Self-help principle #7:
Stay mentally active and growing.Boredom is one of the most acute anxiety triggers sufferers face. A bored mind is an inactive mind -- ripe for worry, fear and panic. The imagination, no longer stimulated to create, becomes a destructive tool for conjuring "what-if" scenarios.
Author Steve Chandler often talks about how children and adults differ in the use of their imaginations. Children use imagination to come up with creative drawings, paintings, dreams, fantasies about what they want to do be when they grow up. Adults use it to worry, to imagine the most wretched outcomes that lie in their futures. Decide for yourself which is the healthier use of imagination.
If you're prone to anxiety, keep using your imagination to create. Draw, paint, dance, write, take classes, undertake an educational discipline. Turn off the television and take your mind out of passive mode.
If your job is a bore, draw an up an action plan for getting a more mentally satisfying one. If you have a tedious commute, listen to some stimulating audiocassettes. You can learn a lot about history, science, philosophy, religion, literature or almost anything via your tape recorder or CD player.The main thing is to keep the brain activity going.
Because an imagination left to itself will soon begin feeding on itself.
