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An Invitation to Adapt, Create and Change
Regular creative practice increases our brain’s ability to change and enhances our mental health.
Small Shifts, Big Change: Moving Towards a Calmer State of Mind
Part of creating change in your life begins with awareness — noticing what’s happening in your thoughts, feelings, and body, and then deciding whether that reaction is valid and useful. Sometimes our initial thoughts or responses don’t serve us very well. When that’s the case, the next step is to consider what would be more helpful instead.
Ask yourself: What state do I want to be in? What step do I want to be taking? What thought would I rather be having right now? Once you’ve identified where you’d like to be, the focus becomes how to gently move yourself in that direction.
There are many ways to shift your state, but one simple and effective approach is a self check-in. Take a moment to notice what’s happening for you physically and mentally. Then, start making small, deliberate adjustments that move you closer to how you’d like to feel.
For example, if you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed and want to move toward a sense of calm neutrality, start with your body. Notice your shoulders — are they tense or lifted? Try wriggling them and letting them drop. Notice your breathing — is it shallow? Take a few slow, deep breaths. Maybe your posture is slumped; sit up a little taller. Picture what “neutral calm” might look and feel like for you, and allow your body to settle into that position. Each of these small shifts is a step away from tension and a step towards balance.
Another helpful strategy is to write your thoughts down. You might note what you don’t like about your current state and what draws you toward the state you’d prefer. I remember once writing that I felt like a failure but wanted to feel empowered — and simply writing those words helped me create some distance from the feeling. It gave me the space to reflect and realise that I hadn’t failed at all — I was just stuck in an unhelpful frame of mind.
You might choose to do a full body scan, noticing how each part of you feels, or just a quick all-over check-in. However you approach it, the goal is the same: small changes that lead to a big difference. These simple acts help you shift gently towards the path you want to be on — the one that leads you forward.
About the Author
Theresa is a Clinical Hypnotherapist and Strategic Psychotherapist based in Canberra, working with clients both in person and online through her practice, Navigating Calm. She helps people create lasting positive change by breaking free from unhelpful patterns and reconnecting with calm, clarity, and confidence.
If you’re ready to take the next step towards lasting change in your life, get in touch today to book an appointment.
How to Ease Stress and Anxiety by Noticing Life’s Little Delights
In our constant search for happiness – something social media often tells us we should be chasing – it’s easy to forget that a good life is made up of a full range of emotions. Happiness is beautiful, but it feels even richer when it follows sadness. Calm is nourishing, but we often appreciate it most after stress. Real life is a mix of highs, lows, in-betweens, and many pleasantly ordinary moments in between.
When you’re feeling overwhelmed, stressed, or worn down, that search for happiness can feel completely out of reach. Our minds tend to filter what we notice: when we tell ourselves we’re stressed, we find endless signs to confirm it. So how do we begin to turn this around?
One simple step is to start looking for microdoses of delight, wonder, or awe. It might be pausing to watch a bee collect nectar, noticing a dog stretching into the patch of sun on the carpet, or spotting the first buds appearing in the garden. Small, fleeting things — yet powerful reminders that joy is still threaded through the day.
If you set yourself a gentle goal to notice just one or two of these moments each day, you begin to balance out the negative messages of stress and overwhelm. You train your brain to see beyond the weight of what feels hard. Recording them – with a quick note, a photo, or even a mental bookmark – can give you a pause, a recharge, a moment of breathing space.
This doesn’t take away life’s difficulties, but it does loosen the grip of those heavy emotions. It reminds you that you’re not always stressed, and helps break the cycle of feeling stuck in those unhelpful patterns.
So, how will you look for your microdoses of delight today?
About the Author
Theresa is a Clinical Hypnotherapist and Strategic Psychotherapist based in Canberra, working with clients both in person and online through her practice, Navigating Calm. She helps people create lasting positive change by breaking free from unhelpful patterns and reconnecting with calm, clarity, and confidence. If you’re ready to take the next step towards lasting change in your life, get in touch today to book an appointment.
Lift Your Gaze: A Simple Strategy to Calm Anxiety and Interrupt Overwhelm
When anxiety strikes, it often feels like it takes over everything—your mind, your body, even your breath. It can be like falling into a well-rehearsed script that your body and brain know all too well. But what if you could interrupt that script with a simple, physical shift?
