If you’ve ever heard, “Clean your room!” as advice for coping with stress, it’s because of this very reason. Clutter, be it at home or work, is generally a significant cause of anxiety because it subconsciously acts as a reflection of yourself.

Write down your automatic thoughts, even if they’re not too clear in your mind yet. Watch any self-talk, any questions that pop up, any explanations or stories you immediately begin to tell yourself. The tricky thing is that the most stubborn and damaging automatic thoughts are usually the most vague and difficult to articulate—at first.

Chevalier asked participants of the study to put their feet or bodies in contact with the earth for one hour. He then tested them and found a statistically significant boost in the self-reported moods and levels of wellbeing in those who were in contact with the earth versus those who spent the hour without this contact.

Anxiety and overthinking have a way of “fracturing” our attention and creating chaos and confusion. When we deconstruct all of these thoughts, however, we see that many of them are just noise, and we don’t necessarily have to entertain them. Maybe you’re primarily concerned about your health, and off that single worry branches a million other thoug

The right attitude turns adversity and obstacles into an opportunity for creative solutions. Stress and worry can be channeled into planning and innovation.

The idea is that you actually achieve more by pursuing small, cumulative baby steps rather than trying to make big (intimidating!) quantum leaps. In Kanban, you use six core actions to shape the existing flow, and inch it gradually toward something better and better:

For example, when that negative inner voice chimes in with an anxious criticism or worry, you can deliberately ask your inner cheerleader to respond.

Autogenic training, visualization, and muscle relaxation are all, in a way, variations of the same theme: you want to learn to take control of where your conscious awareness is settling and guide it toward your body, the present moment, and the input from your five senses, and away from stressful rumination and overthinking.

There’s no point talking about time management without knowing what your goals and priorities are. Good time management depends entirely on the outcomes you’re aiming for, and you need to know what you value first. With your values in mind, you can start to decide what’s important and what isn’t; i.e., you can rank activities and tasks.