11 Mindfulness Activities to Calm Anxiety in 2024

Do you find yourself wondering how to calm anxiety? Try some of these mindfulness ideas to keep calm.

What is mindfulness some of you may be thinking? A few years ago I was in the same boat. Unfortunately my boat was sinking!

Mindfulness is what I had been searching for. It is all about living in the present moment rather than focussing on past events or worrying about the future. Practising mindfulness is something that has helped me to live for right now.

1. Focus on your Breathing

The first thing I would suggest is to pay attention to your breathing. One of the main things you learn to do with mindfulness is noticing things. Breathing is a huge part of this for me. By paying attention to my breathing I have noticed that I subconsciously hold my breath or take very shallow breaths when I’m anxious, meaning my body is getting less oxygen.

When we take steady deep breaths, our heart rate slows down and we get more oxygen in to our blood. This tells our brain to release chemicals called endorphins. You may have heard of these described as the ‘feel good hormone’.

Knowing that there is a scientific reason for deep breaths reducing anxiety helps my mindset. I recommend focusing on this and seeing if it helps you too.

2. Step Outside in to Nature

Nature is a fantastic way to bring mindfulness in to your life. Whether you live in the City or the countryside, there is nature to be found. You just have to look for it.

When you look around in nature, initially you may see a basic picture with little detail. For example, you might look around and see some plants or trees. If you look closer though you’ll see so much more. Insects, flowers, pollen, the veins on the leaves – the list could go on. I really enjoy being amongst nature. It makes me feel peaceful and calm. I find you can get lost in nature like you might get lost in a good book.

Try sitting in the garden or the local park and noticing with your senses. What can you hear, see, touch and smell?

3. Colouring Helps Ease Anxiety

Colouring is a good mindfulness activity. It can help you really focus in on what you are doing.

“Colouring books have been shown to reduce stress and promote relaxation due to their inherent qualities, such as the ability to remain present and focussed on the image and provide temporary relief from life stressors.”

Martha Dorn from The Art Therapy Project

You might not be very accurate at colouring and you might feel that your colouring isn’t perfect, but that’s ok. You don’t have to colour perfectly inside the lines. It doesn’t matter because it’s just for you.

There was a time when an adult colouring would have be considered a childish thing to do. However, it’s on trend now and it’s worth giving it a try if you haven’t already. It can be really therapeutic, and you can find all sorts of adult colouring books on a variety of topics.

You can try colouring some of my free printables by clicking here.

4. Mindfulness Apps

Mindfulness apps have become increasingly popular in recent years. More than 2,500 mindfulness apps have been launched since 2015.

Mindfulness apps vary in content from providing simple relaxing sounds to listen to, logging your emotions or guiding you through meditations. As there are so many apps available, there is bound to be one that suits your needs.

Colouring apps are also increasingly popular. If you don’t want to get out the real pencils, a colouring app is a great way to be able to do mindful colouring on the go.

5. Journaling your Way to Happiness

Writing about what is happening can be a really helpful way of processing our emotions. Journaling can be about anything you choose, from what is happening in your personal or work life to the noises you can hear as you are writing.

You will probably find that as you get more used to journaling, you will work out what style of writing works best for you. Whether it be doodling in your journal or writing lengths of text about your day. Both of these techniques will help you process your thoughts.

6. Showing Gratitude

Gratitude can be an easy thing to practise. Being grateful for our loved ones or the things that make us happy are the most obvious things to be grateful for and these usually come quite naturally. For example, you would naturally say “Thank you” for a Birthday gift.

A challenge with gratitude can be trying to take it that step further and be grateful for the less obvious things. Things that seem, and perhaps are the negative things in your life. What has that negative experience taught you? Are there positive elements that you can take out of the experience?

Once you have got used to expressing gratitude for the more obvious things, you may find it easier to improve your perspective on the more challenging areas of your life.

I have a disability and that has been really hard to accept. However, although I acknowledge that it can make life really hard, I am grateful for the strength it has given me in other ways. It led me to mindfulness, which in turn has led me to helping other people. That is something I enjoy doing and I’m thankful that I can help other people who may be struggling.

7. Morning Thought Processing

This can be similar to journaling depending on how you approach it. It can help to write down your thoughts when you wake up to ‘get them off your chest’. You can do this in many ways and I suggest trying a few and seeing what you find most effective.

