Are you around anxious people?  5 Tips to keep you balanced.

It is hard enough at times to keep ourselves lifted and happy, but how do we do this when others around us are anxious or stressed?

Anxiety and stress, just like laughing, can be contagious: if you are around someone, or worse still, many people, who are highly anxious then the chances are it will affect you. Your mood, attention span, focus, motivation and energies can all be affected.

But the good news is there are a few simple things that you can do to help greatly reduce the risk of becoming affected. And can even help to tip the balance of the energy in your favour so the others become happier, more content and balanced.

You know this:  Try walking into a room where someone has just received bad news. No matter how great you feel your energies will shift as you will be affected by the low mood or atmosphere of the people there.  And vice versa for entering a room full of laughing people when you are a bit low.

Here are my 5 top tips to keeping yourself balanced.

1. Remember it's not about you. 
When people are stressed or anxious, they may go into a rant, a meltdown or even just go quiet and if they do, we might take this personally.  So, for example, if they start to shout at us, we might believe that this person is annoyed at us and so we become annoyed.  When you recognise that it has nothing to do with you and is a reflection of the state of mind they are in, then you can start to let this go.

You don't die from the snake bite you die from the poison.

The bite being the shouting and the poison being our overthinking after the event.  It is the ruminating of ‘why they said that’ or ‘why they spoke to me like that’, and ‘what I will say to them’ that raises our stress levels. So recognise that the person is reacting to their own poison and this has nothing to do with you, so let it go.

2. Protect yourself from other people's energies.
We subconsciously pick up on other people's energy – think about someone you know who is a happiness hoover.  You can protect yourself by visualising a colour either surrounding you or between you and that other person.  You can also do it, and this is how I do it, by sending out a wave of love to that person.  When I am with someone who is anxious, stressed low in any way, I fill myself with the feeling of love and I imagine that coming out of me.  That feeling coming out of me will protect me from any negative feeling coming towards me as it acts as a block. 

You will still hear them and you may even still feel slightly annoyed by what they say but you will not absorb the draining energy that comes from the anxiety or stress that they are feeling.

3. Let the person have their say. 
When someone is stressed or anxious, they will have replayed the scenario or the thought over and over in their minds, so by the time they see you, they will almost vomit the words all over you.  This may come out like a rant, or it might come out like an attack on you but either way it has nothing to do with you.  If you stand there, protect yourself and allow the person to say whatever it is that's been going round and round in their minds, this allows them to get it out. 

Do not engage in the conversation.  Simply stand there and listen and acknowledge them every now and again to let them know that you are listening.  They just need to get this out of their system, and if they need you to talk to them, they will ask you.

4. Think about what feeds your soul.
If you are keeping your mind settled and thinking about things that you enjoy, that feed your soul then your energies will remain lifted.  Those around you will subconsciously pick up on this energy (just like the example of walking into a room above) and in a very subtle way, you will help them to settle.

5. Daydream.
When you start to daydream a happy scenario with the person who is anxious they will subconsciously pick up on this.  We experience this all the time – think of a time when you were just thinking of someone and then they called you.  We are all connected energy and so we can create happiness for others by thinking about it.  What we think about we bring about.  So daydream the scenario and more importantly feel how you both feel in the daydream.