Do you want to learn how to alleviate anxiety and be more trusting in life’s perfection?
Anxiety and chronic stress keep you from trusting in life’s perfection. So how do you turn it around?
With everything going on in the world today, anxiety and stress are running rampant. Individuals in our society are losing their trust in life’s perfection and are allowing the world’s chaos and struggles to weigh them down.
When you are in constant states of anxiety and stress, you’re keeping your sympathetic “fight or flight” nervous system in overdrive. The leads to a weakened immune system, poor quality of sleep, and a body full of the stress hormone cortisol.
So, amidst all the chaos and struggle, how do you find peace?
How can you learn to cultivate trust in life’s perfection?
How can you come to a place of knowing everything will be okay?
Keep reading because I’m going to share with you some easy habits to help you release the anxiety and stress that’s bringing you down and trust more in life’s perfection.
What changes can you make to alleviate anxiety, reduce stress, and be more trusting in life’s perfection?
There are five simple, foundational lifestyle changes you can make to alleviate anxiety and stress symptoms to cultivate more trust in life. They are:
- Developing Self-Awareness & Mindfulness
- Incorporating More Self-Care
- Practicing & Strengthening Belief
- Grounding & Connecting with Mother Nature
- Shifting Your Focus to What’s Good
These changes will help to re-engage your parasympathetic “rest & digest” nervous system, which is the stepping stone from anxiety and stress to having more faith and trust in life’s perfection.
Below, I share some tips and details on how to easily incorporate these changes into your life so you can start to alleviate anxiety, reduce stress, and find your inner joy, trust, faith and peace.
1) Developing Self-Awareness & Mindfulness
One of the first steps to cultivating trust in life’s perfection is to develop more self-awareness by incorporating mindfulness techniques.
What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is the ability to attend to one’s own physical and mental processes, in a non-judgmental way, during ordinary, everyday tasks. It’s becoming aware and present in the moment: the ability to recognize mental, emotional, and physical events in the present. With that definition in mind, ask yourself,
“How often am I checking in with myself and coming back to the present moment?“
I’m sure if you ask yourself this question, and look at it honestly, odds are you’re usually thinking or worrying. Maybe you’re dwelling on what happened in the past or anxious about a future that has yet (and may not!) come to pass.
You’re not alone!
Most anxiety and chronic stress sufferers tend to have a past or future mindset. They’re either dwelling on past events or worrying about what could happen in the future. And there are two reasons why this is keeping them anxious and disconnected from trusting in life’s perfection.
First of all, when we dwell on the past, we’re focusing a lot of time and energy on things that cannot be changed. These are things that have already happened are now out of our control. (They may have never been in our control to begin with!) When we exert energy focusing too much on the past, especially on the negative things that have happened, we’re detracting from investing our energy in the present moment! We miss the chance to connect with the energy available to us right now.
Secondly, when we’re focusing on the future, we’re creating worry and angst about things that COULD happen. We never know what the future holds, and constantly worrying about all the possible outcomes is only detracting from your ability to have energy in the present moment. By waiting for what’s to come, we miss all that’s currently wonderful and beautiful right in front of us.
So, how do you bring yourself back into the present? How do you start to increase your self-awareness so you have the ability to catch yourself dwelling in the past or worrying about the future? One of the best ways to develop this skill is to practice Mindfulness.
Practicing Mindfulness
Remember: mindfulness is all about becoming more aware and present in the moment. And there is an easy process you can start to incorporate daily to cultivate more mindfulness in everyday life!
First take a seat. Find a place to sit that feels calm, quiet, and comfortable to you.
Next, Set a time limit. If you’re a beginner, it can help to choose a shorter time, such as 5 to 10 minutes. Even getting in two minutes of mindfulness can be a great place to start!
Then, take notice of your body. Make sure you’re in a comfortable position so you can stay still for a while. Find any tension you may be holding onto, and just begin to check in with all the different areas of your body.
After you settle into your body, feel your breath. Follow the sensation of your breath as it goes in and it goes out. Simply notice and feel your breath. There’s no need to try to control it; just sit with it as it is.
As you’re tuning into your body and your breath, just be kind to your wandering mind.
There’s no need to judge yourself, stress, or obsess over the content of the thoughts you may get lost in. When thoughts do come in, thank them for coming by. Acknowledge them, and then release them. I like to imagine them as clouds just passing over the sky above.
After you’ve released the thought, come back to your body and your breath. Focus on where you are, in this present moment, in mind, body, and spirit.
This practice, done for just a few minutes a day, is an incredibly powerful method to help rewire your brain to cultivate mindfulness in all moments of the day. The key here is to practice mindfulness DAILY. By doing so, you’ll find your ability to become present in the current moment gets easier and easier. This shift helps you increase your self-awareness and allows you to have more power over your thoughts and emotions.
