Life is full of genuine worry and anxiety. Indeed, worry and anxiety are essential indicators for our bodies. But, there is a point where these feelings go past being ‘normal’ and grow to a point where they can significantly cripple your daily functionality.

Of course, for some, this is a genuine medical issue, but for others, this is an extremely inconvenient tendency and requires some conscious practice to help ease. So, if you are a worrier, and could use some thoughts on how to stop those feelings from getting in your way, look no further…

1.     Are Your Worries Worth the Worry?

Consider your list of concerns. Are they, when you really think about it, logical worries? Do they have merit? Or is the irrational part of your brain just running riot and eroding your wellbeing? Which of these worries is actually worth your time? During your designated period of worry, it might be useful to delve into the rationality of your fears about a given situation and explore how valid they really are.

2.     Talk to Someone

Anxieties are well eased when you share them with other people. Sharing your thoughts with a trusted friend, partner or relative will help you to see your concerns through the eyes of others. Having someone else weigh in will confirm or deny the validity of your worry, and the connection alone will make you feel infinitely better. 

3.     Put A Cap on It

You can worry, worry, worry until the proverbial cows come home. Although it is useful to note the potential pitfalls or dangers of a situation, it does not do to dwell on them. All you can do, by dwelling, is to repeat and remind yourself of all the things that could go wrong. These facts do not change as you repeat them, and only make you feel more anxious.

So, put a time limit on your worry. Allow yourself to lay out your concerns for a limited time, after which you need to move on with your day. It may help you to write your concerns down during this period. Often, when we take thoughts out of their head and put them on paper, they don’t look nearly as daunting and feel as overwhelming as they did in your brain.

4.     Accept Uncertainty

Look, uncertainty is everywhere and you can’t control everything. Accepting this fact will help you to change your entire relationship with worry. The concerns that you can control and solve, are worth addressing. However, the ones you can’t, well, there’s nothing you can do about them; are they worth the energy you are spending dwelling on them?

5.     Work it Out

The issue with sitting and becoming more anxious and less resilient as you turn concerns over in your head is that it changes nothing. These things that are bothering you, is there something that you can do to change them? Are they concerns that can be resolved?

A great way to put worry to one side is to take action. This is for two reasons. One; action, movement, and productivity often lift the mood and will probably ensure that some of your concerns fade on their own. The second is that by actively dealing with a fear or anxiety you are consciously dealing with a problem. Get up, get out of your head, and get the thing solved!

6.     Try to Stay in The Moment

Concerns over potential happenings in the future often cripple the ‘now’. A multitude of problems is solved by living in the moment. This may not allay your fears entirely, but it will stop them from impacting the quality of the rest of your life. Focus on the here and now.

By Chris Thomson

P.S. Whenever you are ready… here are 4 ways we can support your personal and professional Conscious Goals:

1. Access Free Live Meditations & Energy Transmissions

Inside our private Facebook Group, The Conscious Professional Mindful Community where Neil leads live weekly community events. Join now for free.

2. Learn To Meditate With Neil Seligman In Just 10 Days!

Zen in Ten, our flagship online course, is a ten-day mindfulness challenge for people who need to slow down.  

3. Work With Neil One-To-One

See if a Conscious Coaching Partnership is right for you. Book a 15-minute discovery call with Neil here.

4. Bring The Conscious Professional To Your Business

See if The Conscious Professional training and coaching programmes are right for your team or workplace. Book a call here.

The Conscious Professional is dedicated to delivering inspiring corporate mindfulness and professional resilience training, conscious leadership coaching and workplace wellbeing services at the level of professional excellence. Thank you for following our blog.

The post Tips for Tackling Crippling Concerns and Anxiety appeared first on The Conscious Professional.

Although we may not like to admit it, we all have fears and anxieties. Your fears may be problems that have been present for your whole life, or they might pop up only occasionally to nip at your heels. Whatever the size of your fear, it can be tackled.

