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Achieving your goals is tough enough, but if you suffer from anxiety it becomes even more difficult. Here, clinical psychologist Dr. Alice Boyes shares her best tips for conquering anxiety.

Outline:

Get to Know Your BIS (Behavioral Inhibition System)

People who are anxious or sensitive tend to be high in behavioral inhibition—they’re highly sensitive to “punishment” or just the “potential for punishment.” In psychology-speak, “punishment” includes both actively negative responses (such as criticism) or something positive been taken away (such as the loss of solitude). […]

Practice Experiencing “Non-Reward”

Practice Exposing Yourself to Constructive Negative Feedback

Learn to Accurately Identify Your Emotions

Give Yourself Time to Recover From Disappointments

Learn to Identify Your Cognitive Distortions

Many people are largely unaware that the quality of their lives is to a significant extent determined by whether they have a positive or negative self image. The way in which you perceive and feel about yourself is bound to have a considerable effect on whether you succeed or fail in many of life’s endeavours, on whether you are happy or unhappy, fulfilled or unfulfilled.

Your deeply rooted self image is the basis upon which you operate in your day to day life, and it is often the factor on which many of your choices and decisions are ultimately – though often unconsciously – based. If deep down you don’t see yourself as a person worthy of love and respect, or as a person capable and confident enough to succeed in overcoming challenges, then your self image is selling you short and holding you back.

As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. This goes to the heart of something that many people are either unaware of or think just can’t be true, that being that whatever poor self image may have been derived from an individual’s childhood and early youth, the truth is that it’s not set in stone, even if it may feel or seem like it. There is no decree or law of nature which says that because you “believe” – consciously and/or unconsciously – that you don’t come up to the mark in comparison to others that it must be actually “true” or “real”.

In order to build a vibrant and healthy self image, you must nurture it and work on it. In the same way that you most likely take steps to improve or at least preserve your outward appearance, similarly your inner self image needs to be maintained and if necessary improved.

This can be done by first understanding that the key lies within your own mind and also by understanding that you are free to use your own mind to think of yourself in any way that you wish. Whatever thoughts you regularly and habitually impress into your subconscious mind will sooner or later be accepted by it as true. And when the subconscious has accepted a new self belief system as true then that new belief system actually becomes true and the self image – and thenceforth quality of life – changes accordingly.

Create for yourself and stick to it for as long as necessary – usually anywhere from a couple of weeks to several months – a regular program or discipline whereby on a daily basis you nourish your mind and self image with positive thoughts and feelings about yourself.

Meditation at its core is an exercise in stillness, in quieting the mind to deeply reflect on life and your place in the world. The hope is that the repeated practice of focused introspection will help you to channel out the myriad distractions and manufactured dramas that seem to fill our lives.

[T]here are other ways to meditate that, while maybe not as effective, are still better than not doing it at all. Engaging in fast, repetitive, physical activities like running, bicycling, skating or skiing can trigger a similar sense of reflection by essentially separating our physical selves from our mental processes. The repetitiveness of the activity allows your body to go on autopilot while your brain is free to work through the problems of your conscious (and unconscious) self. The separation is at once freeing, transcendent and kind of creepy (but in a neat way).

The usefulness of this kind of meditation cannot be overestimated in arriving at conclusions to tough problems. So why not create games that invoke just this kind of reaction? While a few titles try, and others accomplish it inadvertently, there seem to be three kinds of approaches developers take, with noticeably different results.

The Nothing Games: BYO Meditation

The first kind of meditation game attempts to mirror the practice of traditional meditation by forcibly provoking deep introspection through the game mechanics and world. […]

The Focused Relaxers

Next is a class of games that uses more structure, but still maintains a relaxing pace designed to evoke reflection. These games can be objective-based, or have goals that are merely suggestions. [… These games] place the player into relaxing environments with soothing music, and subtly guide them along missions that vary in open-endedness. […]

The X-Treme Zen Machines

Lastly, there are the fast-paced Zen machines. These kinds of games couldn’t be more different from the previous two groups – they’re fast-paced, objective-focused, are usually linear and demand player concentration to prevent failure. [… They] require a high level of motor skill proficiency to be successfully played. […]

It’s these games, oddly enough, that mimic the sense of active meditation more than anything else.

An appreciation for art is one of the transcendent values of life, and a great source of happiness, but like many transcendent values, it can sometimes be hard to wedge into your ordinary day.

Here are some tips for getting some visual art into your daily routine, without spending a lot of time, energy, or money.

1. Check out art books from the library. […]

2. [Collect …] postcards of […] favorite works of art [and keep them handy]. […]

3. Enjoy picture books. […]

4. Don’t feel like you have to spend hours in a museum. […]

5. Treat a a store like an art gallery. […]

6. Make something yourself. […]

7. Use sites like Pinterest or Instagram. […]

Read the article for more details.

There are lots of art-related apps and web sites available, including official ones from museums and art galleries. Many are free.