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Setting daily intentions to reduce anxiety can help in dealing with anxious thoughts every day in a very efficient manner.
Anxiety has many forms and affects everyone differently. For some, it is a constant worry, and for others, it can become so severe that one can not go through their day-to-day activities without having an anxiety attack.
Getting anxious from time to time is normal, as feeling nervous before a presentation, flustered before meeting someone new, or fearing the outcomes of your result.
We all have been in these situations at least once, and these feelings can be quite overwhelming to control.
When all these anxious thoughts cloud our minds for the long term, it can become a problem in maintaining a smooth life course.
Before delving into the topic of setting daily intentions, let’s find out more about anxiety, its symptoms, and how it can affect a person’s life.
1. What is Anxiety?
The constant feeling of worry, fearing the worst possible outcomes in all scenarios, can sum up the definition of anxiety.
People with anxiety know that what they are thinking is just irrational thoughts, but the thoughts have so much power that they manipulate the way a person’s mind works and, in turn, affect how they live their life.
Having negative thoughts when starting something new is normal, but it can become a problem when these thoughts start affecting a person’s way of living.
Identifying that you are suffering from anxiety and doing things to curb these thoughts as soon as possible can be very helpful.
2. What are the Symptoms of Anxiety?
Anxiety is different for everyone, so everyone doesn’t need to suffer from the same symptoms. What makes one anxious might be a normal thing for another.
2.1. Most Common Symptoms of Anxiety
- One of the symptoms of anxiety is your heartbeat increases more than your normal heartbeat. you may start feeling a little burn in your chest too.
- You don’t have peace of mind, you feel restless.
- When you are facing anxiety issues, your mind finds it difficult to concentrate on things. You lose your concentration. The Unwanted thoughts keep coming to your mind during your work which kills your concentration.
- A person who’s suffering from anxiety often goes through the problem of excessive sweating. It is one of the common symptoms of anxiety.
- When you are suffering from anxiety or having anxiety attacks, your body shivers, and you feel dizziness and lightheadedness.
- A person suffering from anxiety finds it difficult to fall asleep, as he’s sleepy but the constant chain of thoughts in his mind won’t let him sleep. As well as that person finds it difficult to stay asleep as that person often may wake up in the middle of the night. These are two of the common symptoms of anxiety.
- If you are suffering from anxiety You start breathing rapidly and you start taking small insufficient breaths.
3. What are Anxiety Attacks?
When these symptoms are not given attention, they can worsen over time and start causing anxiety attacks.
Anxiety attacks are attacks that slowly build up in a stressful situation. When you are a long-term unaware patient of anxiety, and you do not act upon your condition ever, your anxiety pressure builds up in you, it keeps bothering you but you don’t acknowledge that it’s there.
When your mind becomes unable to hold it in for any more time, it bursts out, a big wave of stress, fear and worriedness, that’s an anxiety attack, much worse than normal anxiety.
It is best to identify the symptoms of anxiety to get the treatment as soon as possible before it starts harming the daily life of people. Most people do not acknowledge mental health and anxiety as real diseases or real health problems. So even if they are having symptoms they avoid it which leads to severe anxiety attacks.
As anxiety is a chronic disease1, That means it keeps coming back at you. You can’t really get rid of it because there is no definite cure for ending it. Only the symptoms 2can be managed to control their effect on daily life.
One of the cures to reducing it is here, Setting daily intentions to reduce anxiety can be very helpful.
You might be wondering, What are examples of daily intentions? How do you set daily intentions? What is a good intention to set? well, we are going to find out ahead in this post.
4. What are Daily Intentions?
What exactly are daily intentions? They are not the same as your tasks on the to-do lists.
Setting daily intentions is a way of getting yourself ready for the day. It doesn’t mean what are you gonna do on that day, it means how you going to act on that day, how you are going to control your mind.
The intentions can be anything, from telling yourself to smile more to being more productive, not a thing about anything bad, or living in the present.
Daily intentions are more effective than goal setting as there is no compulsion to achieve anything. You are doing it not to achieve anything, you are doing it because you intend to do it. You are having a smile on your face because you intend to smile.
As the focus is more on creating a positive attitude towards life, goal setting takes a backseat, as there is no pressure to achieve anything except for a free mind.
The intentions should not be taken very seriously, and if you cannot complete them, there will be no harm in it. You are not supposed to put pressure on your mind to follow the intention that you decided. It will only worsen its effect of it.
If you forget the intention, no worries, you start acting upon it again when you remember it again.
5. What Is the Importance of Setting Daily Intentions?
Intentions remind you to keep a positive mindset and positive energy about life and provide motivation to go through every day. The hectic schedule of everyone can make it difficult for them to focus on themselves.
Setting intentions can help them focus more on themselves by reminding them to be happier and more considerate of others. setting daily intentions moves you closer to your life goal without you knowing.
Intentions are a set of points that guide a person in living a positive life. Setting intentions while suffering from anxiety can help you reduce being on edge every time.
The steps mentioned below will tell you how to set daily intentions to reduce anxiety.
6. How Do Daily Intentions Help in Reducing Anxiety?
6.1. Set an Intention
When you set an intention for a day, you feel motivated to practice those intentions daily. You suddenly have a goal just for that day, which isn’t guided by any rules there is no achieving or missing something in it only acting upon the intention is the goal.
