6 tips to minimize and eliminate anxiety and stress

● Remind yourself that anxiety and stress are not the same thing. Stress is a legitimate and objective response to a real life challenge. Anxiety is an illegitimate response (perpetrated by insecurity) that has you convinced you can’t handle the challenge.

● Self-trust is a willingness to believe. The sooner you take the risk of believing that you can handle whatever life throws at you, the sooner you will be eliminating anxiety and reducing stress.

● Stress is experienced both physically as well as psychologically. When stressed work to distract yourself from the stressor. Try taking a time-out by meditating, going for a walk, watching a movie, or petting a dog. Anything that pulls your mind away from the stressor.

● In all life situations, recognize that you have a choice. You will experience more stress if you feel that you are a victim. Victims by definition are powerless. In order to empower yourself, you are going to need to recognize that, even if you can’t change the circumstance of your stressor, you can change the way you think and interpret your circumstance.

● Don’t wait until you are stressed, start building that trust-muscle today! Recognize that learning to trust is learning to risk believing in yourself, begin with small steps. Keep in mind, it isn’t about always making the “right” choice, it’s just being able to risk being you in the moment and finding out that even a poor choice, isn’t the end of the world.

● As the AA adage goes: Let go, let God. Let go of the ego’s insecure, controlling tendency to over-think and then, whether you call it God, fate, a higher power, or that in you which goes beyond the narrow view of the ego, trust the vast instinctual, intuitive potential that resides in you—waiting to be realized.