One surprisingly powerful way to do just that is this: lift your gaze above the horizon.
Yes, something as small as where you direct your eyes can help change how you feel in the moment. This simple movement is more than a mindfulness trick. It’s grounded in principles from Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), a therapeutic approach that explores how our thoughts, behaviours, and body language all interconnect.
Let me explain why it works—and how you can use it.
How Anxiety Becomes a Pattern
When we feel anxious or overwhelmed, it’s often because our mind has recognised a familiar trigger and set off a series of automatic responses. These might include shallow breathing, racing thoughts, tension in the chest or shoulders, and a visual focus that drops downward—towards the ground, our feet, or a blank stare inward.
Over time, this becomes a well-trodden neural pathway. Your brain learns that when X happens, we react with Y. You don’t have to think about it anymore—your system just goes there.
But here’s the empowering part: we can interrupt that pattern.
The Power of Physiology
NLP recognises that how we use our body shapes how we feel. The link between physiology and emotion isn’t one-way. It’s a feedback loop. That means if you change your posture, your breath, or even where your eyes are looking, you can send a different signal back to your brain—and that signal can help break the anxiety cycle.
Lifting your gaze is one of those “pattern interrupts.”
Think about the last time you were deep in anxious thought. Chances are your vision narrowed or dropped. Now imagine doing the opposite:
- Raise your eyes.
- Look up and out—ideally above the horizon.
- Take in a broader view of your surroundings.
This action cues your nervous system that you’re safe, aware, and not under immediate threat. It’s not just symbolic—it changes the actual feedback your brain receives.
What Happens When You Look Up?
In NLP, looking upwards is often associated with visual processing, which typically engages the part of the brain used for imagination and creativity. In contrast, looking down tends to lead us inward, often into the emotional (kinaesthetic) or critical (internal dialogue) states that feed overwhelm.
By changing your eye direction, you disrupt the emotional momentum. You step out of the trance of anxiety and into a more neutral—or even resourceful—state.
A Simple Practice to Try
You can use this technique anytime, anywhere. Here’s how:
- Pause – When you notice anxiety creeping in, or your thoughts racing, stop for a moment.
- Breathe – Take a slow breath in through your nose, and exhale fully.
- Lift Your Gaze – Gently raise your eyes above the horizon. Look at a tree, the sky, a point on the wall—something neutral or calming.
- Stay Present – Allow yourself to really see your surroundings. Let your awareness widen. Notice details without judgement.
- Notice the Shift – You may feel an immediate difference. The thoughts might slow. Your chest may feel less tight. There’s space again.
Why This Matters
Clients I work with often describe anxiety as something that “just happens” to them. But part of our work together is about recognising that we can shift our experience. Not by force or suppression, but by using tools like this one to interrupt old patterns.
Lifting your gaze is one small move in a bigger toolbox. It’s not about pretending everything is fine. It’s about giving your brain and body a new message—one that creates a circuit breaker for the spiral.
Ready to Change the Way You Relate to Anxiety?
This is just one of the many tools I share with clients who are learning to respond differently to anxiety and overwhelm. Hypnotherapy and strategic psychotherapy can help you not only manage symptoms, but unlearn the patterns that keep you stuck—so you can create new ones that support calm, confidence, and clarity.
If you’d like support interrupting your own anxious patterns and finding a better way forward, I offer a free 20-minute consultation. You can book online here.
Quick Body Scan: A Simple Path to Calm
The concept of ‘body scan’ is a simple but effective tool that can help you to connect with the present and calm your mind. When used effectively it can amount to a form of meditation, but it is so convenient and easy to do that we can use it in many situations where we might not normally think that meditation will work.
When your mind is in overdrive, overwhelm, or over-anything, having a simple technique to reconnect yourself with the present and move past your feeling of ‘stuckness’ is useful. This is often referred to as ‘grounding’, and can help to calm and clear your mind. The body scan technique may help you to do this.
The simple goal of scanning your body in this exercise is to focus on the physical sensations throughout the body, bringing awareness to the present moment. The purpose of body scanning is not to change or improve any feeling, but instead to simply notice the sensations. It is a technique that doesn’t require any additional tools as it uses your most accessible tool, your own body.
What is body scan?
