Here's a strategy to eliminate a huge source of anxiety from your life.
I don't hear this discussed much in public discourse or everyday life, but how you define your character can provide an enormous step to reducing sources of anxiety in your life.
What I mean by this is that, by treating others honestly and respectfully, and trying to "do right" by them, you can move forward in life focused on the present and future. You don't have to replay your past interactions and worry that you treated them badly. People who are not honest or truthful have to expend energy and time maintaining an weaving a web of their fictions. If you're honest and truthful then you don't have to spend your time on that. There are more important things to do in life. People who are mean or sneaky have to expend time to rebuild their reputation, rather than having it built slowly and solidly by treating people well to begin with.
To live with good character is not necessarily an easy task. After we interact with others, we can always ask, "Can I do better?" Sometimes you will wrong others inadvertently. Some days you will walk around under a storm cloud, and your thunder and lightning will do damage to the world around you. When that happens, it's up to you to undo the damage. With practice, you may learn to make the cloud go away before it does any damage.
"Do to others as you would have them do to you." It's a cloyingly simple saying, the Golden Rule. But to actually live by it requires presence of mind, and some actual practice.
Luckily, if you're reading this, most likely you are a human, and being a human means that you always have a choice. You can step beyond your surroundings. You do not simply have to react to each stimulus. You can choose your reaction. You can choose a different action. The road less traveled by, or not. Every moment of every day, you can make a choice. Or you can let things flow automatically. That is a choice too. Over time, you can change yourself to not just be a healthier person, but to be a better person. Of course, it's up to you to define what that means. It's not fair or easy, but I still believe life is what you make of it. As a member of society, I want you to make the most of it, but that's your choice too, not mine.
As with healthy eating and healthy physical activity, healthy habits of the mind such as developing your character make you a more capable and resilient person, but come from innumerable small steps, building slowly. After you've walked for a while, you look back, and realize you've come quite far.