I prefer to write lists of things that I need to do that day and work out a plan. I like structure and find that if I don’t write down a plan for the day, my mind gets jumbled. Writing down a list makes a huge difference to how my day pans out.

Some people prefer to journal and write down what they are thinking about rather than lists and this is fine too. Play around with some different ways to process your morning thoughts and see what you find is the more suitable for you.

8. The ‘I’m listening’ technique

Listen to and notice five things you can hear. Whilst I am writing this I can hear some birds outside, an aeroplane overhead and some cars going past. After these three sounds I am going to need to listen more carefully.

When listening for the less obvious sounds, it can sometimes take a little while to ‘tune in’. This can sometimes be the case if there is a constant background noise. After a while you don’t always notice it.

Now I am listening more closely I can hear the humming of the dehumidifier (we recently had a flood and currently have no ceiling!). I can also hear what sounds like a leaf blower so I guess somebody is clearing up those Autumn leaves that have started to fall.

Focussing on the sounds around you can be really grounding and help to ease anxiety. With practise, you can make the anxiety the ‘background noise’ by retraining your brain to focus on different things.

9. Mindful Walking

Mindful walking is something that you can do anywhere. Whether it be down the local street or in the countryside. I like to use mindful walking to calm my anxiety. If I’m feeling anxious then I try to acknowledge my feelings and tell myself that ‘I know I’m feeling anxious right now but that it won’t last forever. The moment will pass and for now I am going to go for a mindful walk and notice the things around me’.

A walk amongst nature is my favourite place to be mindful where I can pay attention to things like the rustling of the leaves, birds tweeting or maybe a dog barking. There are usually less distractions in the countryside and this is partly why I prefer it. It can take your mind away from the stresses of modern life.

You might be listening to the birds sing and then get distracted by a car going past. This is ok as it is just another thing that you can acknowledge that you are noticing. Once it has gone past you can focus on what else is going on around you and this can continue for the rest of your walk, noticing things come and go.

If you are walking in a built up area then you can still do effective mindful walking. There may be slightly more distractions but part of mindfulness is about noticing those things.

I’ve spoken a lot about listening, but you can use your other senses as well, such as what you can feel. Do you feel leaves crunching under your feet? Or perhaps you might have something with you like a backpack that you can feel on your back.

You could also think about what you can smell. You might be able to smell some flowers, or you might smell some exhaust fumes. Notice how you feel about your surroundings. If you don’t like what is around you, it might be a good idea to start to analyse how you can adapt things to make sure you are surrounded by things that make you feel good.

10. Do Something you Love

Sometimes we are really busy looking after other people. As a Mum to an energetic boy I definitely have this happening in my life! It feels like if we are putting ourselves first then we are failing as a parent or carer, but it is really important to take care of yourself. Self care will make you stronger not only for yourself, but also for the other people in your life.

I suggest taking some time for yourself by doing something that you know makes you feel good. It could be playing a video game, doing something special to your hair or meeting up with friends either in person or virtually.

Since I became a Mum I have always put my son first and I never made time for myself. To be fair, it didn’t feel like there was any time for myself! However, I reached a point after a few years where I was completely burned out. It wasn’t sustainable.

I realised to be strong for my family, I needed to make sure I was in a position to look after myself so that I could look after them effectively.

Something that I am trying to do more of is singing. Music makes me feel somehow free. Singing is said to release endorphins in the body which make you feel good so singing can actually act as a kind of antidepressant.

11. Dancing in the Rain!

Although the expression dancing in the rain is metaphoric, you could really dance in the rain if you want to! I imagine it’s quite liberating!

Sometimes you will have a situation where things can seem bad and dealing with it can be hard. In those times we need to try and accept it and carry on the best we can. This isn’t always an easy thing to do, but with practise we can learn to cope with things better.

Conclusion

Life can be a challenge and we face so many things every day that can stress us out and cause anxiety. If you struggle with anxiety, please know that you are not alone and that things can get better.

I really hope that you can use the strategies I’ve talked through here to help you lead a calmer more balanced life.

I would love to hear from you in the comments. Let me know what you think of the blog or how you are getting on implementing some of the ideas you might have read here.