Did you know that almost 50% of adults have reported feeling anxiety regularly?

This is anxiety defined as “a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.”

With the global events of the last ten years — the breakout of wars, the pandemic, the elections — everyone has faced uncertain outcomes. Whether it’s war or the economy or the pandemic, those are events for which — we know at an individual level — we cannot control the outcome.

Most of us also worry about things that impact us more directly. We worry about our children, feel nervous about our finances, or live with a general feeling of unease, expecting that “the other shoe will drop” at any moment.

For many years, I counted myself as part of that 50%. In fact, labeling what I was feeling as anxiety was not very helpful. Knowing that I had anxiety did not give me specific ways to deal with it.

In fact, many of the solutions were NOT solutions at all. Instead, they were methods of avoidance and self-soothing.

In my 20s and 30s, I incorrectly thought my anxiety was a result of not having the material things I wanted in my life. If only I could work harder and get those things — a new house, a new job, a new degree — then I would finally feel safe and more certain about my future. Then, I would find relief.

But I didn’t find relief. I only worked harder and harder until I was faced with burnout.

So what do we do about anxiety? Do we just have to learn to live with it?

I intuitively knew the answer to the latter question was “No,” so I set out to find what exactly I could do that didn’t involve giving up my hard-earned lifestyle.

I want to share what I found after many years of learning different tools.

Before I share the two strategies, I want to acknowledge that conquering anxiety is not an easy fix. It’s tempting to reach for a glass of wine to relax — and don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with having a glass of wine — but that choice does not provide the long-lasting relief we need if we want to avoid the health impact chronic anxiety has on our bodies and mental health.

The most helpful way to transform how anxiety affects our lives involves a mindset shift.

The power of the two strategies below begins with this mental shift: change the way you think about anxiety to focus on what you are able to control.

To transform how you deal with anxiety, you want to consider that the most important part in the definition of anxiety I shared above is not “worry” or “unease” but “uncertain.”

The strategies I provide below may seem simple and you may have even tried them before, but the IMPACT and EFFECTIVENESS of these simple strategies change when you couple them with the understanding that anxiety is a problem precisely because it hijacks your sense of personal power.

Even though many things in the outer world may be uncertain, you can regain a sense of certainty when you are able to directly impact your internal state by working with your own energy.

Here are two specific strategies you can use to start.

Strategy #1: Take It to the Body

How does anxiety feel in your body?

First, it is critical to become aware of what anxiety feels like in your body.

Why?

Because we can directly shift the way we feel in our bodies by using simple tools.

So consider what anxiety feels like for you. Many common symptoms are a

• Tightness in the throat
• inability to think straight
• Flutter in the chest
• Weight in the stomach.

Being able to identify what anxiety feels like in YOUR body allows you to start considering the options you have to be able to change that feeling.

When I learned how to work with the feeling as an “energy” in my body, I learned to translate the feeling I was having into information I could use.

Once you are aware of what you feel, you can begin to change the embodied sensation, or the feelings created by anxiety; more than likely it will be a sensation you may have become accustomed to and may even consider normal.

A simple tool you can use to shift the feeling in your body is your breath.

Even though focusing on your breath may seem like the last thing you want to do when you feel so much fluttering in the chest that all you really want to do is to run away and make it stop, taking several slow and deep intentional breaths is the fastest way to calm the anxiety.

Instead of running away, you want to choose to go deeper and settle into the body. When you breathe into the lower lobes of your lungs, your body processes much more oxygen which triggers a relaxation response.

With the focus on the breath, you’ll find that the external conditions have not changed, but your internal state has.

Strategy #2: Audit Your Behavior

Keep in mind that anxiety thrives when you feel a loss of control. This next strategy focuses on the one thing we can always control, our actions.

How does anxiety manifest in your behavior?

This second strategy asks that you begin to notice what anxiety looks like in your daily behavior. These actions you take on a daily basis directly impact the way you feel.

Take an audit. What is it in your daily life, your daily activities, that contributes to the anxious feeling?

Perhaps you are doing way too much; you are overcommitted and you don’t give yourself time to transition from one activity to the next or you may not give yourself enough time to relax at the end of the day.

You may have the behavior that is common among many. Can you relate to this?

The first thing you do when you wake up is to check your phone, your calendar, and your emails. By the time you get up, you already feel overwhelmed with everything there is to do. This feeling of having too much to do and needing to hurry so that everything can get done escalates throughout the day until we feel exhausted.

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During the day, you are so exhausted that you self-medicate or self-soothe. You may turn to hours of watching television, or endless scrolling on social media. Anything to escape and turn off the mind that has been in a mode of frantic activity since the morning.

Once you have completed your audit and are aware of behaviors that contribute to your anxiety, you can begin to choose differently. Take different action.

Make sure to be gentle with yourself. You will not notice problems with your actions or you may be unable to change them immediately. Becoming aware of them is your first step; after that, you can focus on changing the behavior.

How to take control and minimize anxiety

To begin to lessen the anxiety you feel and take control of what you are feeling, I shared two strategies that can help you first become aware of how specifically anxiety manifests in your life.

You can use the strategies of noticing what you are feeling in your body when you feel anxious AND noticing which of your daily actions or activities contribute to the anxiety.

We cannot control the world outside of us, but the sensations in our body and our daily actions are two areas we CAN control.

Also, many energy body practices can help you develop your awareness and help shift your behavior. Learning how to master the energy body is at the core of my work.

When you learn to engage and deliberately work with your energy body, you can control the amount of anxiety you feel and how often you feel it. You can notice when the anxious feelings begin to rise and then choose to do something different in the moment.

These two strategies are two seemingly small changes but they have a tremendous positive impact.

I’ve designed an Action Plan you can download and print that can help you integrate these two strategies into your life by giving you an opportunity to document your reflections. It’s easy to have a thought and then forget it; we remember when we write it out.

Commit to your transformation. You can access the Action Plan here.

I share much more about these and other deeper energy practices in the Mastering Your Energy Body class. Reach out to find out more information about the class.