Confession: I get anxious. Do you ever get that feeling in the pit of your stomach and, for lack of better terms, feel like you’re about to vomit?
Feeling anxious and stress is common. If you experience stress and anxiety over work, school, money, a big event, or any other mega life-changes, you’re not alone. The National Institute for Mental Health estimates that over 40 million people (or 18% of the population) in the U.S. experience anxiety.
How to overcome stress and anxiety
Life is full of ups and downs, and big tasks to tackle. You can first overcome stress by realizing what motivational speaker, Brian Tracy states: 99% of what you worry about never happens anyways.
The common natural cures for overcoming anxiety are exercising or talk therapy. Exercising does wonders, but my number one way of dealing with anxiety goes against almost everything I believe about personal finance and life.
I teach in Best Money Class Ever (a four-week class that’s like CrossFit, but with money! ) to plan for your future. That can be having a plan to get out of debt, buy a home, retire early, or even a vacation.
In almost all circumstances I could talk for hours on my dreams, aspirations, and my future.
Planning for the future is awesome, except for when you’re anxious.
If I’m feeling anxious there are a million things flying through my brain. With stress and anxiety your brain doesn’t quite operate right. I even recently slammed my trunk on my brand-new phone. FYI here’s what to do if your phone breaks before the contract is up!
For goodness sake, in that moment of anxiety and stress my year plan or even what I am doing a week from now, goes completely out the door.
Related Posts:
- What to Do When You Get Bad News
- How to Stress Less about Money
- What to Do If You Feel Like You’re Failing in Life
- 2 Tips if You Feel Like You Have No Direction in Life
- How to Conquer Your Quarter Life Crisis with Kali Rogers
A cure to dealing with anxiety is instead of forward thinking, get peace from 100% living in the moment.
Overcome stress and anxiety by temporarily forgetting about your future.
This is an unconventional way of managing anxiety. Forgetting about your future doesn’t mean racking up a bunch of credit card debt. Or cashing out on your retirement account to go on an impulsive shopping spree. Instead, simply focus on what you need to do for the day. Take things on one day at a time. This is a form of mindfulness and living in the moment.
Plus, in the Lord’s Prayer we are taught to pray for God to, “give us this day, our daily bread.”
Also, when the Israelite’s where wandering through the desert, God provided them with a supply of manna, or bread. It was just enough to get through each day.
To take things one day at a time, add a note on your calendar of what exact tasks you need to do for the day. Then, knock things out one by one without spending energy on the things you need to do tomorrow. Or worrying about what you should have done months ago!
Whatever is going on in your life, you can overcome stress and anxiety. Take things one day at a time.
