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6 Anxiety Secrets You Need to Know (100th Edition!)

6 Anxiety Secrets You Need to Know (100th Edition!)

Shhh... these anxiety secrets are only for our 100th edition subscribers.

Sol TV
January 16, 2025

💯 100th Edition

⌛ TL/DR: Distraction and Deep Breaths

☀️ Sol Bites: 6 Ways to Lessen Anxiety

😰 Understanding Anxiety: Are We Addressing the Symptoms or Targeting the Root Cause?

📹 Video Bite: Robin Richardson on Easing Anxiety

🦉 Words of Wisdom

Welcome to our 100th edition of Wisdom & Sol and to the 2,684 people who have joined us since last week! If you haven’t subscribed, join our community of 32,973 intelligent, curious folks who want to boost their emotional well-being by subscribing here.

In honor of our big milestone, we’re sharing our most simple but powerful lessons about our most-requested topic: anxiety

TL;DR: Distraction and Deep Breaths

The most eye-opening thing we learned this year is that most anxiety advice may help in the short term, but it actually ramps up anxiety in the long term.

Take distraction, for instance. Sure, focusing on something else besides “the thing” that is causing your anxiety might calm you down, but by dodging those anxious feelings, you're telling your brain that anxiousness is a threat. Because you’ve made anxiety something to be feared, the next time something big or troubling pops up, you might just feel anxious about the possibility of feeling anxious.

And then there's deep breathing. It's awesome as a regular practice to help you relax, but relying on it during moments when you feel anxious can send your brain the message that it isn’t okay to feel that way. This can lead to feeling guilty about your anxiety, ratcheting it up even more over time.

Your goal: Make peace with anxiety instead of running from it.

Sol Bites: 6 Ways to Lessen Anxiety

1) Ditch the labels.

Stop calling yourself "an anxious person." How you talk to yourself matters a lot. If you keep telling your brain you’re anxious, it will believe you. Start giving yourself some kinder, more balanced self-talk. Say this instead: It’s okay to feel unsettled in this situation, or I am new to this, so I think this way.

2) Get assertive and ask for what you want.

Chronic anxiety can often be tied to holding back, maybe because you’re worried about how others will react—or even afraid to admit to yourself what you want. It’s time to be bold and speak up.

3) Don’t get caught up in mental chatter with your worries.

Everyone worries, but that doesn’t mean you must always dwell on your fears. Train yourself to notice worries or spend 10 minutes daily writing down all your worries, and then move on.

4) Instead of jumping straight to coping mechanisms, try tolerating those anxious feelings.

Yes, that sounds counterintuitive, but when you run from things, you tell your brain to fear them. Try to be okay with your anxiety hanging around for a bit—it’ll give you more control in the long run.

5) Say “no” more often.

It’s super common for anxiety to be a sign that you need better boundaries. Listen to what your anxiety is telling you; it might be showing you where someone overstepped a boundary, and you need to push back.

6) You don’t have to find meaning in everything.

Life is full of uncertainty, and trying to uncover a deep meaning in every little thing that happens will crank up your anxiety. Practice accepting that uncertainty in our lives is a given, and it is okay.

Understanding Anxiety: Are We Addressing the Symptoms or Targeting the Root Cause?

Your smartwatch can tell you're anxious, but can it tell you why?

Video Bite

Gain valuable insights into managing anxiety with Sol TV Creator Robin Richardson. Her powerful analogy of agreeing and disagreeing with emotions provides a clear path to understanding and easing anxiety.