#1 Tip for Reducing Anxiety

Written by, Mak Estill

Anxiety, Panic & Life Coach + founder and owner of Actionable Anxiety®

First published 10/14/2025 ~ Last updated 10/15/2025

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To most people’s surprise, my #1 tip to getting relief from prolonged anxiety, has nothing to do with …

❌ sleep hygiene

❌ caffeine use

❌ morning routines

❌ exercise regiments

❌ or breathing techniques

Instead, my …

#1 tip for managing & reducing your anxiety

… is to get an optimized understanding of this thing we call “anxiety” to begin with - and ASAP!

Let’s break this down.

👇 👇 👇 👇 👇

If tomorrow you were to wake up, and see every single news channel blowing up your phone that - ☄️ BREAKING NEWS ☄️ - there’s a massive meteor unexpectedly going to be hitting planet earth in 12 hours from now …

The whole world would go bloody mad.

We would see all sorts of human behaviors erupt - INSTANTANEOUSLY 🌋 🚀 🧨.

Actions and activities of all varying sorts 🫣!

Ranging from suicides and murders, to frantic calls to loved ones, to desperate scrambling to strategize for survival.

And all of this would happen REGARDLESS if, in actuality, NASA was secretly playing the most cruel joke ever, and no meteor was ever actually coming our way.

So what’s the point of me bringing up this strange scenario?

My point 👉 There is nothing more immediate, nor influential in altering the human experience, than how our mind processes data about an event, a person, a circumstance, etc.

NOTHING.

No exercise regiment.

No breathwork practice.

No medicine.

No optimized morning routine.

NOTHING.

Nothing can shift the human experience ⚡️faster⚡️ than our brain’s very own, natural, hard-wired data processing performance capabilities.

Which is why we see people with the healthiest lifestyles in the world still get raging anxiety (that was me 🙋‍♀️) …

While millions of people, who take horrendous care of their bodies, report of never (or almost never) experiencing anxiety in their lives (trust me … I’ve met a ton of folks that fit in this camp … and they aren’t lying).

So how can this be?

This is because anxiety 👉 first and foremost 👈 is a brain data processing issue over EVERYTHING else.

Which is why my #1 tippy-top tip for anxiety sufferers - HANDS DOWN - ALWAYS - AND FOREVER ONWARD - is to get yourself an optimized understanding of this thing we call “anxiety”.

Because if all of the next steps you take (or are currently taking) to “manage”, “alleviate”, “reduce”, “calm” or “cure” your anxiety is predicated off of your understanding of the darn thing, then we better start THERE, and ensure you are launching from the strongest starting line in your anxiety relief efforts.

So if you are still asking yourself:

1. What the heck really is anxiety?

2. Why does it continue to go on, and on, and on?

3. What is there to actually do about it?

4. And why are all my efforts not doing diddly squat to reduce my anxiety for real?

Then my guess is that you are like the 99.9% of people that come my way, who DO have some introduction or understanding of anxiety … but … it’s the furthest thing from an optimized understanding.

Any of these sound familiar?

Ex. “It’s the fight, flight or freeze response”

Ex. “It’s your hormones that are imbalanced”

Ex. “You’re an over-thinker and worry too much about the future”

Ex. “It’s a symptom from your childhood trauma”

Ex. “It’s JUST anxiety”

Ex. “It’s adrenaline”

NONE OF THESE typical-half-baked-run-of-the-mill explanations of anxiety do anything to gift you a crystal clear, empowering, and actionable understanding of anxiety that actually services you and your desired future life.

Which is why my #1 anxiety tip is to get yourself an OPTIMIZED understanding of anxiety - and ASAP.

What’s the best way to get that?

Booking a one-off, targeted session with an anxiety coach to address simply that 👉 your understanding of this thing called “anxiety”.

For clients that come to Actionable Anxiety, we accomplish this by the end of a single, one-time introductory session, that’s laser focused on getting them ON and LAUNCHED FROM a strong starting line.

If that sounds like a conversation you're craving to have, simply book us a time to chat and connect!