Lasting Change: It’s closer than you think

We all know what anxiety, stress, and depression are like, and how hard they are to overcome. The answer, we are told, is to change our thinking, tell ourselves we’re worthy, or take up yoga or meditation. But do these approaches actually create a genuine and lasting change? For some they do, but for others, they are left falling in and out of those distressing states, never gaining the sense of peace that they need so much.

But that sense of peace, that solution you are looking for, is closer than you think. And actually, you experience it every day. It is that state you are in when you’re “in the zone” at work, and when you’re having a great conversation with a friend, and when you’re teaching your child something new, and when you’re alone and singing and dancing to music. It is an empowered state, and it fills you with passion, and confidence, and energy.

The problem, of course, is that this empowered state can be short-lived, and our disempowered states—hopelessness, helplessness, depression, fear, worry, etc.,—all get triggered so easily, and when they do, they take over your whole being and can be so difficult to get out of.

And the sad thing is, you weren’t born with these disempowered states, you had to adopt them in order to protect yourself from threatening situations and to keep you connected to those who looked after you. They kept you safe, but now they get triggered too often, and they disrupt your life. But nobody has shown you how to manage them.

The key is to understand that these disempowered states are a very vulnerable part of you. They are scared and hurt and in need of love and protection. And you are the only person who can give them that, who can give yourself that. Healing involves learning to treat yourself with the compassion that you need and deserve. And when this happens, when we can make those vulnerable parts of yourself feel safe, then they will deactivate, and we will feel that relief we are looking for. That freedom from fear, and vulnerability that those disempowered states are.

And then when you’ve achieved this—when you’ve created a safe space for that vulnerable part of you—you can then get in touch with your more empowered states. Those states that, as I said before, are actually already a part of you. Now, for some, these states are very close to the surface and require little work to activate, and for others, they can be buried quite deep and require more work. But regardless, there are always instances in your life of the person you want to be, of the person you want to be more of. And by learning to tune into these empowered states, you can learn to activate them in more areas of your life. You don’t need to learn to be someone else to find what you are looking for, because you already are the change you are looking for, you just have to learn how to tune into it.

We all know what anxiety, stress, and depression are like, and how hard they are to overcome. The answer, we are told, is to change our thinking, tell ourselves we’re worthy, or take up yoga or meditation. But for many of us, this advice doesn’t really create lasting change. However, there is hope, and that hope is much closer than you think, because the change you’re looking for, you experience it every day, if only for a few moments.