And when you have this level of self-awareness and mindfulness, you begin to shift from feeling anxious to feeling more trusting in life’s perfection.
2) Incorporating More Self-Care
One of the kindest things you can do for yourself if you suffer from anxiety and chronic stress is to incorporate more self-care. By incorporating self-care, you work on ensuring your own needs are met and that you can keep your strength and stability during hard times and leave space and energy for trusting in life’s perfection.
Self-Care is such an amazing practice to help alleviate anxiety. I’ve learned through my practice that helping clients build healthy self-care routines is just as powerful as helping them customize their nutrition to relieve their symptoms.
Incorporating more self-care helps you to trust more in life’s perfection because we’re shifting from focusing on what we cannot control, to what we CAN. There are so many things in life that are out of our control, and all we really have the ability to do is control and take care of ourselves. And there is power in that thought!
As you shift to focus on what you can control, including your own thoughts, actions, and words spoken, you take your power back, and it fuels your trust in life’s perfection.
Let me give you a quick example here. Let’s say you’re always worried about your appearance and what others think about how you look. You may constantly stress on the fact you’re being judged by others and struggling with what they might be thinking about you.
In this example, can you control what others think? No. You can’t. As much as you might want to, you have absolutely no control over what others think about you.
So what CAN you do in this situation?
You can focus on deepening your own self-love by focusing on self-care. If you simply focus on yourself, on loving and caring for yourself, it won’t matter what others think. You’ll crowd the judgments you might think people are making about you with the positive love and attention you give to yourself freely.
All you can control is your own thoughts, actions and words spoken. So you might as well do what you can with what you’re given!
This is powerful. Instead of worrying about what you can’t control, you can instead turn to YOUR thoughts, actions, and words spoken. You can start to incorporate more positive affirmations about yourself. Begin to take care of your body better by upgrading your diet or by exercising more often. Shift your internal critic and negative self-talk into more loving kindness for yourself.
If you want more ideas for how to incorporate self-care into your daily routine (and a lot more reasons on why to do it), I highly recommend you ready my post on 7 Self-Care Practices to Cultivate Self Love!
The more you love and care for yourself, the more you can give up your need to control everything. When you do that, you focus on what you can control and start to sink into trusting in life’s perfection.
3) Practicing and Strengthening Belief
How do you gain more trust?
Start with strengthening your belief.
One of the main reasons people fail at achieving goals, aspirations, milestones, and successes is because they don’t truly, deeply BELIEVE they are possible.
So how will you ever trust in life’s perfection if you don’t believe in it?
Now, I’ll admit, this one is trickier than some of the other tips I’ve shared because we’re all at different places in our own beliefs.
However, the first step in cultivating and strengthening your beliefs (wherever you’re at) is to make it a daily practice.
I want to share another example here to help explain this one. Let’s say an opportunity at work has opened up for you that would be a promotion. You feel like it’d be great to have more money, but you believe your co-worker is better suited for the job. Even though they’ve worked there a shorter amount of time than you, they have more degrees and certifications, and you believe they’ll get the promotion. So, you say to yourself, “Why would I even try for it?”
Your lack of belief in that example with absolutely keep you from getting the job. Actually, in that example, you’re so deeply entrenched in the belief that your co-worker will get the promotion, you don’t even take the risk and TRY for the opportunity.
You see, we make so many decisions based on our belief, or lack of belief on a subject. And just as a lack of belief in thinking you’re deserving of a promotion can keep you from going for it, a lack of belief in life’s perfection can keep you feeling anxious, stressed, and worried.
The way around this is to focus daily on strengthening your belief in life’s perfection. Honestly, this principle can be applied to any belief system you’d like to change. The key is to practice daily so you can reinforce the new belief.
What does practice of strengthening beliefs look like?
It can be as simple as sitting in meditation and prayer for a few minutes every day with positive affirmations statements like, “I believe that with Spirit all things are possible.”
Or maybe, “I believe in the perfect timing of the universe and of life.”
“I believe I am fully supported and capable.”
“I believe I am perfectly imperfect.”
Whatever positive affirmation statement resonates with you will work! Feel free to use the examples above or come up with some of your own, and dig into them daily.
One thing I like to imagine as I’m working on strengthening my own beliefs is to believe in them as much as I believe the place where I’m sitting is supporting me. As I sit in meditation/prayer on the ground, couch, or chair, I believe they’ll support me! I never believe they will crumble beneath me. My seat and stability is my foundation, and I bring that security with me while I affirm my new beliefs.
When you focus on strengthening your beliefs, imagine trusting and believing in them as much as the chair or ground supporting you in that moment. Trust in them like you trust the Earth beneath your feet. Feel how deeply true it is that life really is perfect and everything unfolds in perfect timing.
With practice and dedication, you’ll be strengthening your belief in life’s perfection in no time. This will allow you to trust more, have more faith, and alleviate anxiety and stress in your everyday life!
