In my last post I talked about 10 different ways to sooth and stress and anxiety. The first tip was affirmations. Affirmations are helpful because they help you challenge negative thoughts and thought patterns, to be replaced by positive ones and reinforce positivity in your life. Repeating affirmations can reprogram our thinking patterns so, overtime we begin to think and act differently, bringing us a happier more positive life and lifestyle.
“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”
― Lao Tzu
Choosing affirmations is a simple way to help re-wire your mind and mentality to be happier and more positive and less stressful, leading to a happier life. You can type them in your phone, to look at when ever you feel stressed. You can write them on post-its, and place them around your home. You can also write them on your bathroom mirror(s) with dry erase mirrors, you'll see them everyday and you can always change them whenever you need to. I have affirmations written on my bathroom mirror that help me be more happy and positive.
Sometimes all we need is a moment, a break, to breath and relax. Here is a video of some affirmations to help with anxiety.
I have put together a list of affirmations. If any of them resonate with you, please use them.
Affirmations for anxiety relief
I am the most important person in my life
I am strong
I forgive myself and set myself free
I let go of anxious thoughts
I trust the unfolding of my life
I am safe and protected
I breathe in calmness
I let go of the past
I have the power to change how I feel
I am loved
I am safe
I am protected
I release what I cannot change
I am filled with peace
I am at ease with change
I am wanted
I make others smile
I give myself permission to let go
I am in control
I am mindful
I am confident
I am whole
I'm doing my best
I accept myself
I let go of my stress
I take one step at a time
I am calm
Peace washes over me
I hold myself with love
I see the beauty of life
I am focused on the present moment
My tension melts away easily
My mind is calm
I release my worries
I can handle anything
I can thrive through any situation
I trust myself
I trust the Universe
Only good and positivity flow to me
I am positive and happy
I am a beautiful soul
I shine brightly
I am grateful for life
The present moment is safe and calm
My life is easy and filled with joy
I am tranquil
I attract calming energy
I am at ease
I am present
I am at peace
I have assembled these affirmations into audio and are used subliminally with meditation music and bird songs in the 10 minute video below, to also help ease stress and anxiety.
I still struggle with anxiety but this definitely helps me and is one of the first things I go to, to sooth my anxiety. I know how hard anxiety can affect you especially with how the world is right now. I hope for your mental, emotional and physical health. I encourage you to have faith and be brave, you are stronger than your anxiety, stress, and fears.
Find balance. Live well. Be happy.
Be true to you. Be the light in the world.
Thank you.
Lavender Photo credit to - https://pixabay.com/photos/lavender-field-purple-flowering-7304564/
Quote Photo credit to - https://www.pinterest.com/pin/72479875227841077/ - https://i.pinimg.com/originals/3a/e8/cb/3ae8cbc4e860657558a38a21c4c7554c.jpg
Top 10 ways to sooth and relieve stress and anxiety
Anxiety. My long life nemesis. I have found that sometimes it takes hours or even days to ease my anxiety after a trigger. At times my dreams (not nightmares) will trigger anxiety that affect the whole following day. Sometimes I won't even know the trigger and I will just sit with the physical feelings and responses of anxiety. Which is very stressful, which triggers more anxiety. I have found myself in this situation quite a bit over the last couple of years. I have also found I have different types of anxiety with different symptoms corelated to different triggers
The last few months have been particularly difficult. Today is one of those days where I had a trigger over 8 hours ago but I am up, kept awake because of the tension in my chest, tightness in my throat an overwhelming sensation I am supposed to be doing something looming over me without any idea of what it is, and a very activated mind with a steady flow of thinking.
I am mostly confident that my anxiety isn't a serious condition. I feel that my anxiety (just as my depression) is mostly created and fed by my current situation. So life likes to test all of us. It throws something at us and we can handle it, so it adds more and more until 1) I have cracked. or 2) I have proven my strength. Either way I learn something, usually in retrospect. So this last few weeks has been sort of like that. Throws a weight on me, and then another and another. There have been moments this week where I just wonder how am I going to make it through. These are the times where I tend to have tunnel vision. It's harder to be positive but I keep moving forward until I am out of the situation.
