One Minute.That’s All It Takes
You woke up feeling pretty good this morning. Maybe even great.
Then you picked up your phone.
Five minutes later your stomach is tight, your jaw is clenched, and that good feeling is gone. You haven’t even had coffee yet.
Sound familiar?
We are all going through it. The edgy anxiety when we open a screen, that “What the the Hell Now” response when we get a phone news alert. An impending sense of something less than joyful this way comes.
I catch myself looking around at the grocery, staying watchful for the anger and rage that might erupt at any moment. And yes, anger has erupted in ways that make my stomach drop and my heart hurt. Right in front of my disbelieving eyes.
There’s a reason that happens. It has nothing to do with willpower, weakness, or whatever you’re blaming yourself for.
It’s our minds under threat. In today’s world, those threats are running the show.
Our Threatened Minds
What I call Threatened Mind is technically known as our fight-or-flight response, also called the acute stress response.
Wonder why it’s so active these days? Here’s one clue.
A threatened mind is triggered by both real and potential threats.
You don’t have to be experiencing a real threat. The potential for one is enough. Like reading that news headline, then the next, then the next, wondering why your stomach is dropping and your heart is pounding.
A threat, or the appearance of one, causes your mind and nervous system to flood your body with hormones that prepare you to fight, flee, or freeze. Our minds go into high alert, continuously searching for any immediate or potential threat around us.
Our evolution intended this response to trigger for minutes, when a wooly mammoth appeared or a neighboring clan came calling. Once in a while. Not for days, weeks, months and now even years.
It surely didn’t mean for us to live in constant threat mode.
Which is one of the reasons we are so divided on so many topics. The division itself is fueled by and fuels our threat response. It’s no wonder, given the animosity and outright attacks so many experience in day to day life. We won’t even talk about the war zone formerly known as social media.
The research confirms we are not alone.
In 2025, 43% of American adults say they feel more anxious than they did just one year ago, up from 32% in 2022. An estimated 42.5 million U.S. adults are now living with anxiety. Only 36.9% ever seek treatment.
What can I do?
So many people tell me they want out of the heart pounding, exhausting sense of waiting for the next blow. It’s like being an abused kid, and I should know.
I thought I’d share a few techniques I offer clients for managing threat triggers. I use them all personally. They help me stay in balance in the insanity we’re all dealing with today. And yes, they’re easy and safe :)
1.STOP giving attention to all the negatives around you.
One specific? Cut way back on your digital news and social media. As in STOP.
I know, you want to be informed. That’s threat mind in action btw. Here’s the reality. There are ways to stay informed without diving into the abysmal details.
Here’s what I do.
I don’t watch any form of news on a digital screen. Today’s screens are designed to put us into a light hypnotic trance. That’s the last thing I want with our news, or anything else. Every screen does this, from your tv and computer to your tablet or phone. And yes, this hypnotic effect is part of our addiction to our digital devices.
Instead, I skim headlines on news websites, primarily offshore news. I scan Associated Press, along with BBC, Al Jazeera and a few others. Scanning the headlines is intense enough. They are designed to stimulate our threatened minds. Scan quickly and don’t dwell. Some days, when I’m feeling less than powerful, I don’t scan at all. The world will go on, hopefully. BTW, as soon as I feel myself start to jack up whole skimming, I stop. Which means I rarely get through more than 3-4 headlines these days. Which is OK. I’m more important than the mass hysteria being manufactured by our media and more these days.
I have dramatically cut back my time on social media. I still chat with friends and keep up. Even after carefully curating my streams, there’s still too much sensational negativity. If you notice your heart rate increasing, if you’re feeling down as you scan your stream, STOP. Your body is telling you it’s moving into threat mode.
It took me a long time to realize why I’d wake up in a great mood and then dive into the depths after five minutes on Facebook, or any other social platform. Lesson learned.
2. FOCUS on what you want.
Your mind uses your attention to define what it thinks you want in your experience. It connects to our quantum field of potentialities, then filters the information your conscious mind uses to deliver that experience.
What you focus on, what you pay attention to, influences your daily experience.
Threats compel us to focus on all the negatives, and potential negatives, around us.
We have to pay even closer attention to what we want. Be grateful for all the positives in our world. Remain focused on all the goodness around us,that is coming to us.
That doesn’t mean being Pollyanna and ignoring the chaos. It means we balance our good things within the chaos. Focusing on every single thing that is positive and gives us joy in our world.
I write my 10 grateful things every am and pm to make sure I begin and end my day with positive attention and focus.
That’s a key lesson I share with clients. You don’t have to shift everything from negative to positive in a minute, or a day, or a month.
One thought at a time is all you need.
Begin to pivot from a negative thought to something positive. Again and again and again. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither were your unconscious programs, especially those related to your survival mind.
Shifting your attention to shift your emotional state on your own takes time and commitment. You can do it!
Here’s a simple technique to help with the shift. I use it all the time, throughout the day.
3.I call this method the Idle Mind Shift.
I usually catch myself in negative self-talk when I’m in idle mind time. That’s when I’m not actively focusing on something. Driving, doing the dishes, cleaning the house, cleaning horse pens... the list goes on.
Pay attention to your idle mind and its chatter. When you find yourself focusing on something negative, stop. I catch myself grousing about things like these: someone said or did something that was mean, out of integrity or a blatant lie. A conversation or act that was unfair. Some world event like another mass shooting that gets my righteous indignation going.
When you catch yourself in those negative mind conversations, STOP. Then laugh. Lovingly tell your Unconscious Mind the following:
“Unconscious Mind, I understand why you might want to believe (insert negative voice here). The truth of what I want is THIS.”
Then close your eyes and imagine a moment in time when you have what you do want in opposition to that negative nellie voice. Create a picture of that moment in your mind and be in it. Make it highly sensory. Note all the details of that moment, see the colors, feel the power and joy and all the positive emotions you can muster. Notice the details and rest there for a bit. Then go back to life.
Every time you catch yourself in negative idle mind, pivot as above. If you’re like me, you have a few favorite negative voices that come to you and lend their doom and gloom again and again. Create a moment for each of them, or use the same moment.
I’d recommend using the same moment of power initially. Create one where there is pure joy, gratitude, power, and completeness for your life experience. Then use it for all the idle mind scary chatter. As you move forward you can create more specific moments for specific nagging voices if they still bother you.
The Bottom Line
We can shift our minds to manage our attention. Protecting our sanity and our personal truths from the onslaught of sensationalism designed to trigger us all.
There are so many techniques you can use. The ones I shared here are my personal methods. Especially Idle Mind Time. It’s quite powerful and will help you shift your mind to stop the negative chatter and focus on what you want.
That single step will begin to shift your emotional state. .
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Learn to Use Your Attention
If you’d like to learn more about the science behind your attention, download my short ebook, The Power of Attention.
It explains our minds in simple terms, giving you the insights you need to Pay Attention! Along with some powerful methods you can use at home to proactively focus your attention on the life you really want.
Just click here to get your free download.