It’s an increasingly demanding world we are living in. It’s a world that bombards us with messages from our televisions, social media, print media, and beyond, about how we should incessantly be achieving in career, relationships, lifestyle, and everywhere in between. In an attempt to remain on top of it all, we do a lot of juggling, and it gets exhausting. This kind of living breeds anxiety, as we find ourselves worried that we haven’t done it all just right, that perhaps we’ve made too many mistakes, not measured up, irreparably harmed our futures, or simply don’t have enough of what we need within or around us to be happy or successful.
As a Positive Psychology Coach, I work with a lot of clients who are living with intense anxiety as a result of unachievable standards they’ve created for themselves. I understand these challenges quite well, as I once lived with them too. Like many of my clients, in addition to self-esteem issues, my own anxiety exacerbated to psychosomatic symptoms like headaches, neck and back pain, TMJ, and ultimately panic attacks.
At the lowest point of my own anxiety battles, I found a remedy in a most unexpected place, and I offer the gift of this remedy to my clients today. The remedy is not chemical and it cannot be purchased. It doesn’t require working even longer or harder to achieve more and more and more. The antidote to this worry and rumination simply lies in seeing all the good we already possess. It can be found in practicing gratitude.
The following are 8 ways to reduce anxiety by contemplating your gratitude:
- Contemplate the people presently in your life that you are grateful for: Anxiety can be an isolating experience. It keeps us stuck in a negative mental loop, which can occasionally lead us to avoid others, or not be fully present when we are with them. Take time to consider the people in your life that you are grateful for—friends, family, neighbors, pastor, mail carrier, doctor, hair stylist, restaurant server, or even the stranger you just talked with on line at the supermarket. How do these people contribute to bringing you joy or comfort? When we remind ourselves of all the people in our lives that make it better, we feel calmer and more at peace. How can you thank those you care about for the positive impact they have on your life? Expressing appreciation brings us a sense of harmony and brings us back into our hearts and out of our heads. Savor your moments with those you love and encounter in your travels.
- Consider the past relationships you are grateful for: The loss of relationships through death or severed ties can leave us feeling lonely, rejected, and even fearful to fully connect in present or future relationships. However, even a relationship that ends provides us with gifts. What memories do you savor from these relationships? You get to keep these. How did this person help you learn, grow, or be a better version of yourself? You get to keep this wisdom and personal growth too. No relationship is wasted. We can decide to keep the good from them, let go of hurt and fear, and recognize that our future connections, whether short or long, will give us new gifts and joys.
- Assess the positive life experiences you are grateful for: When we are feeling low, it can seem as if life has always been stressful or unfair. We need to remind ourselves of all the good we’ve experienced. When you look back at your life thus far, what journeys and moments have brought you the most joy and satisfaction? Perhaps it was a concert you attended as a teenager, a college course you loved, graduation, a great project at work, a promotion, a painting you worked on for weeks, a vacation to Europe, or volunteering at the soup kitchen. Close your eyes and bring yourself back to those experiences, breathe them in, then go out and experience some more of what life has to offer.
- Determine the negative life experiences you are grateful for: We can spend quite a bit of time ruminating over the negative experiences we’ve had in our lives, and even allow them to taint our present experiences. The irony however, is that if we really think about it, the challenges we face often provide us with the greatest wisdom and transformation in our lives. Instead of allowing previous challenges to poison our minds, we can consider what gifts they have given us. Whether it’s an argument with our partner, loss of a job, loss of a home, car accident, or serious illness, we learn something about ourselves and gain strength that propels us toward something different or sometimes even better.
- Reflect on what external resources you are grateful for: Each of us has external resources to draw comfort from, whether it’s a home, food on the table, money to pay the bills, good health, a reliable vehicle, or a great job opportunity. When we are feeling that we do not have enough, its critical to remind ourselves of everything that we already have.
- Ponder what external shortages you are grateful for: It may seem counterintuitive, but we can even be grateful for shortages in our lives. Perhaps living on a shorter salary has taught us what things we really need, helped us to be more economical with our money, and led us to appreciate a vacation or dinner out more fully than we did when we had a larger income. We all live with one shortage or another at various points in our lives. They teach us to appreciate the little things, for its it’s those little things that truly mean the most.
- Assess the personal strengths you are grateful for: What are you great at doing? What capabilities just come naturally to you? What do others tell you that you’re great at or always come to you for? Each of us have unique strengths, gifts given to us by a higher power. The greatest way to show our gratitude for these gifts is to make sure we express them and give them to others. By doing so, we multiply their positive impact.
- Determine the personal imperfections you are grateful for: As much as we each have strengths, we also have imperfections—the things we struggle with. We can either worry that we are unlovable because of them and attempt to hide these imperfections from others, or we can embrace them as part of the tapestry of our unique beauty. Gratitude for our imperfections removes any shame we may have about them. When we become grateful for our flaws, we learn to love ourselves wholly, authentically, and without need for some unrealistic standard of perfection. It allows us to be honest about ourselves, and in doing so, we help offer others permission to do the same.