I know most if not all of us have these or similar experiences. I am sure there are people who either are so set with their rose colored glasses they don't acknowledge stress or people who have become so disciplined in spirituality and life that they realize there is no need for it in any situation, other than life or death. I want to share my tips for relieving the stress and anxiety of when life likes to throw everything at you.
* I am not a licensed doctor or medical professional at all. If you have or suspect you have a clinical form of anxiety, please search out a doctor for diagnoses and treatment. I am only giving stress relieving tips and suggestions.
I try to first analyze my anxiety/stress and ask myself what is bothering me
It might sound silly, but identifying the trigger or root cause helps relieve some of the stress and can also help pinpoint possible resolution for it. But I only do this if I don't know why I am feeling anxiety or stress. Once I know I try to re-direct my focus to the solution and away from the problem.
Positive talk and self love talk is such a key to overcoming stressful times. If you are being mean or hard on yourself over situations even ones outside of your control it makes the burden even heavier and the effects last even longer. Think of your best friend, or your most favorite person on the planet. Would you be mean and belittle them if they were having a challenging day? I hope not. They wouldn't deserve that. Neither do you, treat yourself like you are the most important person in your life, because you are.
2. Hydration and healthier diet
Our bodies are the vehicles for our souls. If we don't nourish and take care of them they will suffer, begin to stress and break down. Dehydration stresses the body, lowering blood pressure and making your heart beat faster. Sometimes simply drinking more water or choosing a healthier food option can change the whole projection of your day, week, month or even year.
Check out this article about dehydration from Optum Perks
Just like a good hydration and nutrition we need ample oxygen. When we get stressed out, worked up or experience anxiety we tend to take shorter shallower breaths. It pumps up our heart rate. Adrenaline seems to run rampant for me. But the benefits of deep breathing is reducing heart rate, relaxes muscles, and brings a calm.
4. Earthing
During the warmer months this is one of my favorite methods to help sooth my stress and anxiety. I hadn't heard of it before last year, but I am so grateful for it. It helped me through the hardest things if my life. Just to intentionally walk, sit, lay in the soft grass of my yard and reconnect with the vibration and energy of the earth.
Burning incense or using lavender essential oil in my diffuser helps with de-stressing, anti-anxiety and helping you to find your peace and calm. I am just relaxing or calming one of my senses, to help calm all of my senses.
There are many benefits to aromatherapy. This article from Sublime Life has many oils, uses and benefits included.
Here is a great article on the benefits of burning incense from Mindbodygreen.com
6. Mindfulness/Meditation
Being mindful helps bring and keep your focus on the now. Anxiety has a lot of focus on the future. So when you bring your focus to the now and just take each moment as you're in it, anxiety can subside. Meditation helps bring a calm to your mind, spirit and body, while reducing negative emotions.
7. Music
I have found that depending on the type of stress or anxiety I am feeling, different types of music help in different ways. If I am starting to feel lost or disconnected from self because of the constant demands of the world; listening to my favorite music (usually punk or rock) brings me back into me and helps(metaphorically) shake of the dust of negative vibes and refreshes my energy. Other times I'll need calming music or soothing nature sounds to drown out the over stimulations of the world around me and relax the tensions built up inside.
This video is one of my most favorite that I have made to date. I have noticed the ease of tensions and stress so quickly even though that wasn't the intention of the video when I created it. I am quite happy with this beneficial side effect.
8. Rest/Sleep
Sometimes I find that when nothing else works, to take some time to rest. Either take a nap or a good nights rest. Often I wake feeling much better.
Check out this article from MedicalNewsToday.com about the benefits of deep sleep for anxiety.
9. Exercise and yoga
Exercise distracts from the anxiety, while releasing tension from your muscles and your brain releases feel good mood enhancing hormones. Yoga, has the benefits from stretching, exercise, meditation, mindfulness and healthy breathing, all wrapped into one.
Check out this article about the Underrated benefits of exercise from cheatdaydesign.com
This article from verywellmind.com is very insightful and educational about the benefits of exercise and mental health.
Here's is a great article from PsychologyToday.com that tells of the benefits of yoga for the relief of stress and anxiety.
