Transform stress and anxiety to peace and harmony

Transform your thoughts & emotions by following these steps –

You can train your brain to operate from your calm thoughts.

Trans: “to cross, go beyond, change thoroughly”

Transformation: “a marked change, especially for the better”

Years ago, living with high stress and anxiety was normal for me. My solar plexus often felt fluttery and nervous. My chest felt tight and my breath was shallow.

While meditating, I had an insight: “Anxiety is not trusting What Is.”

This made sense to me, but I didn’t know what to do with it, or how to change the anxiety I felt. Bodywork helped temporarily. So did meditation. But when I wasn’t meditating, praying, doing yoga or getting bodywork, anxiety tended to overtake me.

Learning to relax helped me cope. But it didn’t remove the stress. I tried to change my worldview by thinking positive thoughts or doing affirmations.That worked temporarily, but anxiety seemed to be my default mode.

How helpful it would have been to know how to change anxiety into peace and harmony using my thoughts and my feelings. I was missing the feeling part.

Our thoughts and our feelings combine to create emotions. Emotions generate particular chemistry in the brain, and groove neural pathways that make it easier to feel our habitual emotions. That is how our habitual emotions become our default modes of being.

Do you know someone who is always “sure” things won’t work out? Or someone who sees the bright side of every situation?

With awareness and practice, you can train your brain to generate peaceful emotions. You can move from stress and worry, to peace and harmony, even without the outer circumstances of your life changing.

The icing on the cake is: when you do this, the outer circumstances of your life tend to change, too. When your relationship to what is happening changes, your perceptions change, and you create space for new opportunities. You make decisions from clarity and calm. You know you are being guided, even when circumstances are out of control and not what you want. Your vibration is higher, so you attract situations and people to you that are also of higher vibration.

Here is a step by step process:

Start with Awareness

1. Notice your thoughts. If a situation is troubling you, do you generate a cascade of anxious thoughts that escalate, as you contemplate the worst case scenario? This is called disaster thinking. A sequence of negative thoughts could look like this: “This traffic is horrible! I’m going to be late! I hate being late! If I’m late, I’ll look bad! I might lose my (job, academic standing, goodwill of a family member, friend.) They’ll think I’m (some version of a bad person.) I’m so incompetent! My life is out of my control! No matter how hard I try, these things just happen to me! I might even lose my (job, scholarship, friend….). I’m an idiot and everyone knows that now!”
2. Notice the physical sensations in your body that accompany your thoughts. Perhaps your chest or your throat gets tight, or your stomach knots up in a ball. Are your fists clenched? How about your jaw?

Take mindful action

Now that you are aware you’re having a stress response, here is what you can do to transform it into a peaceful state of mind.

1. Use your cognitive powers, your mighty brain, to stay, “Stop!” to your escalating fantasy of disaster. Your brain is like a wild horse out of control. It needs to be tamed.
2. Grab hold of the reins. Now you can make a u-turn, from disaster thinking to a state of mind that feels better. Use steps 4 and 5 in whatever sequence works best for you. Fine tune them, change them to meet your needs. You know what will work for you. If you don’t know, experiment until you find out.
3. Tell yourself there is enough time to feel what you are feeling. Once you look into it, you will see that there is enough space to feel whatever you are feeling. You won’t actually explode when you stop and tune in. The opposite occurs.
4. Take a few deep breaths. Feel your feet on the ground. If you are sitting, feel the points where your hips, legs, feet and back make contact with the floor or chair. Breathe in on the count of 4. Exhale on the count of 6 or 8 if you can. When you are able to pause at the end of your exhalation for a count of 4, you will notice your body softening. You are unclenching, coming into neutral. You are feeling calmer and more spacious.
5. From there, picture a scene that is peaceful for you. It can be somewhere you’ve been before, a lake, a beach, or your favorite place in the woods. Or it can be somewhere you’d like to go. It can be a moment of great happiness, such as holding a newborn baby, petting your dog or the happy feeling of singing your favorite song. The content of the picture is not important. The feeling it generates in you is what is key.
6. You are generating feelings of peace and contentment. You are creating a sense of calm and emotional harmony.
7. This new state of mind actually changes your physiology by altering your neurobiology. This has been documented in medical trials by MRI’s.
8. The more you practice this, the more peace and harmony become your new normal.
9. Say goodbye to stress and anxiety. Smile at those states of mind as you notice they don’t have power over you.
10. Transform the outdated default mode of reacting with anxiety to the unknown, to facing it with peace and harmony.
11. With practice, you will learn to do this automatically. The more you do it, the less you will be plagued by anxious thoughts. You will see disaster thinking for what it is: a series of thoughts that take you away from peace, happiness and the present moment.

“And now we are aware of the Radiance of Light.” This is how the prayer to open the Akashic Record begins.

One thing that always works for me is to focus on the feelings of Divine Love, peace and harmony that I feel in the Akasha. My awareness expands, I feel in tune with my Highest Good – the energy opens a path through the stars. I lose “worry mind” – and surrender to being loved.

This loving connection is available to all of us – when we are available to our Highest Good.

When you are anxious, your good may seem out of reach. When you have anxiety or worry – Stop. Breathe. Call Light in. Notice beauty. Think of something you are grateful for. Read something uplifting. Take a nap.

For in0depth help from your healing guides in Spirit, contact me for a private session, or sign up for an Akashic Blessing Circle.