holds for us, so it's best to choose to trust life.
• Acceptance. This is big. A sense of humor will help with this. Very often things don't go our way. And that's OK. (By the way, those are the precise words that I tell myself--"That's OK.") If you have the irrational belief that things ought to be a certain way, you're in trouble. You're swimming against the current of life, and you're going to get hurt. Learn to go with the flow and accept things the way they are.
• Developing your spirituality. In AA, we talk about "Let go, and let God." Learning to trust a power higher than yourself can help in this area. Another way that spirituality can help is learning to trust that there is a larger purpose in life beyond what we can see. Things happen for a reason, although we may not know why they happen.

Ignoring the Signs of Stress

Many people with anxiety disorders have a long history of ignoring the physical and psychological signs of stress. They push themselves unreasonably, and it eventually catches up with them. Are you ignoring tension in your muscles (jaw, shoulders, forehead), upset in your stomach (bowels included), or fatigue? Are you sleeping enough? Do you have mood swings? Do you feel overwhelmed?

Tips for Noticing the Signs of Stress:

Get in touch with your body. It may have some message to give to you.

• Breathwork can be very helpful. Go to the related article on this web site and read how to do this.
• Relaxation Techniques that can help include meditation, yoga, Tai Chi, bodywork, and massage. See the related articles at the bottom of this page.
• Assertiveness training can be very helpful.
• Develop your sense of humor. Watch funny movies, read funny jokes and books, laugh and have fun!

The Need for Approval

Yes, we all need approval. But the person with anxiety seems to have an excessive need for approval. If you're overly concerned with approval, you will need to address your inner sense of feeling unworthy or somehow flawed. You may be the ultimate pleaser.

Tips for Pleasers:

• Look at the thinking errors that lead to an excessive need for approval. They could be as unrealistic as "If people really knew me, they wouldn't like me." to "If someone doesn't seem friendly to me, it's because I did something wrong."
• Learn to look at criticism objectively. My mother always said, "First consider the source." Do you value that person's opinion? Is this person qualified to make an objective criticism of your work, your skills, your traits? If so, ask for specific details. Decide whether or not it has validity, then decide if it's a good opportunity for you to learn something new.
• Recognize your codependency. And then let it go. A need to be needed can only cause you sorrow. Learn to shift the focus to yourself rather than always having a focus on others.

As you can probably tell, addressing these four traits is a process, a journey of self discovery. This journey will go a bit faster if you do it with a therapist.