10. Grounding
I do admit this is a technique I have seen everywhere I have not utilized it. I wanted to share it anyway to help anyone who might need it. I think it is very beneficial, bringing you back into your body and into the present moment through your senses.
I know there are so many other techniques for helping sooth stress and anxiety such as using stones, tapping, or scripting/journaling; yet as I stated with the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding these are techniques I haven't used before but I see often. I hope you take the time for self care and self love. Especially in trying times to relieve the harsh effects of stress and anxiety, to live a fulfilling happy life.
Since my life has so drastically changed over the last few years. I have learned so much about positivity, spirituality and striving to be my best self. I use affirmations. Meditation. Mindfulness. I create and listen to subliminal meditations when my conscious mind is too in charge. I create positive content on Youtube, Instagram, and Tiktok to help share my learnings, to help spread light and love.
One thing that hasn't really change all that much is how I revel in my originality. Maybe, when I was really young, just figuring out who I am, I wanted to be like others, because I didn't love and accept myself. But as I got older maybe pre-teen age I stopped fighting how different I seemed and how different I felt from everyone around me. Eventually I grew to cherish being different.
I encourage all to wrap themselves up in their originality like a nice warm blanket. This is who you are, this is how you're meant to be. Sure, there are things we don't like about ourselves or want to change about ourselves, but originality has nothing to do with that. Being your true authentic self is about embracing your core self. Being original isn't about being extreme in your outer appearance, unless that is truly how you feel you are. Who we are at the center, underneath all of the physical states and fleeting emotions. We shouldn't be trying to be like anyone else or trying to be better than anyone else, because their isn't a ranking system. The Universe doesn't work like that. There is no comparability. We can and should only strive to be better than who we were yesterday. Just be yourself.
Only people who love themselves (at least a little), can embrace their true core self. If you hate or dislike anything about yourself, that isn't embracing who you are. My advice if you look in the mirror and see things you hate, or there are things you dislike about yourself, it is because they don't represent the core you. If you act out of character towards someone and it bothers you it's because it isn't true to you. So when you see things you don't like or love about yourself, be kind and loving with yourself and realize those are just notes on what you wish to change.
You need self love to succeed in this life. You are the most important person in your life. So, take a few moments every morning and right before bed. Catch yourself in the mirror. Look in your eyes. Tell yourself that you love yourself. You might not mean it at first but if you continually do it, one day you'll look in the mirror and realize you do love yourself. When you find that love for yourself, being your original, authentic, true self will be easy and freeing.
You'll be one step closer to your manifestations and the life of your dreams.
Bad days happen to all of us. Most days I have the strength and capacity to stay positive, or to turn it positive. I'm a silver-lining kind of person. Unlike when I was younger where my days ran away with me, the external situations dictated my emotions. Where it was either that I was on top of the world or the it was the end of the world. I lived emotionally in extremes.
I have had quite a life and I am not even old. I have lived through some very difficult things. I have survived through a challenging childhood, being a single teen mom, faced betrayal from people I love, from friends to family. I have endured the damage of lies and rumors. I have been cheated on, taken for granted, emotionally and mentally abused. I have had to come face to face and conquered some of my deepest fears. I have survived, strived and thrive.
Yesterday was one of those rarer and rarer days where life throws so much at me I feel the weight of the world and begin to feel myself crack. No matter what I did I couldn't bring myself out of the darkening clouds of the storm. No silver lining to be seen. If I had been younger, without the experience and wisdom I have gained, a day like yesterday would have been detrimental and it would have been heavier to endure.
So... even though yesterday felt like a deep, dark storm that I could not escape. My view of days like this have changed with my life. Once a burdening disturbance that controlled my reaction. Rolling black clouds, violent winds and crashes of lightning from the universe are no longer commands controlling my emotions and outer reactions, but more of an indication of either: a test, trying my will and strength to endure, to prove my ability, capability, and or deserving of coming blessings. Or stirring up the stagnant disease in life to clear, cleanse and make way for something new and better. Or simply proof that what I want, what I manifest is on it's way with the force of a fierce gale that it can't help but stir up my life a bit.
So although the darkened skies linger into today. I no longer hold the naïve belief that the world is against me. I hold strong to the belief that something amazing is just around the corner. I just have to get a little wet in this cleansing rain.
