Worry is the Misuse of Imagination

By M-Power

Christmas is a time of imagination and creativity. Sometimes people use their imagination in the wrong way. It isn’t all sugar plums and twinkling lights. They imagine troubles, hardships, scarcity and conflict. No twinkling lights there. Dan Zadra said, “Worry is the misuse of imagination.” We have a choice – allow your imagination to think positive or negative thoughts. You do have something to do with the future – but you don’t know what will happen. Did you predict a pandemic and exactly how it all played out? Did you predict a war in the Ukraine? People say, “But I am a realist.” That is fine, be a realist – be an Equal Opportunity Realist.  When your mind begins to wander, call it back and imagine something wonderfully positive happening. One of the most often refrains I hear is, “I could never have imagined I would be in this situation.” (For…

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How To Help A Teenager With Anxiety

By M-Power

Paul: Vicki, we’ve had a lot of parents asking us how to help a teenager with anxiety. So, let’s jump into that today. We’ve done a number of videos on our channel at Live On Purpose TV on YouTube about anxiety and what causes it. The short version, your brain loves you. It’s true. Your brain does not want you to be in danger or to experience any kind of threat because well that wouldn’t be good for your brain. So, it tries to take care of you. And the way that it does that is through the fight-or-flight response. This fight-or-flight response is what we subjectively experience as anxiety. It’s where the feelings come from. This is a normal thing that your brain does. And it happens to everybody. Kids, teenagers, adults, everybody has this mechanism built-in. So, maybe the first thing is let’s normalize the experience a little…

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