I love that this choice is available! We can continue to suffer, or we can begin to find our way to freedom. Here’s how.

An essential first step to finding release from anxiety is to recognize that thoughts are present as part of your experience.

If you’re feeling anxious, you will find thoughts running nonstop in your mind—of judgment, comparison, worry, doubt, and expectation. So much thinking!

And if you explore these thoughts, you’ll notice they’re telling you stressful and negative stories about yourself, other people, and the world—that you’re inadequate, that others are not to be trusted, and that it’s not safe to let your guard down and simply be.

Thinking thoughts means that you’re feeding what they’re telling you with your attention. You believe them and assume that they’re real and important. This is what roots the anxiety even deeper in your being—and takes you farther from the peace you’re looking for.

Let yourself feel into how persistent these thoughts are and how tense you feel when you’re chewing on them.

Then, from your deep knowing that they’re just stressful mental chatter, stop being interested in them as much as possible. Ignore everything the mind is telling you.

Instead of getting lost in thinking, take a few loving breaths and feel the sensations of the breath in your body. Take a big stretch, do some jumping jacks, or expand your attention to what you see, hear, and feel in the present moment. Do anything that helps you ignore the cycling thoughts.

Open to a couple of things you feel grateful for to activate your essential capacity for love. If someone is with you, meet them with presence coming through your eyes. 

See how your whole experience changes? With your attention now in deep connection with the present moment—and not in your mind—you’re relaxed, effortlessly being, here and alive.

It may take many journeys through this process as you find peace for a short time before the mind and body seize up again. But it doesn’t matter. Don’t lose faith. Anxiety doesn’t hold a candle to the power of love and truth. 

I receive emails almost every day from people whose experience has been transformed by their fierce determination for freedom that just won't quit.

Keep trusting in the life force that is infinitely greater than your false personal self. Keep returning to the aliveness that is who you are.

This is the anchor that will set you free.