Defeating anxiety can often seem an impossibility! Anxiety is such an invasive emotion it impacts our mood, behavior, self-image, and can negatively influence our motivation and confidence to achieve the goals we have in life. While anxiety is powerful, your mind is more powerful. You possess the strength and capacity to defeat anxiety.
Learning skills to shift your mindset, battle anxiety through gratitude, and manage your breath will help you triumph over the exhausting, relentless self-doubt and loathing that comes with anxiety.
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I love TED talks for personal motivation when looking to shift a mindset or achieve a personal goal. I save some of my favorites and replay them when I know that my thinking is stuck in an unhealthy pattern. These are some of the most powerful TED talks to give you courage in your journey to defeat anxiety!
Anxiety can become like a record skipping in your mind. Thoughts become stuck and the more you engage those thoughts, you can actually train your brain in an unhealthy way. So you learn to think negatively, therefore feeding your anxiety and self-doubt more. Shifting this mindset requires a catalyst to challenge these thoughts. Listen to these amazing speakers for some immediate inspiration.
Don’t Believe Everything You Think
Lauren Weinstein’s TED talk is one of the most powerful I have listened to and is deserving of far more views than it has! She hooked me with the story of the elephant. In her analogy of our mindset serving as a virtual reality headset that influences our beliefs and behavior is incredibly powerful. Consider how anxiety serves as your ropes, feeding the ideas that hold you back from the life you want, the adventures you seek and the goals you wish to attain.
Anxiety is a distortion of reality. This inspirational TED talk will offer amazing insights into how shifting your mindset, taking off your virtual reality mindset to help you defeat anxiety.
Points to Ponder
- “My beliefs affected the way I perceived the world, which changed how I acted, which led to a self-fulfilling prophecy. I felt small, and my world became smaller.”
- “How you see yourself and your circumstances will affect what you see, how you act, and what occurs as a result.”
- “No matter who you are or where you are, in this moment, there is the life that you can be living if you break your ropes. You get there one new thought at a time, one new action at a time until one day, you find yourself in a new reality.”
- “New beliefs lead to new actions.”
How to Cope with Anxiety
Olivia Remes’ TED talk offers tangible coping mechanisms to help defeat anxiety. She offers insight into 3 coping mechanisms that are easy for anyone to do! So many resources for coping mechanisms are just activities to busy your mind and hands, but these activities do not help shift the thinking that causes the feelings of distress. Not tackling the underlying thinking that creates the anxiety will perpetuate the anxiety. A great listen!
Points to Ponder
- “A way to overcome indecision and this lack of control in life, is to do it badly.”
- “The second coping strategy is to forgive yourself, and this is very powerful if you use it.”
- “For people who think there’s nothing to live for and nothing more to expect from life, the question is getting these people to realize that life is still expecting something from them.” Dr. Victor Frankel
The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong
If you struggle with anxiety, you know the cost of anxiety on your life and happiness. Anxiety fosters a way thinking and behaving that is destructive. Amy Morin’s TED talk shines a light on how anxiety and the mental habits it creates, gives away your power. She shares a painful personal account of loss and grief and how this pushed her to train her brain to think in a healthier way. Defeating anxiety is challenging and hard. This TED talk inspires us to work hard to overcome the destructive thought patterns that negatively influence our life.
Points to Ponder
- “Your world is what you make it. But of course before you can change your world, you have to believe that you can change it.”
- “If you want to be mentally strong, you need good habits like practicing gratitude.”
Breathe to Heal
Max Strom’s TED talk on breath-work offers research based information on how breathing impacts anxiety and depression. Learning and practicing breath-work offers an easy and free method to cope with anxiety. While it seems easy in theory, but it does take practice. Strom offers insights and information that will help you to better understand the benefits of breath-work. In this talk, he teaches the 4-7-8 breath technique. Yet another tool in your arsenal in your battle to defeat anxiety.
Points to Ponder
- “Some doors only open from the inside. Breath is a way of accessing that door.”
Breaking the Anxiety Cycle Through Kindness
Steven Zanella’s TED talk may bring you to tears. His story is incredibly relate-able for anyone who struggles with anxiety. He speaks with vulnerability and courage. He shares his battle with debilitating anxiety and offers up insights into how a shift in thinking…to live in the present moment with kindness and compassion for himself changed his life. When you need to recenter yourself, listen to this talk. Kudos to him for his bravery…
Points to Ponder
- “It’s the trying that is the important part.”
- “What if I told myself I could do things, what if I showed myself the same love and respect…”
- “The present moment is all that we ever have…this moment is where we find our happiness”
Defeating anxiety requires you to possess tools and skills that you can draw from to find the strength to shift your mindset. I love TED talks as a mini-boost to bring focus to my day and reset my motivation. Save your favorites for that pick me up that you need to continuing working toward mastery over your anxiety!