5 Superpowers That Helped Me Overcome Anxiety & Start A New Life

If you’re like me, you will have gone through a great number of changes in your life, some easier than others, some wanted, and some unwanted.

For me, change has become a bit of an obsession and I love going through the process of change myself. From everything I learn during it and the personal growth to experiencing the often surprising outcome on the other side.

I also love supporting others through the process of change – hence becoming a coach. I know first hand it’s not always easy and I’ve learned from experience that most people hate it. But the look on people’s faces when they accomplish something big is priceless.

The thing is, life is a tricky landscape to navigate. We constantly have to face new challenges that threaten our day-to-day lives, our sanity, and sometimes even our existence.

Friends and loved ones come and go, dreams are achieved and crushed, we succeed and make mistakes, illnesses leave their marks both physically and mentally, and we must fight to feel sane, happy, fulfilled, and accomplished.

For some, life is something to endure. For others, it’s pure bliss. For most of us, it’s likely a mix of both. Your attitude and outlook towards life, might just be the difference between these two extremes.

But life doesn’t have to be difficult.

Although I’ve experienced my fair share of hardship in the form of depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem, I can attest to this fact.

Despite everything I’ve been through, I can assure you, you have the power to create the life you want — and only you have that power. Though it’s not just going to happen without effort and even a little bit of skill — what I call superpowers.

We need skills for just about everything in life. For our jobs, performance, communication, and much more. Some though, I believe will benefit us all regardless of what you do in life. The following five “superpowers” have proven to be the most powerful for me both in overcoming anxiety but also in making several seemingly impossible dreams come true.

Patience

Patience really is a virtue.

By default, dreams and goals always take longer to manifest than we expect or have patience for — otherwise, they wouldn’t be dreams, we’d already be living them. As a result, too many people give up prematurely. Mainly because they get tired of waiting and tired of putting in the effort without seeing the desired results.

There’s a saying that success is just on the other side of giving up. Of course, there’s no real scientific way to prove that’s true — at least none that I know of. But equally, there’s no universal law that tells you how long manifesting your dreams should take. So why would you ever give up trying to achieve them? So long as you’re alive, the possibility exists.

I may not always have worked equally hard on my dreams, but I have certainly never given up on them. As a result, many have manifested. Often unexpectedly. Sometimes they lie dormant for a long period until the right opportunity presents itself. The key here is to never forget. If you do, you risk closing yourself off and won’t notice when the right opportunity comes up.

Most importantly, don’t mistake patience for laziness. This is one of the biggest mistakes I see people make. Assuming they can just sit back and wait for things to somehow magically appear out of thin air. That is not what patience is. You still have to make an effort. And trust me, it is always worth it in the end.

Trust

Trust follows patience closely. Without trusting your dreams will come true, you cannot patiently wait for that to happen.

You have to trust that the things you want for yourself will happen, and you have to trust in yourself. In your ability to create the things you want for yourself, whether it’s to build a business, travel the world, lose weight, write a book, become an artist, create financial freedom, overcome anxiety, or anything else.

Whatever it is you want, you must have enough trust in yourself for it to happen. You must picture yourself as the person you wish to become. If you can’t think of yourself as the lean person you hope to be, you’re not going to lose weight. If you don’t put pen to paper, you’re not going to publish a book. If you don’t try new things and fail at some, how can you build a successful business?

Cultivating trust is hard, but essential. It starts with listening to yourself, being kind to yourself, and following your heart and gut feelings.

Curiosity

Humans come into this world innately curious, but we are often educated out of it. In school, we are taught to answer questions rather than ask them. At work, we’re hired to fill a pre-defined role rather than develop with it. At some point, many of us forget or get too scared to be curious and question the norm.

But with a curious mind, we learn, we grow, and we become better versions of ourselves which benefit the places we work and the people around us. With a curious mindset, we discover new things, meet new people, inspire others, and cultivate a sense of purpose.

A curious mindset — coupled with patience and trust — got me out of anxiety. A couple of months of struggling was enough for me to start exploring ways out of it and experiencing life once more with a quiet mind. I started seeking out different strategies for coping, and after many more months, failed attempts, and panic attacks, I was finally free. You can be too.

Open-mindedness

How can you cultivate curiosity without an open mind? What’s the point of exploring new things and approaches if you’re not open to doing things differently?

I always considered myself an open-minded person. I wasn’t. Anxiety taught me that. My world was a black and white rules-based reality and I couldn’t deviate from that. Until I was forced to and boy was it a smack in the face! But I am grateful for that very first panic attack as it changed my life.

It told me I needed to change. It taught me to be less judgmental of people, experiences, concepts, and processes. To accept other people for who they are and to accept me for who I am. It taught me to accept change with an open mind.

Ironically, as a gay man, I was very closed-minded. But over the years I have learned to embrace differences and diversity, and now I intentionally and continually expose myself to new things and new people.

As such, I continue to grow as a person. Every day I become more accepting and as a bonus, I get to meet the most fascinating and beautiful people that I otherwise wouldn’t have. I get to develop new and deeply meaningful relationships and I get to experience the world from different angles that broaden my horizon.

Empathy

For years I lacked a sense of purpose and just played along, letting circumstances run most of my life. For the most part, I am grateful for the experiences I’ve had but there were certain things I needed that I completely neglected. I ended up so far out of alignment with myself that my body literally had to shake myself back into place through panic attacks.

I let it guide me to a volunteering position as a mentor — I needed to find purpose. Because I struggled with mental health, I wanted to learn more about it so I decided to dive headfirst into a completely different world. I started volunteering as a mentor for ex-offenders with mental health issues.

Now, if working with this particular group of vulnerable people doesn’t teach you empathy, I don’t know what will.

I was hard on myself. I had difficulty accepting that I was anxious and was having panic attacks. I felt defeated and I blamed myself and society. Developing empathy towards other vulnerable people, helped me develop empathy for myself. I became more accepting of myself and my environment. I began taking responsibility for my own life.

Having empathy helps you communicate better and more effectively. It helps you notice and adjust the language you use when talking with other people — and in the way you talk to yourself. Often, we talk to ourselves in ways we would consider harsh and hurtful to other people.

As much as we shouldn’t talk to other people that way, we absolutely should never talk to ourselves that way either. It is nothing but unhelpful and unproductive and we bring ourselves down. In developing empathy, I was able to notice the language when addressing myself and I was able to change it.

Talking ourselves down breaks our trust, our confidence, and our belief in ourselves. And without it, we can’t achieve our dreams. Being empathetic towards yourself can help you stop that.

Final thoughts

Overcoming hardship can be difficult. The “superpowers” described above can help to alleviate some of the pain and speed up the change process. Of course, they are not the only skills you need to achieve your dreams. But if you can cultivate these, they might just help open doors to opportunities beyond belief. And isn’t that something worth fighting for?