How to get rid of anxiety and worry?

By Allison Liddle

Have you ever been stuck in anxiety and worry? You can come up with all the reasons why everything is going to go wrong? Or why you aren’t the right person to do that thing? Or that you’ll fail?

I have an active imagination and for a long time I let negative thoughts dominate my thinking because I didn’t know any better. I could give lists of limitations or reasons why something would not work. I could think about everything that may go wrong. I’d lament about how I wasn’t the person to do that next thing or grow that business or talk to those people or write that book. I bet you get the picture. :)

Then I started to grow myself and I learned that I had a choice every moment of every day to choose to think negatively or positively. I had a choice to make and I realized there were ways I could get myself out of the anxiety loop or worry loop and into a productive thought process.

First, here is the picture of what would happen to me before, maybe you can relate. Something in my life would go wrong. I would have a challenge, the client would leave, the person got mad….whatever happened did not feel good. I would instantly start thinking about all of things that would go wrong from this one problem. I would often times over-do all of the things that could go wrong because I’m very creative and can use that creativity for good…or bad in my thoughts.

One day I was talking to my mentor Clif and he noted that I was worrying about things that likely would not happen. He asked why I did that? I didn’t know.

The trick to anxiety and worry is to stop yourself from going into the negative spiral of emotions. If you can stop yourself and retrain your brain to look for the good things then you’ll be able to get more good things in your life.

Here are the steps he taught me to get through my anxiety and worry:

1. Name the fear that I’m facing. There is always a fear from your past that you are bringing up in this moment that is causing you to be afraid and anxious. Write it down.

2. Write down what is magnificent in your life? Look for the good and you’ll find more good.

3. Look to your future. If in 1 year things turned out great from this situation, what would that look like?

4. Focus on what you want, not what you don’t want.