Something to think about . . . from Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now . . .

“The psychological condition of fear is divorced from any concrete and true immediate danger.”

Hmm. “The psychological condition of fear is divorced from any concrete and true immediate danger.”

How many times are we in real life or death or scary situations, and how many times do we create them in our minds?

“It [fear] comes in many forms: unease, worry, anxiety, nervousness, tension, dread, phobia, and so on. This kind of psychological fear is always of something that might happen, not of something that is happening now.” (The Power of Now)

When you catch yourself raising your fear meter by imagining negative or disastrous outcomes . . .

1. Take a deep breath.
2. Note that the situation you are thinking of is scary to you – “Wow, I’m more worried about this than I realized.” (Be honest with yourself; keying in and admitting you are afraid can quickly reduce the stress you are feeling by interrupting your negative thought process.)
3. Take another deep breath.
4. Do something physical to switch gears. Move! Get up. Stretch. Rollover. Sit up. Walk away. Turn around or shimmy, shake, hop, skip or jump yourself away from your fear. 🙂 (Making yourself smile, never hurts.)
5. Repeat as necessary, and don’t be discouraged if you have to repeat these steps often, because that means you are serious about change!

Later when you aren’t worrying about the topic, you can review the situation by brainstorming your options, assessing your strengths, recalling pass successes dealing with tough situations – and why they worked, predicting a positive outcome (Try it, it can work wonders.), and then you can decide how, or if,  you need to deal with the situation.

But for now, learning to interrupt your thought cycle is all you need to do to dial down your fear meter and gain some peace of mind!