Tish Schuman is one of the hypno-therapists at the Anxiety Control Center. She has been helping people get relief from stress for over 12 years. The following are some of her thoughts on staying in the present moment to get back into control of emotions.
The other day while driving I saw a sign that read “Don’t use your today thinking about yesterday.” If I had written that, I would have added … or tomorrow. So many times that is the cause of anxiety for people. Instead of living in the present moment, they are spending time recalling situations from the past that caused stress or didn’t turn out the way that they had hoped. Or, they are creating negative situations out in the future – what if’ing – about events that haven’t even happened yet!
If you take a moment right now to stop and think about how much time in a day you spend thinking about the past or future, you may be surprised at what you discover. There have even been studies done on exactly this. One study found that people spend 58 out of 60 minutes either thinking about the past or thinking about the future.
Next time you are feeling stressed, stop and take notice of what you were thinking about or saying to yourself right before your body started feeling stressed. If you found you were thinking about some past or future event, is it something that you have any control over or is it out of your hands? By doing this simple exercise, you may begin to realize that you have more control over how you feel than you realized.
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