You might think of a body scan as a mental X-ray slowly traveling up or down your body, observing each part of your body as you go. Some people include the concept of isometric exercises, which involves imagining tensing and releasing each muscle group as you scan it. This can add another dimension to the exercise and help to shift it into a truly meditative state.
I have included two different versions here – the first is the ‘quick, on-the-go’ version that you can use anywhere, anytime to bring yourself back to a grounded state. The second is the more detailed version for meditation and relaxing. Let me know if you use either or both and how you find them!
Quick on-the-go version
When to use:
– When you need to calm your mind, distract yourself from unhelpful thoughts, or break a thought pattern and create room for a new one.
Where to use:
– anywhere you can take a few moments to focus on yourself and your body safely
How to use:
- Be aware of your surroundings. Take note of where you are and what is in your surroundings. If you can move to a place to sit or stand safely out of the way, then this is ideal.
- Breathe. Take a deep cleansing breath, to centre yourself. If you can do a round or two of box breathing, do this. Whether you close your eyes or not is up to you.
- Choose where to start. I recommend beginning at the feet and moving up through your body, but you might like to start at your head and move down – it is your choice where you begin. Focus on the first spot as you continue breathing slowly and deeply.
- Be aware. Open your awareness to the sensations attached to that part of your body, and notice how it feels. You might imagine the sensation of tensing and releasing that part of your body and notice how that feels. You could spend 10 seconds or 60 seconds focused on that part of your body – it is up to you.
- Release. Release your awareness of that part of your body and move it to your next area of focus.
- Moving through the exercise. Continue the exercise along, up or down your body in a way that makes sense to you, whether you move from bottom to top, top to bottom or up one side and down the other.
- Breathe. When you reach the point that you are feeling calm and able to move to the next strategy, activity or part of your day, repeat a deep, cleansing breath (or another round of box breathing) to help continue to the calm.
Body scan as meditation.
When to use:
- When you want to create a calm state before you start the day, or when you are ending the day.
- When you need to calm your mind, distract yourself from unhelpful thoughts, break a thought pattern and create room for a new one.
- When you are looking to meditate and clear your mind.
Where to use:
– anywhere you can safely sit or lie calmly for 10 minutes or more, uninterrupted and comfortably, with your eyes closed.
How to use:
- Get comfortable. Lie down or sit in a position that allows you to stretch your limbs easily.
- Focus. Close your eyes and begin focusing on your breath. Notice the sensation of your breath filling and leaving your lungs as you inhale and exhale. You could do a few rounds of box breathing to start the process.
- Choose where to start. I recommend beginning at the feet and moving up through your body, but you might like to start at your head and move down – it is your choice where you begin. Focus on the first spot as you continue breathing slowly and deeply. In choosing the part of your body to focus on you might choose to be as detailed or as general as suits you. For example, you might choose to think of your toes as a whole, or to focus on each toe individually.
- Be aware. Open your awareness to the sensations attached to that part of your body, and notice how it feels. You might imagine the sensation of tensing and releasing that part of your body and notice how that feels. You might choose to actually tense and release that part of your body. You could spend 10 seconds or 60 seconds focused on that part of your body – it is up to you.
- Release. Slowly release your mental awareness of that specific part of your body and redirect it to your next area of focus. Some people find it helpful to imagine releasing one body part as they breathe out and moving on to the next as they breathe in.
- Move along. Continue the exercise along, up or down your body in a way that makes sense to you, whether you move from top to bottom or up one side and down the other.
- Note drifting thoughts. As you continue to scan your body, note when your thoughts drift. This will probably happen more than once, so don’t worry. You haven’t failed and can easily get your thoughts back on track. Just gently return your awareness to where you left off scanning.
- Return. When you have completed the scan of your body, allow yourself to slowly release your focus and bring your attention back to your surroundings.
Final Thoughts
Body scanning is a simple yet powerful technique that helps bring awareness to the present moment, offering a sense of calm and clarity. Whether you use it as a quick reset during the day or as part of a longer meditation practice, it can be a valuable tool for breaking unhelpful thought patterns and creating space for a more relaxed and focused mind. Try incorporating it into your routine and see how it helps you feel more grounded and at ease. If you want to watch a video explaining how it works, you will find one here.
