What To Do With Your Anxious Morning Thought(s)

You ever sit up in bed from a restful sleep and then immediately start scanning your brain for anxiety and sources of worry?  I have and I’ve done so plenty of times.  I seriously doubt that this is intentional on our part, it’s more of a habit you see.  A habit which can unfortunately throw a wrench into our entire day.

They say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and along those same lines I’d say that just as important is your first thought (or more likely series of thoughts) of the day.  To have a set of positive first thoughts in the morning can mean the difference between you saying to someone later that your day was o.k., or even great, to horrible on the other end.

Thoughts are incredibly important as they set the tone for your mood, expectations, and emotional reactions throughout any given day.  So if you often wake up with morning anxiety after scanning your brain for those negative thoughts try this little technique I’ve done in the past.

1.  The night before (although difficult) don’t think about the next day too much with respect to your anxiety.  I firmly believe that most morning anxiety is set up the night before.  Don’t anticipate anxiety or anything else for that matter.  Focus only on what you’re doing, like reading a book, watching t.v., or whatever you do before you snooze.

2.  When you wake up don’t scan your mind.  In other words, just do the things you normally would do and focus on that.  Think shower, clothes, tooth brush, breakfast, one at a time.  Keep it simple and keep your mind focused on a tasks, not imaginary possibilities.

3.  When the negative thoughts come (because they always do) accept the thought immediately and and don’t attempt to fight it.  You can also replace the thought with another more pleasant thought, an affirmation, or even self talk your way out of it.  Whatever you do nip it in the bud asap.  Don’t develop, nurse, or add variants to a negative thought.  Just float.

Now admittedly this will not work overnight.  You have to practice for it to have some effect.  But in my experience it tends to work.  The adage “if you don’t go looking for trouble there won’t be any trouble” really comes to mind.  Just remember that although anxiety causes loads of physical symptoms, it is our mind, our thoughts, that lay the ground work for palpitations and all the rest of it – learn to curb negative thinking and you will be on the right path.

Side Notes:

In case you haven’t noticed the forum has been taken down temporarily.  Unfortunately there was a spammer doing a number on the forum and I had to suspend it to avoid an overload of crappy links and garbage from being added to the little loved talk space.  I’ve also been working on a few ideas for future post and trying not to just post for the sake of posting.  I’m trying to be more useful basically.

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