Learning to observe yourself, without judgment, is highly useful and another step toward healing and rising up from challenging times and emotions.

This means stepping back and simply paying attention to how you interact with yourself, your world, and others.

This does NOT mean you judge yourself for any of it. This is the beginning of learning about you and being able to make changes to let go of anxiety, depression, feeling scattered, and other emotional states.

You may observe that a certain area of town makes your anxiety spike (that was one of my personal triggers for many years), that specific people do the same, or that you mentally beat yourself up when something – anything – doesn’t go smoothly (which is how life goes!).

Step back and observe your thoughts and emotions and see what happens, see what you learn.

As always I’m an advocate of writing stuff down. Take your observations and write down what you’ve observed about yourself.

Look for patterns. When we are living in anxiety and stress, we cultivate consistent patterns of thought, which eventually become ruts like what running water creates. Those ruts turn into streams, then rivers, and, given enough time, the Grand Canyon.

Emotional ruts keep us anchored to anxiety or other emotions, and an anchor keeps us in the same place emotionally, mentally, and even physically. For myself, that meant I kept extra weight on.

I recommend writing down your observations every day for two weeks. This will help you create the habit of stepping back and simply observing yourself, and it will help you spot patterns.

Once you can see what’s happening emotionally, what your triggers are and what your patterns are, you can make changes.

Your challenging emotions like anxiety and depression (and more) do NOT have to become the Grand Canyon!

Hey, you might want to attend one of my writing retreats!