New fears pop up throughout our lives as our experiences and circumstances change and develop. Although many of these anxieties will be quite specific, there are many standard measures you can take to dull, or even eradicate them. Here are a few to try out next time you are standing face to face with a fearful prospect!

1. Focus on the Breath

Panic is rising in your chest, your head is racing and full of ‘what if’ scenarios and you can’t think straight. The first thing to do is to return to basics. Focus on the simplest and purest of things; your breath. There is a good reason that so many meditations use the breath as their foundation. To focus on the breath is to quirt the noise in your mind, and to tune into the rhythm of the breath is to tune in with a sensation of calm, safety and consistency.

Close your eyes, listen to your breath. Don’t force it in any direction; just notice it. When you feel sufficiently clam and centred, only then return to the matter at hand, able to address it from a place of clam.

2. Go To Your Happy Place

If focusing on our breath is not quite working, try this. Close your eyes and visit you happy place. This could be any place in the world, it could be an imaginary place, indeed, it could be a sensation, a smell or a memory. Whatever that place is, visit is for a sense of calm and a reminder that good and places without fear do exist in the world.

3. How Bad Can It Be?

Consider the thing you fear. What is the worst thing that could happen as a result of doing the thing about which you feel so anxious? Very often the answer to this question highlights the irrationality of your fear, or certainly that your anxiety has less weight than you are giving it.

4. Evidence

Now that you have asked yourself what the worst that can happen is, now consider, ‘what is the worst that has happened?’ This thing you fear, has anyone ever actually hurt themselves doing it? Has failing at this actually ever ruined anyone’s reputation? Is there evidence of it being unsafe? Is your fear unsupported by actual evidence?

5. Face Your Fears

Ah yes, that old cliché. But does facing your fears actually work? Well, here’s the thing, clichés become clichés for a reason. By avoiding engaging in something you are afraid of you are only making things worse for yourself. If you do not face them then how will you even know if it was something worth fearing? If your concerns are valid? The more you face up to your fears, the more resilient you become towards them.

6. Get It Out in the Open

Don’t let that anxiety fester inside of you. Talk to somebody. Fear and anxiety, when left bouncing about inside of you, only gets worse. If you share with somebody the likelihood is that they will be able to offer you an angle on your worry that you hadn’t thought of before, or that they will be able to see what it is that you need to tackle it.

7. Revisit Coping Mechanisms

What do you usually find works well when you are anxious or afraid? Most of us have had to deal with fear and anxiety before, so what did you do last time? Perhaps a good night’s sleep, a decent meal, a bit of exercise or listening to your favourite album is all you need to keep your anxiety at bay. What are your most reliable coping mechanisms?

By Chris Thomson

Out an about and feeling the fear creep up on you? No problem, the world is full of places just right for a moments silence and meditation… Great Places to Meditate in Public

P.S. Whenever you are ready… here are 4 ways we can support your personal and professional Conscious Goals:

1. Access Free Live Meditations & Energy Transmissions

Inside our private Facebook Group, The Conscious Professional Mindful Community where Neil leads live weekly community events. Join now for free.

2. Learn To Meditate With Neil Seligman In Just 10 Days!

Zen in Ten, our flagship online course, is a ten day mindfulness challenge for people who need to slow down.  

3. Work With Neil One-To-One

See if a Conscious Coaching Partnership is right for you. Book a 15-minute discovery call with Neil here.

4. Bring The Conscious Professional To Your Business

See if The Conscious Professional training and coaching programmes are right for your team or workplace. Book a call here.

The Conscious Professional is dedicated to delivering inspiring corporate mindfulness and professional resilience training, conscious leadership coaching and workplace wellbeing services at the level of professional excellence. Thank you for following our blog.

The post Thoughts on Dealing with Fear appeared first on The Conscious Professional.

When we are anxious, mindfulness encourages us to meet the experience with acceptance, non-judgment and compassionate awareness. One of the outcomes of the mindful approach is that we step into resourcefulness rather than victimhood. We acknowledge our experience and through not resisting, we allow it to normalize. Anxiety dissipates or we take action.

