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Direct your attention outward, certain anxiety states, especially panic, social and anxiety and illness

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and anxiety, lead to a focus on ourselves, our own anxiety symptoms, our heart rate worry, physical

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sensations, how we're coming across to the person we're talking to and so forth.

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This preoccupation only intensifies our anxiety and discomfort.

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Mindfulness offers the possibility of turning our attention outward to what's happening in the rest

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of the world.

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For example, we can notice what the people around us are doing, what the sky looks like right at this

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moment, or the shape of a tree.

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We've seen a thousand times, but never really noticed.

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We might find that we not only interrupt our anxiety fueling cell focus, but we also step into a richer

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experience of life.

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Except that what you're afraid of could happen.

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Part of what maintains our fear and worry is mental resistance to what we are afraid might happen.

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We cannot know for certain how things will turn out, and yet we keep trying in some way to control

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the outcome.

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When we accept that we cannot control what happens, we can step out of that tension.

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We can recognize that our two could go really badly.

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We might lose our our have we we could be in an accident and a tragedy could be full of the people we

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love.

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This kind of acceptance is likely to raise an anxiety at first, which is probably why we avoid it and

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then can lead to a greater sense of peace as we give up the control we never had in the first place

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at a certain age.

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In the same vein of acceptance, we can acknowledge, even embrace the inherent uncertainty in our lives.

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Who really knows how things will go?

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That mystery can be terrifying, especially when we prefer to control everything all the time.

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At the same time, it's liberating to align ourselves with the nature of life, which is fluid, surprising

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and unpredictable.