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Our attempts to avoid painful feelings and experiences, so often leave us not fulfilling our potential, not being involved in potentially meaningful relationships, and not fully living life. We also end up  surrounding ourselves with the painful feelings anyway by imagining them and regretting lost opportunities. Is it not worth risking being hurt, worried, rejected, grieved but having the opportunity to be involved in something meaningful, than protecting oneself from such feelings but perhaps feeling a lack of meaning, connection, passion as a result? Sometimes people forget that the very nature of human existence means that life is hard, but some of the hardest things you will experience will bring the most learning and meaning to life.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.”

Using breathing to calm yourself before bed, or throughout the day to keep on top of anxiety can be incredibly useful:

Breathing Video  

Breathing Video 2

I find both of these breathing pacing videos particularly useful, but make sure you have the sound turned on so that you can get used to doing it without watching so that you can fall asleep.

Headspace is also a brilliant app to begin meditating and calming yourself at night, which is very accessible. Meditation and mindfulness are vital to manage anaxiery and stress. Here is an interview regarding Headspace by Russell Brand:

“So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lives or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?”