7 Simple Ways to Help Manage your Anxiety at Work and Home

Over the last few years since the release of our book Anxiety at Work , my coauthor Adrian Gostick and I have hosted more than 200 episodes of our podcast on how to manage stress, burnout, and anxiety at work. I love to ask guest to walk us through a few practices they’ve found to help them thrive.

As we near the end of this Mental Health Awareness Month, I thought it might be helpful to share some of the wisdom we’ve heard from these experts that might help on your journey to mental health and happiness. We’ve interviewed experts from Jon Gordon (author of The Energy Bus), to Michael Bungay Stanier (author of The Coaching Habit), to Liz Wiseman (author of Multipliers), to Whitney Johnson (author of Disrupt Yourself), as well as dozen of business leaders, psychologist and psychiatrists.

??? Exercise.

The most often cited piece of advice from these experts is how important it is to move every day. A regular workout routine at some regular point in their days helped our guests reset and move into a positive mindset. Some were dedicated marathon runners or triathletes while others just enjoyed a daily walk in a nearby park. What mattered most was not the intensity of the workout but the idea of getting out of their offices, getting the blood pumping, and stimulating brain chemicals that left them feeling happier, more relaxed, and less stressed.

??♀? Meditation.

Many of our expert guests have told us how important it is for them to meditate every day, or at least a few times a week. Some used an app on their phone for 10 minutes a day while others pursued a deeper discipline of meditation for an hour or more a day. They told us how meditation can have a wonderful calming effect on people—helping them reduce anxiety, improve their sleep, and boost their cognitive abilities.

?? Prayer.

Like meditation, personal prayer is often cited by our guests as a daily practice. When our guests found time to commune with the divine (however they defined the higher power they believe in), it brought them comfort and peace. Many said they combine their prayer with the reading of scripture or sacred texts. Particularly in hard times and when going through tragedy or personal loss, this practice brought comfort and peace.

?? Breathing.

In his landmark book Breath, James Nestor says the average person breathes at least 25,000 times a day. Breathing is something most us hardly give a thought to, yet breathing properly resets our hearts, minds, and souls that can be truly life changing. Many of our guests talked about effective breathing as an essential practice to calm anxiety attacks as well helping improve everyday life. Nestor encourages us to breath less and more slowly, and to breathe more through our noses where the air goes more directly to our lungs.

???Journaling

An avid journal keeper myself, I have been heartened to hear how many of our experts take time on a regular basis to reflect and record their thoughts and experiences in a journal. Research has shown that journaling can help people more clearly see patterns in their joys and fears of life—helping them recognize triggers and better control them. Journals also leave a record for our posterity. I still have many of my grandfather’s journals, and reading about how he dealt with hard things has helped me know that I can do hard things too.

???? Gratitude

Many our guests acknowledge the importance of a gratitude ritual or practice in helping them stay in a more positive frame of mind. Helping people to form this positive habit inspired us to create our own journal The Gratitude Habit: 90 days to a more grateful life . Science has shown that humans can’t hold two emotions at the exact same time. In other words, at the moment you are grateful you can’t also be anxious. Yes, anxiety can creep back in to our thoughts, but the more we are grateful the more we push out feelings of stress and anxiety. Some of our guests told us about family rituals of gratitude shared at dinner table or at the end of the day with their significant others. Whatever works for you, incorporating a gratitude ritual will help boost your mental health.

??? Service

Many of our guests talked about how serving others helped them through tough times by turning their thoughts to others—i.e., helping a neighbor or friend, leaving a kind note for someone, sharing a gift of food, or just lending a listening ear. At work, service can include offering to help with a project, taking an extra shift so a co-worker can go to a family event, or checking in with coworkers each day to ask how they are doing are all simple acts of kindness that take us out of our own headspace. These small acts are win-wins since we feel better and so do the people we serve.

As for my go-to practices? They are ??Nature walks. ?? Mediation and prayer. ?? A gratitude journal. When I do these three things each day, I feel happy, healthy, and my anxiety levels are much lower.

Those works for me; what works for you? I would love for you to share some of the things you do to help reduce stress and anxiety at work and in the rest of your life. This is Mental Health Awareness Month and a great time to think, with gratitude, about how much we can learn from each other.

Love + gratitude,

Mental Health Awareness ??

Anxiety at Work podcast. Each week, my co-author and dear friend, Adrian Gostick , and I are grateful for the opportunity to talk to leading authorities on mental health and explore the causes of workplace stress and anxiety, along with practices that are proven to reduce tension & cultivate calm.

Key Highlights: ??

?? Preparation Enables Spontaneity: you can prepare to be spontaneous.?

?? Mindset Over Perfection: Communication should be about connecting with others rather than delivering a flawless performance.?

?? Structure Your Messaging: crafting your message with a clear beginning, middle, and end, much like the problem-solution-benefit structure in advertising.?

Our new friend, Matt Abrahams , is author of the new book “THINK FASTER, TALK SMARTER: How to Speak Successfully When You’re Put on the Spot. ” Matt is a Lecturer in Organizational Behavior at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business where he teaches popular classes in strategic communication and effective virtual presenting.?

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Gostick & Elton are overjoyed to share Anxiety at Work Resilience Training . Self-guided for one, or enterprise for many. 8 modules and 7 CPU's earned. Launch Offer: Currently offering 50% discount

??The Culture Works

Visit The Culture Works for free resources including videos, podcast episodes, and more to help you build an "all in"?culture?of?gratitude.

Leading with Gratitude , Anxiety at Work , The Best Team Wins , and All In are sold at fine bookstores everywhere.

??NEW keynote from Gostick & Elton offers six strategies to help you embrace the discomfort of uncertainty and ambiguity??