A Mindset Hack for Anxiety

Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. I hope you got to use take five yesterday to help calm your nerves. In today's session, I want to share more of a cognitive hack that'll help you settle your mind when you find yourself overwhelmed with future thinking. So much of our anxiety comes from what I like to call the what if mind? What if this happens? What if that happens? What if it doesn't go well? What if they don't like me? What if, what if, what if. Sometimes the what if mind can be useful.

They can help us plan, prepare, but a lot of times it's just excess neurotic chatter, and it's not actually serving us in a positive way. So when you notice that happening, what I want you to do is shift your what ifs to what is. What if to what is. What does that look like? Well, in this moment I can do it and you can do it too. What is here right now? First we're looking at each other.

So you can see maybe the color of the screen, the shape of the screen. Maybe if you look around you, for me, I notice, okay, there's a ceiling, a roof over my head. I feel my feet on the ground. I notice that my skin is a little cool in this moment. And there's just some other things I can see in the space around me.

There's also what I can hear. The sound of my own voice, some of the sounds outside. And so when I drop into what is here, it takes me out of the story of my mind, of everything that is to come, the what ifs. What if that happens. And when we drop beneath the story, we often see that this moment is a little less of a catastrophe than the mind is making it out to be.

So, as you're going about your day today, and you notice your mind caught up in all of the what if's just practice shifting what if to what is. A very simple tip to practice mindfulness and reduce some of your anxiety. Thank you for your practice. Let's settle in for today's meditation and we'll be back tomorrow with one more tip. Talk to you soon.