Many women are struggling with emotional challenges that are a result of our current “reality”.  Anxiety and Fear can feel overwhelming, we feel helpless and desperate with little hope for anything better.  In addition, we then experience shame and try to hide these feelings.  As a life coach who helps women move from anxiety/fear to peace/freedom, I am here to give you some knowledge.  Knowledge is personal power, power brings light, light dissolves darkness, anxiety and fear cannot live in the light. Finding the light switch is the first step to choice.

So many of us spend our time wishing, hoping and dreaming that things outside of us would change. If this stupid virus would go away my life would be great…if my boss wasn’t a jerk my life would be great…if my spouse would do what I want my life would be great…if I could get rid of this debt my life would be great…I could increase the list ad infinitum.  Think back to a time when you achieved an incredible milestone.  There may have been a brief celebration but shortly after there was another external thing that needed to be shifted, changed redone or eliminated to achieve this elusive thing called happiness.  Many of us are raised to put more trust in what is going on outside of us.  External “reality” is huge and everybody else can see it so who am I to minimize its importance.

Here is the light switch. These reactions to the world around us are choices. We may say I have no control over what is going on, how can I choose?  We chose how we will react or respond. We choose anxiety or fear.  Stay with me for just a bit longer.  Bring to mind something that causes you anxiety or fear.  Feel your stomach starting to churn, heart rate increasing, breathing changing? Now take a deep breath and think about a PUPPY!!!  Acknowledge how you feel and shift your attention to something positive.  Staying in negative emotions resolves nothing.

Shifting our attention can be done in many ways.  It could be arranging a group zoom wine/coffee chat with friends or family.  It could be calling 3 people every day just to ask how they are. It could be dropping homemade cookies in a neighbour’s mailbox.  It doesn’t have to be a huge display of giving, it simply requires that we spend some time outside of our own brain.    We get focused on a particular problem or issue which brings up a negative emotion that we grab onto and then down the rabbit hole we go.  Move your attention to something else, focus on something else that elicits a positive emotion such as love, joy, peace, happiness.  For those looking for a technical term this can be referred to as a pattern interrupt.

Living with anxiety sucks, I know this because I did it for decades.  Today I am making different choices because I can.  Ignorance is not bliss.  Awareness is the first step toward change.  Flicking the switch is a choice and only you can make that choice for yourself. For myself, today I chose love and freedom.