How to Avoid the Toilet Vortex of Anxiety | Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren

1. Cultivate Self-Compassion with Metta

Take loving-kindness practice seriously to ‘warm up your internal weather’ and stop being at war with aspects of yourself you dislike or don’t accept, which will positively impact your relationships with others.

2. Prioritize Relationships for Happiness

Be deliberate about maintaining and establishing new relationships, starting with family and extending to social circles, as prioritizing these connections significantly contributes to happiness and avoids regret.

3. Feel Emotions, Respond Thoughtfully

When triggered by fear or anxiety, practice being with the feelings themselves to understand what’s happening internally, allowing you to respond thoughtfully rather than reactively.

4. Prioritize Repair, Not Perfection

In relationships, especially during conflict, prioritize making repairs and recovering faster after mistakes rather than striving for perfection in the moment, understanding that mindfulness includes remembering to apologize and return to a settled baseline.

5. Break Rumination with “Is This Useful?”

When caught in a cycle of mindless stress or rumination, ask yourself, ‘Is this useful?’ to pop out of the rote repetition and assess if the thinking is actually helping you at that moment.

6. Unfixate Thoughts, Avoid Aversion

Instead of trying to ‘compartmentalize’ or forcefully shut down thoughts, aim to unfixate from them by giving them space, perhaps through a gentle visualization, allowing their energy to play out without being driven forward by your attention.

7. Engage Actively with Emotions

Instead of passively sitting with emotions like grief, actively engage with their energy by expressing them in some way, allowing them to live, breathe, and change, focusing on feeling the raw emotions rather than getting lost in the story of grief.

8. Utilize Ritual for Mourning

Engage in mourning rituals, either from ancestral traditions or created for yourself and your community, to actively process and release grief, as ritual provides a structured way to honor loss and the love behind it.

9. Express and Release Grief

Recognize that grief is a natural expression of love meant to be expressed and released, not held onto; engage in processes to honor both the grief and the love behind it, allowing it to flow as a natural process.

10. Simple Grief Rituals

Create simple, personal rituals for mourning, such as writing letters, engaging in nature rituals, or making a small altar, as these actions provide a tangible way to honor and process grief without needing a grand performance.

11. Metta for Difficult People

To work with criticism and contention towards others, practice loving-kindness (Metta) by imagining a difficult person’s life journey from birth, which can foster empathy and release the belief that they ‘should’ be different.

12. Expand Awareness with “What’s Here?”

Regularly ask yourself, ‘What’s here now that I’m not noticing?’ during meditation or quiet moments to expand your awareness and uncover underlying feelings or concerns that might be subtly influencing you.

13. Identify Your Recurring “Shticks”

Identify and acknowledge your recurring ‘shticks’ or ‘demons’—the persistent patterns or challenges that pull you into worry or specific behaviors—to understand how you lose contact with life and cause reactivity.

14. Kindness for Drifting Mind

When your mind drifts during meditation and you notice it returning, gently greet it with a kind phrase like ‘Great job, welcome back’ to encourage awareness and avoid self-judgment, which can disincentivize your mind from waking up.

15. Accept Meditation Plateaus

If you feel stuck or bored in your meditation practice, accept that you are in a plateau and try to be okay with the sameness, boredom, or anxiety as it is, as this true acceptance can sometimes shift the plateau.

16. Experiment Meditation Techniques

If your meditation practice feels stagnant, experiment with different techniques, such as focusing on sound, trying loving-kindness practice, or shifting your attention to other objects of awareness, to help move past a plateau.

17. Choose Your Right Meditation

The ‘right’ meditation is the one that works for you, and this can change over time; feel free to explore different practices, guidances, and teachers, especially if you have a mind that likes to jump around.

18. Commit to One Practice (for a while)

After an initial period of exploring different meditation practices, commit to one for a while to see how it lands, prioritizing multiple short practices daily over one long weekly session to sample meditative quality more often.

19. Create Meditation “Islands of Stability”

Even amidst a chaotic life, establish ‘islands of stability’ by scheduling one to three 20-minute meditation sessions per week, as these dedicated times lubricate your ability to apply mindfulness skills in the moment.

20. Ground Yourself in Chaos

In highly stressful and unavoidable situations, apply mindfulness by grounding your attention, such as in your feet, to maintain boundaries and a sense of your own body, allowing you to hold space for others’ intense emotions without entanglement.

21. Meditate in Community

Engage in meditation with others and discuss your experiences within a community, as this can profoundly change and deepen your practice by providing reflection, conversation, and shared understanding.

22. Deepen Practice with Courses

To deepen your meditation practice, consider taking courses that explore a specific aspect, practice, or teaching, as this provides a structured way to learn, stick with a practice, and engage with a community for questions and shared experiences.

23. Diversify Wellness “Tool Belt”

Recognize that meditation is not a panacea; for chronic issues like anxiety or depression, build a ’tool belt’ of different methods and techniques, which may include therapy, bodywork, or movement, to address what’s needed at the time.

24. Seek Teacher for Chronic Issues

For chronic issues or stuck patterns that meditation alone hasn’t fully addressed, consider working one-on-one with a teacher or therapist to explore deeper and find additional support.

25. Embrace Social Engagements

Actively say ‘yes’ to a large percentage of social invitations and opportunities to connect with people, as this habit can significantly increase your happiness.