Morning anxiety

Author and life coach Sharon Pearson offers advice for handling morning anxiety about the day ahead:

• Anxiety is usually a worry about the future—something that could happen, we don’t want to happen, or we don’t think will happen the way we want.
• Learning to be comfortable with emotions that challenge us is essential. Get comfortable with feeling tense, recognize this is a valid emotion, and rather than pushing it away, feel it, acknowledge it, label it (“I feel tense”), and observe it.
• Acknowledge what you feel without judgment; simply accept it as part of being human.
• Now ask, “Is it OK that I can’t control everything?” Meditate on this question and your answers.
• Is it OK that you don’t know how the future event will go, and realize sometimes that’s how it’s going to be?
• Have there been times when the amount of anxiety you felt was perhaps greater than the actual event warranted? Do you acknowledge that overreaction occasionally can take hold. This is normal; adjust your thinking with the realization that sometimes a future event is not as bad as imagined.
• Acknowledge you can’t control the unknown and it can cause anxiety.
• Practice reminding yourself that it’s OK not to know, it’s OK to let it go, it’s OK to have challenging events in the future.

Sharon Pearson is the founder of the Coaching Institute, the world’s largest coaching school, and an international best-selling author. Used with permission.