If there’s one thing that can make anyone feel anxious, it’s the prospect of failure. The reasons are, admittedly, self-evident: if you really care about something, whether it’s a personal project, goal, relationship, or what have you, then you’re going to want it to succeed. But, of course, failure is part of life, so it is best to be ready to confront fear and anxiety when it inevitably happens to you.

It is tempting to resist anxiety to try to reduce it, but that's not the way to go. No one wants to live with anxiety because it's controlling. When anxiety invades our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, it traps us in its cage and lives our lives for us. When trapped, people instinctively fight back. Not wanting to remain stuck, it's natural to resist anxiety by arguing with anxious beliefs. However, to argue requires thinking about those anxious thoughts and ruminating over them, which keeps us focused on them. Struggling against anxiety tightens the trap door. When we relax enough to shimmy out of anxiety's tight grasp, we can open the door of the cage and fly free. Doing so involves a different approach.

Do you ever feel in control of time, or do you feel like you'll never finish everything you want to do?

Finding a quiet space inside of you is important because anxiety is loud. It screams incessantly, warning us against threats seen and unseen, imminent and anticipatory, real and imagined. Our thoughts race noisily through our mind, and when they rev up to become obsessions and ruminations, they can turn our mind into a place more earsplitting than a Nascar track. No wonder anxiety causes symptoms like headaches, trembling, irritability, and, for me, the urge to curl into a ball with my hands over my ears screaming, "Shut up!" Believe it or not, you can turn off the race cars (slow and quiet your anxious, negative thoughts), and enjoy much-needed quiet in your mind. When anxiety is loud, find and cultivate the quiet space within you.

I feel like there's never enough time, so I don’t understand how anyone ever feels bored. By definition, being bored suggests you don’t have any idea how to spend your time. I feel literally the exact opposite: on most days, I feel like I never have enough time to do even a fraction of what I’d like to do.

Sometimes, to reduce anxiety, the most powerful thing we can do is reconnect with ourselves, our values, and those in our lives. Chances are, your life is busy. To be busy can be good and healthy when we're pursuing our passions and creating the quality life we want. However, when we become too busy and stress dominates, we risk becoming disconnected from what's most important to us, the values that often drive our busyness in the first place. To reduce anxiety in the long term, reconnect to what gives your life meaning.

With the new year now underway, you’re bound to hear talk of people resolving to cut out toxic relationships, people, what have you. In fact, I’m sure so many people say that every year, the very thought of anyone suggesting they’re going to cut out toxic relationships is more of a cliché than anything else, eliciting nothing more than an eye roll. I mean, who really follows through on any of their resolutions, anyway?

It's the beginning of 2020, and I have a new year gift to offer you: mindfulness exercises to help anxiety. It's a brand-new year. Chances are, you would rather that anxiety didn't accompany you into this year or any other year. You don't have to remain attached to anxiety. Break free from worry and panic by making mindfulness a way of life, and start now, early in 2020, by helping your anxiety with these 20 mindfulness exercises.

Anxiety disorders cause us to ruminate and rehash, running past conversations, events, situations, actions, and emotions over and over in our heads. And doing so makes anxiety skyrocket.

The Christmas story helps me deal with holiday anxiety. So many people find this time of year supremely stressful when it really should be the exact opposite. Because there is no better time than now to revisit the topic of holiday anxiety, I want to go into a little more detail about how I use the Christmas story to frame this time of year in terms of calm, not anxiety.