How To Overcome Challenge Anxiety In Everyday Life With This Easy 4 Step Method
I used to be a pretzel.
Well, not exactly, but when I was living in Thailand, I lived on the same street as an amazing yoga studio (shout out to Chiang Mai Holistic!), so I was going to yoga very regularly, fell in love with it, and had gotten pretty good at it.
So good that I received special requests by people for me to guide them in yoga classes.
By people, I mean person.
And by person, I mean my 8-year-old cousin.
And by classes, I mean a haphazard sequence of poses that we would do together for 10 minutes, or until her little adolescent attention span ran out–whichever came first.
But nevertheless, the point remains, I was pretty good.
But then…
Ever since moving away from Thailand, I could never find other yoga teachers that really did it for me the way my teachers in Thailand did, so I fell out of the practice.
It’s been a few years, and I admittedly and humbly have to downgrade my self-proclaimed pretzel status to…well, something else that metaphorically implies less flexibility.
Recently though, due to excessive incorrect typing, I’ve been having problems with carpal tunnel/cubital tunnel/tendonitis/RSI/tennis elbow (all self diagnosed if you couldn’t tell), and I’m convinced that getting back into yoga regularly will alleviate the symptoms I’m feeling.
(If you think that won’t work, and I need to go to a real doctor to cure my 5 self-diagnosed diseases, please keep that to yourself and let me have my hope.)
In over my head…
So when I got back to Mexico recently, I tried out a yoga studio.
After dipping my toe into a few classes, I was feeling frisky and decided to try an Ashtanga style yoga class.
In the interest of sparing you a long explanation, it’s harder.
In my first week getting back into yoga, Ashtanga was the class I would wait to let out so I could go in for the pee-wee class that followed.
So I wasn’t sure exactly what I was up for, but I knew it would be a couple levels beyond what I was used to.
As soon as I walked into the room, it felt different than the other classes I’d taken.
I normally place my yoga mat front and center, an intentional placement that both implies and requires confidence.
Today, I decided to settle a little more in the cut, up against the wall a couple rows back.
From my little side of the room, human nature took over, and I immediately started to do the obvious thing you do when entering an unfamiliar room full of people–look around and start sizing people up.
I scanned the room for visual clues that would assure me that I would not be the most incapable person here.
My search turned up nearly empty.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but generally speaking in yoga, the longer the hair, and the shorter the shorts, the more advanced people are.
Looking around the room, I saw a lot of hair, and not a lot of fabric.
So yeah…it wasn’t looking like my ego was in for a good time.
There’s a couple types of yogis.
First, the ppl who call themselves yogis and the ones who don’t.
You can tell the difference visually.
The first visual clue…the look–the aforementioned men with long curly hair, tiny spandex shorts, the occasional non-black woman with braids, and the like…pointed to the fact that I was in the room with the yogi types.
The second visual clue was the fact that everyone in the room was doing yoga…before the yoga class had started.
During these seemingly unnecessary yoga before the yoga moments, I saw people folding themselves into positions I thought only possible by pieces of paper.
Yup. I am surrounded by a bunch of bonafide yogis.
Panic
I started running statistics through my head in preparation for humiliation.
Out of 27 people in this class, surely I can’t be the absolute worst, surely there must be at least one person worse than me.
But all the visual clues I was surrounded by suggested otherwise. In my head, I started to hunt for reasons to explain my impending show of ineptitude…
I haven’t done yoga in years…I just got surgery…I’m adjusting to the humidity…I overdosed on key lime pie last night…Let’s see, what else? Carpal tunnel/cubital tunnel/tendonitis/RSI/tennis elbow…I can just pick the most badass sounding one of that list…I certainly can’t go with “typing injury.”
And of course none of these reasons I could come up with, no matter how “legit,” would ever be known by the other people in the class.
It’s not like I’d suddenly shout it out in the middle of a quiet, still, peaceful room of people balancing on their heads in concentration.
But still, coming up with excuses that I could float around in my head and try to transmit telepathically to the other people in the class soothed my ego and gave me the courage to stay in the class and continue.
It was time to begin
“Stand up,” the teacher said.
Good, something I can do. We’re off to a good start.
He asked if it was anyone’s first time here. I raised my hand, happy to take the opportunity to let people know why they were likely about to witness a disaster.
“All you have to do is watch, listen, breathe, do. And you’ll be fine,” he said.
While I was facing something I had never done before, that was initially presented to me as not for the faint of heart, nor for beginners, the teacher reducing it to those four simple instructions, those four simple verbs, instantly made me relax and feel capable of what was ahead of me.
And those four simple verbs are really all you need to do anything. If you’re looking for how to calm your mind and embrace challenges with the right mindset that can allow you to overcome any obstacle in front of you, this is pretty much it.
Tapping into mindfulness for anxiety management
WATCH others who have already demonstrated competence in the thing you want to do.
LISTEN to instructions and follow them.
BREATHE slowly and deeply to control your nervous system, quiet the overthinking part of the brain, slow down the racing thoughts of why you can’t do it, and calm anxiety.
DO the thing. You’ve seen the examples, you’ve heard the instructions, you’ve calmed down and readied yourself mentally and physiologically. So now all that’s left to do is just do the thing.
Watch.
Listen.
Breathe.
Do.
As it turns out, I did a pretty good job…not quite as good a job as the human rubber bands that surrounded me, but pretty good for a person with carpal tunnel/cubital tunnel/tendonitis/RSI/tennis elbow, a typing injury, who hasn’t done yoga in years, just got surgery, is adjusting to the humidity, and overdosed on key lime pie last night.
So whatever challenge you come across today, embrace it, and just watch, listen, breathe, and do.
And you’ll do better than you think you can.
Probably.
Hope this little story helps you discover how to overcome anxiety when facing the challenges that come up in everyday life.
When facing something new, it can be overwhelming dealing with anxiety that comes with doing something we haven’t done before, but as long as you face things with a growth mindset, you’ll be reminded that you are capable of more than you think you are.
And there you have it, that’s how to overcome challenge anxiety in 4 simple little steps.
Always remember, a little mindfulness can go a long way.