2. Catastrophising

Have you ever noticed that when something small goes wrong, the mind starts listing a whole sequence of future problems that may arise as a result. This mindset is often dubbed catastrophising. Mindfulness allows us to come back to our actual experience, it returns us to the present moment and therefore brings us back to our senses (literally). It is far more useful to be fully present with what has actually happened then to live a life predicting the worst.

3. Vulnerability and Tragedy

No human life will go untouched by vulnerability and tragedy. Whilst mindfulness cannot protect you from the pain of either it can remind you that suffering is a choice.

4. Stress at work

The pressure of deadlines, difficult colleagues, the struggle for recognition and office politics all provide wonderful opportunities to put the lessons of mindfulness into practice. Noticing your growing ability to respond resourcefully, to create solutions and to meet each moment with curiosity are all signs that your mindfulness practice is paying dividends.

5. Family issues

If you think you are enlightened they say you should spend a week living 24/7 with your family! Some of our biggest challenges to remain mindful are found at home. It is so easy to repeat old patterns, to rehearse painful conversations, arguments, to re-draw familiar lines in the sand. Mindfulness invites us more deeply into the uniqueness of the moment and allows us to see beyond the drama and patterns that may have kept us stuck for so long.

P.S. Whenever you are ready… here are 4 ways we can support your personal and professional Conscious Goals:

1. Access Free Live Meditations & Energy Transmissions

Inside our private Facebook Group, The Conscious Professional Mindful Community where Neil leads live weekly community events. Join now for free.

2. Learn To Meditate With Neil Seligman In Just 10 Days!

Zen in Ten, our flagship online course, is a ten-day mindfulness challenge for people who need to slow down.  

3. Work With Neil One-To-One

See if a Conscious Coaching Partnership is right for you. Book a 15-minute discovery call with Neil here.

4. Bring The Conscious Professional To Your Business

See if The Conscious Professional training and coaching programmes are right for your team or workplace. Book a call here.

The Conscious Professional is dedicated to delivering inspiring corporate mindfulness and professional resilience training, conscious leadership coaching and workplace wellbeing services at the level of professional excellence. Thank you for following our blog.

The post 5 Difficult Moments That Mindfulness Can Transform appeared first on The Conscious Professional.

1. Observe: become consciously aware of what is occurring without judging it as good or bad.

2. Describe:  neutrally name all aspects of the experience that you are aware of. E.g. I am experiencing anger. I feel hot. My palms are sweating.

3. Participate: make a choice, take action, speak your feelings, take the next step as consciously as you can.

For example, when we are anxious, mindfulness encourages us to meet the experience with acceptance, non-judgment and compassionate awareness. One of the outcomes of the mindful approach is that we step into resourcefulness rather than victimhood. We acknowledge our experience and through not resisting, we allow it to normalize. Anxiety dissipates or we take action.

Mindfulness invites us back into a simpler, purer and more effective state of being and gives us the tools we need to bring excellence to our craft of consciousness. By developing and sustaining a consistent mindfulness practice, we discover new ways to be effective in all aspects of our lives.

P.S. Whenever you are ready… here are 4 ways we can support your personal and professional Conscious Goals:

1. Access Free Live Meditations & Energy Transmissions

Inside our private Facebook Group, The Conscious Professional Mindful Community where Neil leads live weekly community events. Join now for free.

2. Learn To Meditate With Neil Seligman In Just 10 Days!

Zen in Ten, our flagship online course, is a ten-day mindfulness challenge for people who need to slow down.  

3. Work With Neil One-To-One

See if a Conscious Coaching Partnership is right for you. Book a 15-minute discovery call with Neil here.

4. Bring The Conscious Professional To Your Business

See if The Conscious Professional training and coaching programmes are right for your team or workplace. Book a call here.

The Conscious Professional is dedicated to delivering inspiring corporate mindfulness and professional resilience training, conscious leadership coaching and workplace wellbeing services at the level of professional excellence. Thank you for following our blog.

The post The 3 Actions Of Mindfulness appeared first on The Conscious Professional.