Self-help for anxiety relief

Only You Can Control Your Mind

A part of the human experience is the mind, your mind.

Your mind can be the most creative and influential tool that you possess, or it can be the source of mind wrenching and painful anxiety.

And, although especially when you are trapped in the throes of fear, worry, and stress it may seem to be a force that is greater than you, you and only you have the power to use your thoughts to empower you, or let anxiety, fear, and worry destroy you.

Recently, I read that anxiety is the most significant problem from which people suffer. Yet, anxiety is a problem of the mind and emotions. Anxiety is a problem that is entirely self-generated. Anxiety is a trap of your mind blended with a strong dose of fear.

If you suffer from anxiety, you may think it is something that just happens, but anxiety is a result of what you are thinking and feeling.

You may also believe that your thoughts and your feelings just happen, and are beyond your control, but that is simply not true. What you think is within your power to control.

Anxiety is produced by the content of your thoughts and then enhanced by your fears.
– Genevieve Gerard

For over five thousand years and throughout the ageless teachings on meditation, learning to calm, and control the content of your mind has been the goal of meditation.

In the teachings of the Buddha, as he engaged in his search for enlightenment, he is reported to have described the human mind as being like a bunch of drunken monkeys.

Ancient schools of meditation refer to the “chattering of the mind” as “Chitta.” Therefore, I believe, quieting and gaining mastery over your mind “Chitta” is the way to win mastery over any anxiety or fear you may have.

Consider if you will how the content of your thoughts impacts your anxiety. Thoughts of worry become laced with fear especially when you let your mind engage in “what if thoughts.” You can spin out thousands of “what if scenarios” that will fuel your anxiety. What if it doesn’t work out, what if they don’t like me, what if I never get over my fear of __________, what if I never do anything with my life? These “what if” thoughts can run in the background of your mind creating anxiety and negative thought-forms.

Take five minutes observation and let me guide you through the first steps to reduce your “what if” fears and anxiety with this simple exercise.

An Anti-Anxiety Exercise

Set a timer for five minutes.

Get a piece of paper out and for the next five minutes count and record how many times your mind starts a thought with the “what if” words.

Don’t worry about what the content of the what if thought is. Just count the number of times you lead into thought with “what if.” If you notice a particular “what if” thought is repetitive, and for most of us there will be several “what if” thoughts that repeat themselves during your five minutes, record the content of that thought.

At the end of the exercise stop and look at the number of times your “mind chatter” engaged in imagining what you fear could happen or might happen.

Once you have made that count, take the second step by noticing the content of your fears. Realizing that the “what ifs” are not something that is real or that has ever happened. They are only creations of your fears and imagination.

Noticing this makes it possible to begin to gain mastery over your mind, and by extension gain mastery over your life.

As the second step of this exercise, I suggest you continue to pay attention to the content of your thoughts for a few more minutes from a perspective of what I call the detached observer. When you notice a “what if” thought that contains circumstance of what you fear rather than what you want, pause, consider the thought and edit it, change it, revise it, and reframe it to what you do want.

Because your thoughts have power, it is crucial for your personal happiness that you free your mind from worries and fears. You are the creator of your reality because the Universe takes its creative power from your thoughts.

That makes your thoughts very important.

Gaining mastery over the content of your mind is the way to empower you to free yourself from anxiety and fear and more importantly, live your dreams and be happy. Paying attention to the content of your thoughts and imaginings is the way you can change and heal your life.

Change your thoughts and you change your world.
– Norman Vincent Peal

Your thoughts contain your creative power, and they are available only to you. Nobody can do it for you, and nobody can do it to you. By understanding this, you claim your power to live your dreams and your deepest desires. Ponder on this. You are the director of your life.

Learning to quiet the negative input of your fears begins the empowering process of mind-mastery. You must begin by noticing the content of your mind chatter and then choose to take control of it.

You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.
– Marcus Aurelius

You alone have the power to unlock your mind. Your mind is more powerful than you imagine. Your mind activates your creative power. What you choose to create with that power is a part of your free-will.

