Build the Mindfulness muscles

• Catch yourself worrying. 
• Turn your attention to your body and notice sensations you can identify (muscles are tense, heart beating nausea).
• Don’t get involved with your worrisome thoughts. 
• Try to label or name your emotion, whether it’s ...

Whenever you have the urge to avoid, you need to realize that’s an opportunity to weaken your worries. It’s a chance to practice more mindfulness. Shift your focus away from your thoughts and back to the concrete world.

The most dangerous emotions are the ones you don’t know are affecting you. When you know what happens when the worries start, you’ll be relieved and you'll also be able to do something constructive about them. So make a list with thoughts you have when you get worried, physical sensa...

• Fear is what you feel in the moment when someone comes at you with a knife. 
• Anxiety is about the anticipation of an event. Anxiety is often problem-solving — but without the solving part.

Trying to push the worries out of your head is inherently problematic because to be vigilant about not thinking about something, your brain needs to keep it in mind. 

Mindfulness does the opposite by making you aware of your state of anxiousness.