It’s okay, you can do this

“Either you run the day or the day runs you.”

–Jim Rohn

For any anxious person, the first response to change is always fear and a desperate desire to run away from the situation. I call this the “I just want to go home” syndrome. I act like a fish out of water whenever I am forced to come out of my comfort zone. I gasp for air and flop around hopelessly till I’m put back into the water. In the real life scenario, I try my level best to become comfortable in the new situation as soon as possible. I realize much later that I was able to handle most of the new situations or any changes in my life. There was no real need for me to be anxious and panicky about it in the first place, especially to an extreme extent.

I’ve recently decided to try a new trick to calm myself down when I encounter any uncomfortable circumstances in life. As soon as I realize that I have to deal with a new situation in life, my mind works overtime and with 10x speed to blast out anxious and mostly doubtful thoughts. The overall environment created by these anxious thoughts turn negative if not dealt with at the right time, in the right manner. The source of most of my stress in life is related to career and office work. Yesterday when my boss told me about a new task that I didn’t have any knowledge about, my first response was of fear. Within a split second, my mind started spitting out a truck load of “What if?” questions.

• What if you don’t understand?
• What if it’s difficult and beyond your capacity?
• What if they figure out you can’t do this?
• What if they don’t find your effort worthwhile?
• What if?…What if?….What if?

The thoughts started to pile up as it was easily absorbed by my mind. Then, I decided to put my foot down and do something about it. I took action in the form of repeating a positive affirmation. I kept chanting, “IT’S OKAY, YOU CAN DO THIS!” till the pile of thoughts turned to dust. Surprisingly, it didn’t take a long time and I felt amazing after dealing with my thoughts monster, face to face or in this case, thought by thought.

I don’t know if I’ll able to use the same technique and make it work always. But I’m surely on the lookout for more such tactics now to deal with the enemies of my mind. Like we have various self defense techniques to tackle any unwelcome situation that could turn perilous, we need to develop an array of self defense techniques for our mind to counterattack the barrage of negative thoughts created by it.

It’s okay, you can do this!