## Meditation Much of the anxiety that emerges from the cortex is problematic because we begin to confuse thoughts for reality. This grants negative thoughts extreme power, to the point of activating our amygdala. In order to combat this, the book recommends adopting a meditation practice, with a goal of becoming the observer of your mind. > You’re an observer of your cortex, not a believer of everything it produces. (p. 183) And here's a particularly neuroscientific take on observing the monkey mind: > To help distance yourself from a thought, you could tell yourself something like, “I need to be careful of this pesky thought. I have no reason to put faith in it, and it’s likely to activate my amygdala.” (p. 183) The benefits to meditation are myriad, and not only does it help to rewire your cortex, it has a calming effect on the amygdala too. So learning to become the observer of your own thoughts and feelings is one of the most effective practices you can adopt for managing anxiety. ## Replacing Thoughts One failure mode for many people who practice meditation is that they get angry when their mind wanders. Sometimes their mind may find a way to focus on negative thoughts or random thoughts again. And during meditation, we simply regather our focus on whatever we want, whether that's our breath, or a mantra, and move forward. Once you are outside of the confines of a meditation practice, negative thoughts may still emerge and they can begin to trigger anxiety. The book has a very interesting idea: > “Don’t erase—replace!” is the best approach with anxiety-igniting thoughts. (p. 187) The idea here is simple, instead of trying to eliminate bad thoughts, distract yourself when you notice you're having a negative though pattern. If you can, be a positive framing on a negative situation "This might be tough, but I can chip away", or potentially just finding some absurdity in the situation. Take this tweet for example:  You can find replacements for negative thoughts in resilience, humor, absurdity, optimism - anything. But the idea here: you can knock down a load bearing wall, but just make sure you put something else in it's place. As the authors say: > Cultivating a sense of playfulness is essential... Playing games, joking, and engaging in silliness are some of the best distractions (p. 189) ## Planning For many of us, when confronted with a large or nebulous challenge, we might spend a lot of time worrying. But worrying is particularly dangerous when it comes to anxiety: > Researchers have shown that when people continue to think about a negative event, they lengthen their emotional reaction to the event, maintaining negative emotions for longer than they otherwise would have lasted (Verduyn, Van Mechelen, and Tuerlinckx 2011). (p. 190) The antidote to worrying is to plan - or the work of clarifying and derisking your tasks - before execution begins. In my own experience, there is an interesting connection between self esteem, productivity, planning, and worrying. If you focus on worrying, productivity and self esteem seem to fall. If you focus on planning or doing "metawork", productivity and self esteem often rise. So short circuit worrying and plan. The moment you see yourself ruminating, grab a writing device and figure out a plan. Clipped from [Rewire Your Anxious Brain - Review](https://philipliao.com/books/rewire-your-anxious-brain) at 2021-02-26T19:23:50. #psychology