If you forget about acting upon your intention you have to let go of yourself instead of punishing yourself with anxiety, and the is no pressure to keep acting because even if you forget and start having anxious thoughts, you can always keep acting upon your intention when you recall it again and there is no need to regret it. Just have to keep acting upon your intention as well as you can.
For example, before a big presentation, you can intend to be more easy-going and confident. When you intend to be confident, your mind starts working on your intention, this way it doesn’t have anxious thoughts, This helps you stay positive and focused on the task at hand rather than worrying about how you are doing on the stage.
You can write down your daily intentions in a diary or journal3, as it will be easier to tick off everything once you successfully follow the intentions throughout the day. Again, it’s not a to-do list. you are just writing it down to remember it. So that you can act upon your intentions.
So you know about how intentions work and their benefits on anxiety. Now when you are setting your daily intentions, the following points should be kept in mind.
6.2. Specify your Intentions
Being specific does not mean that the points should be followed to their brim. Rather, they should tell you what you ought to do on that day.
It can be difficult to follow vague intentions, as the mind is already clouded with anxious thoughts. Hence the vague intention can mix up thoughts even more.
Specifying all the details of how you have planned out your day, how you will react when you meet someone new or have a get-together with your old school buddies, and how you want to feel before a big presentation.
The intentions set out will allow you to stay and enjoy the moment instead of worrying about how you should react and feel as you have already had that pre-planned.
6.3. Be in Control
Having anxiety is all about worrying about consequences beforehand. Setting daily intentions can help ease these worries. Your setting intention will alarm your mind that no matter what happens in your future or what consequences you face, you just have to act like this today. So your mind eases the worry.
When you are the centre of attention and do not know how to tackle the situation, it can be quite scary as these situations trigger anxiety attacks.
The process of setting intentions can help you feel in control of the situation as then you will know beforehand how to approach the situation.
Setting intentions ensures that you are in charge of everything that will happen rather than waiting for your destiny to create a miracle.
6.4. Take One Thing at a Time
Many people believe that multitasking is beneficial as it saves time, but it is quite the opposite in reality. Doing multiple activities is just as same as opening multiple windows on your PC, so as a PC is a machine, it can work with it even then if you open any tabs it may hang. and if you work on one window at a time your PC works smoothly.
So if we apply the same logic if you work on one thing at a time your mind tends to work more efficiently, without getting anxious any more than multitasking.
The anxious thoughts already make your mind go haywire, and multitasking can only result in more scattered thoughts. When you are focusing on one thing you are thinking about whether your anxiety bothering you, when you do two things at a time, you break your chain of thought into two things with anxiety bothering you, And for anxiety, it becomes easy to bother two different thoughts then to bother one thought.
Whenever you plan to write your daily intentions for the day, keep in mind that you have a complete focus on thinking about the intentions.
There is no perfect time for setting intentions, but morning is preferable, or at night right before you fall asleep. As in the morning, you are refreshed, and you can effectively plan out how you want your day to look. It can be more beneficial if you indulge in some meditation exercises in the morning to help your mind relax.
7. What Daily Intention Is to Be Set to Help With Anxiety?
To achieve a relaxed state of mind to calm your anxiety, an intention setting can be a very useful tip. Setting an intention could change your mindset towards how you view your goals and life.
7.1. Some Intentions to Help You During the Process of Intention Setting:
7.1.1. I Will Be More Grateful
We often forget to appreciate the small things in our lives, and the intention intends us to focus on them more. You might be feeling anxious because you are not getting what you want, you are not achieving what you want, and you are not getting the results that you want.
These are the things that lead a person to anxiety but there is one more thing that can stop anxiety but people forget about it. People stop feeling happy and grateful for what they have. They stop appreciating what they have achieved and keep worrying about what they don’t have.
7.1.2. I Will Be More Kind
Whatever you do, kindness should always be your priority, as it is the first step to gaining success. When you show your kindness to others, others will have a good picture of you in their mind. It’s found that people dealing with anxiety 4tend to lose control and become angry at people for small things or without any particular reason.
So if you intend to be kind you are saving the relations that your normal self made.
7.1.3. I Will Be Happy
We get so busy with our personal and professional life that the line between those often gets blurred, due to which both our personal and professional takes a hit. Being happy is the thing that should be your first priority in life. And most people forget that thing and it’s the trigger point that leads to anxiety in the first place.
During this process, happiness takes a backseat resulting in negative energy.
8. Bottom Line
An intention setting can create a positive world that focuses on the current moment rather than worrying about the future.
If you start writing your intention for the day, it will quickly become your habit like second nature. you can write it down on a sticky note and stick it in front of you at your desk, this way you won’t forget it.
Maybe it can be disheartening when you cannot complete the intentions mentioned on the list you prepared for whatever reasons.
At these times, notice the situations that led you to not follow the intentions and focus on how you can do things differently to achieve the opposite.
When you are healthy, success will come to you, and for this, you should know where their focus lies, with negative thoughts or being productive in your life.
Setting daily intentions has the power to create a free mind that helps us get through our day efficiently.
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