It is essential to understand this important fact because it is by using the power of your mind to create the life of your dreams and desires that you open yourself to the full potential of what it means to be a human being.

You are created to live your life in active co-creation with the Creator. Your happiness, your sorrow, your joys, and your challenges are all within your creative power through the power of your mind.

What you create through that power is your choice. This creative power is a part of the mystery of the miracle of creation when a spark of Divine Light (your Soul) joined with the creative process of fertilization that resulted in your birth. Yes, you are a physical being, but I also know you are a Spiritual being, a creator of life in harmony and cooperation with the creator of all of life.

Your thoughts have the power to bring energy into manifestation.
– Genevieve Gerard

That creative process occurs with thought. A thought, every thought, is a part of that creative process. Your life force and every thought-form is energy and energy is subject to the Universal Principle of Life. One of the Laws of the Universe is that “energy follows thought.”

The challenge with this law is that energy follows thought without judgment about the content of the thought. There is no safety mechanism to make the energy follow only positive thoughts that bring about what you want or desire. You and only you are that safety mechanism as you learn to control your mind and direct the content of your thoughts.

That is a great freedom and a great power. However, if you are spending that power on worrying, being fearful, anxiously projecting through “what if” this (bad thing) or “what if” that (bad thing) can happen, you are using that power against yourself.

If you don’t want to create your worst fears, then you need to learn to harness this fantastic creative power by learning to control your mind.

The simple exercise listed above is a tool you can use to start to help you gain control over the power of your mind. Don’t forget, to live the life you desire, the life of your dreams, living in the now and controlling the thoughts of your mind is essential.

Letting your Chitta and mind chatter float willy-nilly out into the Universe as an instruction manual for your life is wasting the power you were granted when the spark of Divine Light (your Soul) merged with the creation of your life.

Because there is always free will, and you always have the choice to create your fears or create your dreams I ask you to understand that only you can control your mind. From that understanding, I encourage you to harness that power and use it for you to transform your life.

Below I list some other articles and a guided meditation I have written to help cleanse and empower you. Remember, it is your life. This life is your adventure. You can claim this power.

Namaste,

Genevieve

The Keys to Harnessing Your Thoughts to Create Your Life
Be the Director of Your Life
How to Harness the Power of Your Mind
At Each Moment You Decide
Recommended Meditation

Cleansing Vortex Meditation:
Use This To Clear Away Limitations and Manifest Your Soul Purpose

Last Updated 10-09-2019

About the author:
Genevieve Gerard teaches Transformational Consciousness – from first awakening to enlightened Soul awareness. She helps you experience the joy that results from the spontaneous “touch of your soul.”

The Truth About Worrying

Genevieve Gerard

The Truth About Worrying

– You can’t cross a bridge till you come to it.

One of the truths that I have observed is that most of what I spend my time worrying about never happens.

That means all of that energy of worry was wasted.

Right next to that observation was the realization that if something I worried about did happen, the worry did not change the situation. The worry I had invested did not make things better. I had to handle the situation when it happened in the midst of the life circumstance in which it happened.

All worrying had done is sap the strength I needed to cope with things and increase my fear response. It did not improve my ability to handle the situation. It did not decrease my sorrow or frustration one little bit.

What I did realize when I looked back on the events that I had been worried about was the actual facts were very different from my worries.

However, what the time I spent worrying did was diminish my appreciation of what was actually happening in my life.

When I objectively consider the time and the energy I had consumed with worrying, I was able to see that it was a waste.

When I further considered the nature of the worry, it was mostly based on the fear that I would lose something or someone I had in my life in the present, so diminishing my appreciation of what was real in my life at that moment was a significant loss.

The joy of the moment that I sacrificed to worry cannot be recaptured. It led me to understand that worrying is a joy spoiler and a life spoiler.

Worrying brings you out of what is actually happening in your life, in your real life, into a future that may never happen.

Right now in the present moment, the future is unformed and uncreated. As such, what will happen in it is unclear. No matter how hard you try, you cannot know what will happen. You cannot change that.

What is interesting is that no matter how much time or effort you give to worrying in the present, it does not change anything.

