We want to shift our way of thinking about those triggers away from bracing and avoiding and over into opportunity.

The capacity to observe your experience of anxiety with curiosity — like you really want to know it — is crucial for willing acceptance.

Self-monitoring is the opposite of avoidance. The act of slowing yourself down, identifying, and labeling the thought as a thought shifts you from content to process and you are on your way toward mindful observation.

With a healthy mind, you can choose what you attend to and what you ignore. You can perceive all kinds of information from your environment and then make conscious decisions about how you want to respond.