4) Grounding and Connecting with Mother Nature
Want to really be more trusting in life’s perfection? It’s time to get out into nature and connect with the beauty, splendor, and perfection our Earth Mother has to offer.
When was the last time you got out into nature and just observed her beauty?
When did you last sit in awe of a gorgeous flower?
How often do you connect to the bounty and abundance of what our amazing planet really provides for us?
If you can disconnect from the busyness of everyday life and step back to connect into the energy and spirit of the universe that is all around us, you’ll see just how perfect and beautiful life truly is.
Think about how the sun rises for us each day, and how the stars come out each night.
Consider how plants grow, how their roots deepen, and how their leaves and flowers bloom.
Give thanks for the food you eat was grown and produced by our beautiful Earth Mother.
These blessings are wonderful gifts to acknowledge to see the beauty and perfection all around us. And what’s more, this is the same beauty and perfection that YOU are a part of. You are created and sustained by this beautiful Earth we live on.
Everything in this universe is connected, and when you feel anxious and stressed, a great way to become more trusting is to get out into mother nature and ground into her healing energy. Not only does the electromagnetic field of our earth offer benefits for activating your “rest & digest” parasympathetic nervous system, it also allows you to connect and trust in the perfection of life that’s all around us.
This practice can be done by simply getting out into your backyard and sitting in the grass, or you can head out on an adventure into the wilderness and hike deep into a forest. Whatever the answer is for you, whatever you can make time for, honor it and make it happen!
As the tides come and go, the sun rises and sets, and as seasons change over time, everything unfolds perfectly in nature, just as it was intended to. The peace, wisdom and perfection that you’ll find out in mother nature will infuse you with strength and a deep inner trust in just how perfect life really is.
5) Shifting Your Focus to What’s Good
When you suffer from anxiety and stress, sometimes it can lead to too much emphasis on all the negative things in your life and allowing yourself to complain and feel like a victim. Instead, I encourage you to practice shifting your focus to what’s good!
In the past, I wrote about The Power of What’s Good, where you can get even more information on why this is such an important practice to commit to.
But for now, what I want to empower you with here is that YOU have the ability to choose what you focus on!
One of the reasons people suffer from anxiety is because they fail to see what blessings, lessons, and joys they actually have in their life!
Our society is addicted to complaining and commiserating. It’s incredibly easy to fall into the trap of “connecting” with others based on all the bad things that are happening in our lives. And with energy all around us, it’s all too easy to fall into a mindset of scarcity and lack of appreciation.
So, instead of allowing yourself to stay down in the negative thought patterns, make a commitment to focus on what’s good each and every day! It can be as simple as starting a gratitude journal where you write down 4 good things that happened to you that day. Small things. Anything. These don’t have to be grand, monumental achievements!
Some of the things I share gratitude for might be:
- An uplifting conversation with a friend or loved one,
- A delicious meal I was able to nourish my body with and share with my tribe,
- A good night’s sleep, or
- A joke that had me laughing out loud!
Again, it doesn’t matter what the good thing is that you’re focusing on. Your list might look very different than mine. The key is to make sure you focus on the blessings and the goodness. Give thanks for what you DO have in your life.
This shift will actually rewire your brain. It creates more and more connections that focus on the positive things in your life. It becomes habitual. In doing so, it alleviates anxiety, reduces stress, and helps you to strengthen your trust in the perfection of life!
Shift from feeling anxious and stressed to trusting in life’s perfection.
I hope this has helped you understand some simple lifestyle changes you can make to shift from feelings of anxiousness and stress to being more trusting in life’s perfection.
It’s all about working on what you CAN control and letting go of the things you can’t.
It’s about gaining perspective in your life and seeing all the beauty and splendor that you are and that you are a part of.
To get started, simply pick and incorporate one of these practices to begin your journey. When you master one of these practices, keep up with it and work to incorporate another into your daily routine! I’m not saying it’s always easy, but it can be that simple!
When you can become present, give thanks to all that is, and start to feel and see the connection to all the divine love and light that you are, you can trust in the perfection of life and all it has to offer. It will become immediately apparent that it’s been waiting for you all along.
If you need extra support around any of these strategies, please contact me! I’m always here to help you. You can also connect with a group of other like-minded folks looking to alleviate anxiety, reduce stress, and ease depression naturally by joining my group Eat Healthy, Be Happy on Facebook. You’re not alone!
Remember, you are worthy and deserving of strength, love, and trust in this beautiful gift of life!
You’ve got this. I believe in YOU!
Much Love,
Susan Renee
P.S. Looking for more inspiration to help trust in life’s perfection? Join my newsletter! It’s loaded with inspiration, anxiety-relieving tips, recipes, meal plans and more tools to help you find natural anxiety relief. I hope you’ll join me as I lead our tribe of peaceful warriors dedicated to finding natural anxiety relief!
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