Increasing our mindfulness skills that are good for anxiety

Mindfulness is being aware of what is happening around you and what you are experiencing in the moment. Mindfulness, which includes not making any judgments while being in the moment, may sound difficult, but in fact all humans have this capacity.   

Thanks to mindfulness, we can not only live each moment to the fullest, but also cope with challenging emotions such as anxiety much more easily. Although more research is needed to understand how this mechanism works, mindfulness prevents reactions that lead to anxiety, fear and worry. By bringing awareness to your actual experiences in the moment, you can have more control over your behavior and your emotional world.

There are certain mindfulness skills that we need to have when working on anxiety. By engaging with your mindfulness skills, you can support your practice and help your awareness to grow. If you are asking, "But how?", you are in the right place.

The quality that supports all other behaviors is willpower and intention. When you bring your intention into the work on anxiety, you will find that you start to feel much more capable and powerful.

Looking from a new perspective can be very transformative. When you meet your anxiety with curiosity in this way, you are well on your way to transforming the experience. When you are willing to have another perspective, new possibilities will open up and this will help you to combat anxiety by changing your habitual thoughts and feelings.

When you have another perspective, new possibilities will open up and help you to combat anxiety.

Patience helps you to endure and be resilient when anxiety becomes overwhelming. Patience gives you a broader perspective, allowing you to see that the anxious moments will pass in time.

It is the quality of meeting the experience as it is. For example, try to meet anxiety as it is and experience it as it is. Even if you don't like it, you can accept the anxiety in the moment, patiently observe it and convince yourself that the experience will pass.

This is basically experiencing the moment without filtering it through the filter of evaluation. Moving away from a preconceived perspective will allow you to see things more clearly. If you move away from evaluations, many sources of anxiety will disappear. When you feel anxious, having a non-evaluative stance will help you reset your mind and move into a more balanced state of mind.

It's meeting any experience as it is, without trying to change it. When you don't make an effort, you can learn not to cling to or reject the experience. When you are in the midst of strong anxiety, often the first reaction is to try to escape the situation. If you pause for a moment and try to be with your experience without making an effort, you have an opportunity to understand the experience more clearly and so you can choose how to respond. In this way, you will be less fearful of the thoughts, feelings and emotions that accompany anxiety.

Self-confidence is an important quality to develop your inner confidence. This quality will allow you to see yourself through your experience and have the awareness to recognize what is true and what is not true. With practice, you can develop the ability to trust yourself and the ability to manage anxiety and other uncomfortable emotions when you are facing them. It is very important to bring other qualities of mindfulness into your experience, to allow your emotions and let them be as they are.

Letting go or allowing is similar to not making an effort. This quality refers to giving whatever you encounter in the moment as much space as it needs. For example, if anxiety arises while you're meditating, you can choose to let it be there and work with it that way. Over time, you can learn how to use the anxiety until it disappears, just as the storm follows its own path across the sky.

Now give yourself some time to read the definitions again. As you read each one, stop for a minute and reflect on what this quality means to you, especially as you begin to work on anxiety. Try to try each behavior and see how it makes you feel. Finally, experience each behavior, describe your experience and note how it makes you feel.