Calm Your Thoughts: Stop Overthinking, Battle Stress, Stop Spiraling, and Start Living (The Path to Calm Book 2)

We can’t avoid every stress in life, but we often have a say in how these events unfold.

Triggers and warning signs are invitations to become aware in the moment and make the (admittedly difficult!) choice to take a different path. Luckily, this gets easier and easier the more you practice it.

In meditation, we watch stressful and anxious thoughts as they arise and consciously choose our response to them. But with careful avoidance and management, we can actually step in and tweak our lives so that stressful thoughts don’t get as much chance to appear

Step 3: Forego Your Escape Mechanism and do the Opposite

Stoic philosophy argues that unchecked emotions are some of the biggest enemies of your happiness and fulfillment. Rationality, perspective, and practicality are what drive Stoicism.

remember that you are not at the mercy of your anxiety, unless you agree to be. You can always stop and break down your experiences and work through them, consciously and on your own terms. Break it down: Situation Thoughts Emotions Bodily sensations Impulses/actions

Thankfully, there are plenty of other techniques underpinned by the same principles. You could try scattered counting, for example. Counting to ten is a common anger management technique, but it’s easy enough to become automatic, allowing your brain to carry on ruminating even as you count.

Last is the consequence of the behavior. This outcome is important because it is often one that reinforces the behavior. If the consequence is one that is genuinely undesirable, most unwanted behaviors will not be repeated, but if there is some sort of reward that is incidentally received, then the behavior will continue.

Now ask the question again: Why is that?