It seems that no matter where you go you will hear people telling you how stressed out they are about getting their taxes ready. Have you ever thought about how amazing it is that we can create emotional and physical distress just with our thoughts?
It is interesting that for many people what is causing the distress isn’t the actual working on the taxes but the thoughts and worries about doing them.
Our thoughts have power. What we think can create physical symptoms. Just thinking about having to prepare for tax day can cause the stomach to feel upset, or the heart to pound. Some people use food to sooth these feeling and many people find the can easily gain 5 pounds or more, over this stressful time. Others find that the anxiety causes them not to be able to focus, and the more anxiety the feel the more difficult focusing on the task becomes.
There are ways to stop the anxiety cycle. Even with real life stress we can learn to create a feeling of ease. Even when you have to approach a task that isn’t pleasant there are ways of changing the feelings.
Actually stress/anxiety can be stopped by using techniques that work on different areas of the mind. Changing the thoughts that are going through your mind, is powerful. Yet is is one of the most difficult places to start. To change thoughts you first need to recognize that you are having the thought.
There are two other and I believe easier ways to stop anxiety and in the next few days we will discuss them. But since thoughts are creating the stress about tax day well start with the technique that works on the thought part of the stress cycle.
Feeling Stressed:
1. Pay attention when you feel tension in your body.
2. See if you can notice any thoughts going through your mind.
3. Once you are aware of the thoughts, you can begin to evaluate if they are true, or if the are just “what if’s” that most likely won’t come to pass.
4. Come up with at least 2 other possible outcomes to replace the negative thoughts you were having
4. In the next few days I’ll talk about the physical techniques you can use to stop the stress cycle. The emotional techniques are my favorite but take a bit more explaining. I’ll think about a video I can make for you on the emotional release technique, for a future post.
Become a part of the online coaching class where you can learn more advanced techniques for stopping the anxiety cycle. Please look at our sister site by clicking on this link. It will take you top the Action Ends Procrastination site.
But before you go there, please sign up for your first mind calming exercise in the upper right side of this screen.