Feeling anxious in a stressful world is common. But if you don't learn how to cope with your anxiety your reasoning and decision-making process will be badly affected. And also, your body. I am not talking here about pathological anxiety disorders. I am talking about the normal types of anxiety that everyone can experience. If you feel that your anxiety is severe or debilitating please seek appropriate professional help.

Let's learn five techniques that can help you manage your anxiety:

• Catch it early: If you can notice the early signs of your anxiety it gives you the choice to reduce it almost immediately before it develops and becomes overwhelming. Be aware of your emotions, not just when they are so strong that they hit you in the face. But when they are just there as small signs, flickering in the background. Meanwhile, take deep breaths, with rhythm and smoothness.
• Accept it: How you react to your emotions is an aspect of emotional intelligence and makes a huge difference to your ability to manage them. If you notice an early sign of anxiety you have the option to remain neutral about it, just to accept it, or even to reverse it. After all, it is only an emotion, and emotions are like waves on the beach, they come and go. Keep breathing!
• Observe it: Become a detached observer. It is simply anxiety building and fading away. Like the waves on the beach. When you feel anxiety and panic about it, and try to run away from it, and hate it, and live in dread of it, and become sure you are going to die from it, you are more likely to make it worse. Panic about panic doubles the panic! Emotional intelligence is not about avoiding emotions, nor is it about getting lost in them and overwhelmed by them. Patience is more likely to help you than getting impatient and irritated. Keep breathing!
• Focus on something else: By focusing on something serene and calming, you get moments of rest from the anxiety and find it calms down. Believe it or not, it is impossible for the mind to concentrate on more than one thing at a time. It can kid you that it is possible as it can jump from one thing to another and back again, very quickly, but it cannot hold serenity and anxiety at the same time.
• Meditate: Meditation is not like taking a happy pill and suddenly your mind is free from anxious thoughts and you bliss out! It is training the mind to tame anxious thoughts. What meditation also does, in terms of anxiety, is return the control to you. People become aware of their anxious thoughts arising and know how to soothe and calm them. Start with five minutes, 3x a day. Progressively increase the time.