Blink VuMu – Creating Healthier Patterns
I wrote about the technique of interrupting overthinking using ‘Blink VuMu’ a while ago, and many of you have found it helpful. Since then I have realised that there are many more uses to this technique than just ‘overthinking’. This article explains the broader applications of this technique and some ways of incorporating it so that you create healthier patterns in your life.
The concept of Blink VuMu is that you blink to create a pattern interrupter in any of the automatic patterns you are running. This might be anxiety, it could be a strong feeling that overrides your logic, or it could be your critical inner voice telling you unhelpful things. Once you have interrupted the pattern, then you can ask yourself the important curious questions of whether the pattern you are running is valid, and if the answer is yes, whether it is useful.
The next step is to then ask yourself what is more useful, or the most useful pattern you could adopt instead. Another question that can be helpful to ask yourself is ‘What would this look like if I had already solved the problem?’
By asking yourself these questions you create new pathways and approaches that are more helpful, and are more connected to the reality of the world, rather than the stories we can create in our imagination and react to.
In a step by step format it looks like this:
Step 1) Blink wildly for 5 seconds (count back from 5-1)
Step 2) Get curious – How am I doing this?
Step 3) Ask yourself the following questions
Q1) Is this Valid? YES/NO
Q2) Is this Useful? YES/NO
Q3) If not, what would be a More Useful, or the Most Useful response I could offer right now? Or, if I had solved this problem, what would it look like?
The more you practice this approach, the easier it is to interrupt your thinking, check the validity of your feelings, and stop the inner critical voice from running the unhelpful patterns.
If you would like to explore this further, you may find this video explanation useful – Blink VuMu – a technique to create healthier patterns.
You may also like to book an appointment with me to learn how to apply this to your life and create a new path forwards.
The Impact of Language and Why We ‘Shouldn’t’.
I am sure that you have heard or read that ‘how we speak to yourself matters’ and, if you know me at all, have heard or read me saying ‘be kind to yourself’. It is more than a platitude. Many of my clients speak to themselves in ways that they would never speak to a friend, a family member, or even an acquaintance. They are harsher critics of themselves than they are of anyone else, and often quite unfairly.
The language we use impacts us, and the people we speak to. This in turn impacts our mental health. My current top word for clients to be aware of and remove from their vocabulary when possible is ‘should’. When you use should, how does it make you feel? ‘I should go for a run’ carries a weight of expectation and guilt, when compared to ‘I could go for a run’ which leaves the possibility open, but without expectation. If you say ‘should’ and don’t go for the run, there is a sense of having let yourself down, whereas ‘could’ that isn’t followed by a run involves a decision and a choice. The ‘shoulds’ have emotion while the ‘coulds’ have choices.
When we say ‘should’ to others there is a weight to our words too. ‘You should make the dish that everyone is talking about’ feels different from ‘You could make the dish that everyone is talking about.’ The first sentence is telling them what they should do in your opinion, the second sentence is giving them a choice. Telling people what to do can result in them being defensive, while giving them a choice allows them to make their own decision and removes judgement from the exchange.
The language you use impacts how you see yourself and how you judge yourself, and how realistic or fair that process is. If you are telling yourself that you ‘should’ be doing things that you are not likely to do, whether it is because you don’t want to, it isn’t a priority, you don’t have time, you want to do something else, you don’t have the skills, the money etc, you are setting up your brain to feel ‘less than’. When you speak to yourself this way you are setting the filters in your brain to look at what you aren’t doing, rather than what you are doing. Our wonderful brains are wired to look for evidence to support our filters. If we say that we are not good at technical things our brain will look for the evidence to support that and we will believe that we aren’t good at technical things – ignoring the times that we have been good at them, and the end result is that we won’t want to try new technical things. If we say that we are good at finding solutions, our brain will look for evidence to support that – and we will continue to feel good about what we do well, ignoring the times when we didn’t find a solution, and continuing to be willing to try to solve problems.
By changing ‘shoulds’ to ‘coulds’ you start the process of changing your internal filters, and allowing yourself to be more decisive. A ‘could’ allows you to set yourself up achieve the things that you want to do, weighing up the pros and cons. It allows you to quieten that inner critical voice that contributes to feelings of anxiety, stress, depression and overwhelm, and can improve your mental health.