When you expand your awareness to consider the principles that energy follows thought and other factors about life, such as the Law of Attraction, you realize that worrying is like praying for what you don’t want.

In the words of folk wisdom.

In the journey of life, you can’t cross a bridge until you come to it.

Having been mostly raised by sage women who were my grandmothers, I recall their different ways of making the same point. One would say,

Never trouble trouble, till trouble troubles you.
– Mary Fisbeck

The other expressed the same wisdom by advising,

Sufficient unto the day are the problems thereof.
– Florence Hook

Truly, you can only live your life in the present moment. The past is over almost as quickly as it happens. This is an important fact. Nothing you can do can ever bring the past back.

Each moment brings its own gift and its own experience.
– Genevieve Gerard

That there is only right now to live in, gives you great freedom.

You are free from any past failures, past problems and mistakes.

Likewise, whatever challenges may be facing you at the moment can be tolerated when you realize it is limited to now. It is not how things will always be. That provides strength and courage to coping in the present.

This fact of living helped me to understand how we can be assured we will never be given more than we can handle.

Staying in present time is very important. The minute your mind offers the lie that “it has always been like this,” or “it will always be like this,” your strength falters.

The minute that you shift your awareness to the realization that the past is past and you are not limited by it or controlled by it in any way, your perspective changes.

Being in the present is of immense importance. Staying aware of now is of great value.

More and more I find I want to be living in a Big Here and a Long Now.
– Brian Eno

It is significant that this all takes place in your mind. Thankfully, your mind can be under your control.

Indeed, a primary advantage of learning to meditate and practicing meditation is learning to harness the power of your thoughts and your mind.

Indeed the technique of cognitive reframing gives you great power that demonstrates how you can change your life, by changing your mind. Reframing is a way of viewing and experiencing events, ideas, concepts and emotions to find interpretations that are more positive.

To stop worrying, to release your fears and harness the power of your mind allows you to be a force for living a happier, more successful and more empowered life.

An anxious heart weighs a man down, but a kind word cheers him up.
– Proverbs 12:25

Using the tools and techniques of meditation are a significant step in seeing the truth about worrying. The more you can bring the power of your mind under your conscious control, the more freedom and the more joyful your life can be.

Worry is twisted up in your fears, so when you choose not to worry, you are making a conscious step in releasing your fears.

I encourage you to choose to live your life trusting in life to only deliver to you what you can handle in the now and let yourself enjoy and appreciate what is happening today, free from your worries and fears.

Dispelling Worry Meditation

To assist you in finding the truth about worrying, I offer you a little meditation that is straightforward and easy to incorporate into your life.

The first step is to use the power of your mind to choose to stop worrying consciously.

Affirm:
Whatever comes into my life I will handle when it is in my life.

Now take a deep relaxing breath.

Release any fears and consciously commit to considering a problem when it is real. Decide to cross a bridge only when it emerges in your life path.

Certainly, on life’s path, you cannot cross a bridge until you come to it. You may find that just this shift in your thoughts significantly reduces your stress.

Spend 2-3 minutes a day observing the content of your “mind chatter.”

Each time you notice that you are worrying, stop. Take three deep breaths while you bring your attention and awareness into the present moment, into the now.

Then consciously with your mind, replace the negative thought with an affirmation or reframe the just past event that seems to have stimulated your worry or fear response with a positive statement.

You could have at the ready some affirmations that engage the power of your mind in a positive direction. For your convenience, I have written some affirmations that you can incorporate into your life.

Affirm:
I will consider and evaluate each situation in my life based upon what is happening NOW.

Affirm:
Today’s challenges are sufficient for me today.

Affirm:
What is past is powerless over me.
The future awaits creation.
Only right now can I make the right choice.

Finally, live in gratitude for the blessings and abundance you have in your life, right here, right now.

I encourage and invite you to free your life from the stress and strain of worrying and stand confidently in the present moment. Trust yourself and trust life to provide bridges for you over troubled waters that you only need to cross when they are right before you.

Namaste,

Genevieve Gerard

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