The piece of advice in this book that I found personally most helpful is straight out of Chapter 27 of Tanya. Remove ALL anxious thoughts out of your mind entirely by deferring them for the appropriate time. Whenever an anxious thought pops into your mind, whether you’re at work, at home, praying, shopping, etc., tell the thought, not now. I’ll deal with this later.

This tip only works though if you actually follow through in the appropriate time. And when is the appropriate time? In Chassidic teachings, there are set times built into the calendar for soul-searching, also known as cheshbon nefesh. These times are every night before bed; Thursday night for the entire week; the last day of the month; and the last month of the year (Elul in the Jewish calendar).

I’ve taken to writing down all the anxious thoughts that come into my head and setting them aside to deal with during the next check-in session. For example if I walk into the house and see a mess on the floor, normally I’d be flooded with anxiety about how the house looks and how I’m not on top of things. Now I write down “mess in living room” as something to address in the right time.

I have a spreadsheet with different sections for home, work, family, extracurricular activities, etc. Under each section I write things I’m in middle of working on, things I’d like to work on, things I’m stressing over, etc. I actually have them all color-coded depending on whether it’s something I want to address now or later, or whether it’s one of those hopeless situations that I don’t know how to deal with right now. I can’t say I do a full cheshbon nefesh every night, but at least once a week on Thursday night I go through my lists, think about what I want to prioritize, and come up with a few concrete goals to work on during the coming week. Sometimes when the next week comes along I realize that I didn’t keep up with my goals so well, so I adjust it to something more reasonable and manageable.

Another interesting thing about doing this regular cheshbon hanefesh is that I can see how my stressors and problems evolve over time. Some things resolved themselves without me doing anything special. Some things seemed like a big deal at the time and now I look back and wonder why I was so upset over them. And sometimes one problem resolves itself and then almost immediately something else pops up. Such is the cycle of life…