How To Be Happier And Feel Less Anxious

It’s dark, silent and, for the past hour, you have been staring at the ceiling worrying about a comment made by a colleague/getting through tomorrow’s to-do list/not taking out a private pension plan when you were 21. Those night-time thoughts take root, grow and spiral into negativity. So, we do some deep breathing, we make a warm drink; maybe we even ‘tie that worry to a balloon and watch it float away’ – only for it to float back into our consciousness at 2am the next morning.

“It’s the brain versus the mind,” explains Poppy Jamie, whose personal experiences have fed into her work around improving mental and emotional health. “The brain is a rational, completion-loving machine that wants to get each job done and filed away, while the mind is the emotional center where we place meaning on the events and things in our lives. If you think of the brain as the brakes and the mind and emotions as the accelerator, when we get into this tailspin of worry, the accelerator is flat down to the floor. What we need to do is engage the more rational side of the brain to start putting the mental brakes on.” If we have forgotten to do something, the brain will alert us to a job unfinished. However, rational thinking and problem-solving is not something we excel at in the middle of the night, so once awake, “the mind can make that issue snowball and take on a whole new life, where everything is catastrophic,” says Jamie. “The trick is to make a mental shift back to the rational part of the brain.”

Here are Poppy’s tips on how to change your mindset and shut down the worries. Some may resonate more for some than others, but whether you are a day or night worrier (or both), do try them – they work.

“It’s difficult to think your way out of a worry, but you can move your way out of one and you can always come back to it later. There’s a great saying that, ‘the same consciousness that created the problem can’t fix it’. So, get up and go for a walk or, at night, get out of bed and do something to move out of the emotional amygdala part of the brain and switch on the prefrontal cortex or rational side instead. Journaling is also brilliant if you’re feeling overwhelmed, or write a mini to-do list; taking action helps trigger that mental shift.”

“One simple but highly effective thing to do when caught up in that downward spiral is to ask yourself: ‘If a friend was experiencing this worry, what advice would I give them?’ Suddenly, you’re no longer lost in emotion – you’ve stepped out of it to put your advice hat on, which triggers the rational side of your brain.”

“If you have unfinished business that’s playing on your mind, like a falling out with a friend, don’t let it fester and turn into your new night-time worry. Instead, get up and write her an email saying how you feel. Crucially, though, don’t press ‘send’. I’ve done this myself, and when you are lying awake thinking about it, [the action of writing it] takes away the anger and upset so you can get back to sleep.”