When describing my beginning semesters in college, I tend to use more negative words than one would expect. I struggled with depression and anxiety, and found myself attracting toxicity into my life. Looking back at those moments in my life makes me appreciate the moments I can now create in the present.
When we were sent away to quarantine during my second semester, it made me realize how unhappy I was. It gave me time to connect with myself while feeling the comfort of my home. Since then, I picked multiple people’s brains to see how they coped with stress and anxiety. I learned different ways to start each day with more positivity.
The first thing that I thoroughly enjoyed doing was practicing how to be more present.
The act of being present consists of being fully aware of your surroundings. It is about truly enjoying the moment that you are currently in without any intruding thoughts. I love starting my day with mindfulness. I used to always say that I was NOT a morning person (mainly the painful, alarm-set mornings). After starting to understand what being mindful meant, I fell in love with the mornings I had to myself. Walking back from the gym, feeling the sun on my face and listening to the birds singing is now one of my favorite parts of the day.
Taking the time to relax and slow down has immensely improved my anxiety, especially when school is in session. Life moves around us so fast that we tend to forget to take a step back and take a moment for ourselves and our minds.
Mindfulness is the ability that one creates to be in the present moment. This term is used quite frequently when practicing meditation. While meditation has been recommended for me and others that struggle with anxiety, I have personally not had the best luck with meditating. I believe my problem was thinking that it had to be done with absolutely no thoughts whatsoever. Practicing mindfulness with meditation is the act of exploring the nooks and crannies of our mind—not sealing it shut. Slowly integrating meditation into your life will eventually form a healthy habit.
An easy way that I was able to fit mindfulness into my routine would be when I manifested. An article was recently posted on Her Campus explaining how the author used the Law of Attraction to turn her life around. During my first semester on campus, the roommate that I was randomly assigned to (or purposefully assigned to by the universe) created the spark in me to start manifesting more often. Visualizing happiness and positivity in your life creates the ability for those goals to be manifested into your reality. I was able to clearly visualize my goals by journaling and creating vision boards.
After taking the time for myself to visualize my happiness in the present moment, I began to feel happier and started noticing changes in my life that led me to that happiness.
I recommend researching these topics if you have struggled with anxiety over the long-lasting quarantine. It takes small steps over a long period of time to start noticing changes in your mindset. Just know that you are not alone and to check in on your friends now and then. Even the little things can brighten someone’s day, like sending a text to let them know you are thinking about them.
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