I hope through my storms that I face in my life I can help people find the silver linings, find the light in life. Help people realize they are strong and to instill courage in anyone I meet to face their own storms with faith, bravery, and positivity.
My life has changed so much in the years that have passed since I began this blog. Especially in the last few years that I haven't posted. SO many of the things I have had to face have changed me. I have not only grown stronger from certain struggles but found that I was stronger than I thought. I have learned to love myself. Since my post last week. I went through and read the old posts I wrote and I keep them for nostalgia but I can't help but look at them with wiser eyes and disagree with certain sentiments.
One of my past posts I was disagreeing with people who say you need to love yourself. I went on a rant about how I love my husband and kids more than myself. I admitted to hating myself somedays. I talked about how everyone dislikes or even hates things about themselves and that was ok. That we are our own worst enemies... I questioned if it was possible to love myself in a non vain way.
I can't help but feel sadness and almost pity for my past self. To actually have thought and believed these things. I have grown so much. I love myself more than I can express. It is not ego. I do not believe I am better than anyone else, also I do not believe I am any less than anyone else. There aren't things I dislike about myself, just things I am improving on. There is always potential to grow and be exactly who and how I want to be. I am almost disappointed in my past post, in sharing self hating statements. I am a wonderful person and I deserve better from myself.
Just as you deserve better from yourself. I have so much love for myself that I am able to have a full cup for others. I feel we are too hard on ourselves. Too unloving. I have been on a journey of self love and self re-discovery. I have grown so much spiritually. I am wiser not just from age but from the journey. I want to help all I can to take a journey of self love and re-discovery. To find the best life within themselves.
I try to help spread light and love to anyone I can. I create videos on youtube with this purpose. I make subliminal message videos to help re-wire the brain; for healing, or to be happier, or any number of things we as individuals need help and encouragement to grow. We all have the potential to live our best lives. We all have the potential to exceed our own expectations. We have the potential to achieve our goals and dreams. We just need to have faith, wisdom and courage to succeed.
It has been a long time since I last made a post. My life literally had been flipped upside down and inside out. The last few years have been the hardest in my life and I hope for goodness sake that I never have to face anything like them again. The country struggling with the horror/science fiction reality of the pandemic of COVID-19 and the harsh, unlivable cost of the economy are just drops in the sea of the struggles I faced. I have found my strength, my hope and my light.
I have rebuilt myself from the rubble of my experiences, the ashes of who I once was. Growing into a new me. Each day is a step up the hill out of the crater of destruction and pain. Every minute the past is further behind and I have learned how to love myself.
One thing I have learned is in trying and failing I learn and grow. Instead of being too afraid and never making progress at all. I know for a good part of my life I was afraid of so much. The last few years have crushed my walls and boundaries and pushed me out of my comfort zones. Those struggles and painful years took away my security in the life I was living. A life in a safety bubble. Thrown into the depths of my fears. Failing at escaping them, I grew to face them.
Through facing my fears. In encountering all of the struggles that the last few years has presented me. I have learned true forgiveness, the strength and endurance of genuine unconditional love, unwavering faith, and the ability to let go of things and relationships that either don't serve me or are toxic in my life. Forcing new maturity and wisdom in place of the youthful innocence I once had.
There are many things that I still am struggling through. Growing into a stronger, healthier relationship and fighting my own insecurities at the same time. Raising smart, beautiful, amazing children who test EVERY boundary I have, nearly every waking moment. Seeing my oldest grow and begin his life away from home, brings not only pride but pain and a whole new set of fears to face. Surviving in this pandemic and failing economy. Having an ever growing list of goals and ambitions, knowing to succeed I have to risk failure. Also knowing that if I fail I can grow success from it. Either way making the attempt.
So through my struggles and failures, past and present, I have grown and still grow. I have started a journey to help bring light, love and beauty into other peoples lives. I have a Youtube channel centralized around this goal. As well, I create products on Spring.com with this purpose.
I hope I can help enlighten and inspire anyone I meet to love themselves, grow beyond their boundaries, and to spread light and love to all they meet. So, with that I hope for your love, light, and growth.
Be true to you, be the light in the world. Thank you.
