Life can be so much easier than most of us realise. And I’m not talking about if we could just win the lottery or magically solve all of our perceived problems. In fact, ‘fixing’ everything in our external life might make some things easier, but a lot of our suffering comes down to how we choose to react to life circumstances.

Here’s the truth we find hard to believe: you can find freedom in the very situation you’re currently in. That might sound crazy, even frustrating to read, because it seems so rational that if X were different, life would be fine; while X exists, of course I’m anxious!

But life is inevitably sprinkled with obstacles, losses, frustrations and pain. None of us know for sure why that is, but it’s at least something we can all agree on.

My personal belief is that challenges are actually perfectly placed in our lives. We receive opportunity after opportunity to upgrade our fortitude, get clear on what really matters, and develop immense compassion for our fellow humans going through the same processes.

Accepting that bad things happen is not about becoming apathetic or passive. In fact, I can say from experience that acceptance allows us to redirect all of that energy we’re spending on the resistance. We suddenly have so much more vivacity to put into playing this game of life with the cards we’ve been dealt. With acceptance of what is, we have the clarity to get truly honest about who we are and what we want.

But I won’t lie to you — it’s a big leap from trying to control everything in our life into surrendering to the things we can’t change. It certainly hasn’t been a single leap for me, but years of intentional practice and honest introspection. As the Chinese proverb goes, “a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step”, and there are indeed some actionable first steps that you can start implementing right away.

To understand why I’m going to recommend the following practice, we first need to understand some basic science around stress.

We actually need stress to survive. Without stress on the body, we wouldn’t develop the musculature to function in our environment. Without stress to our immune system, our body wouldn’t learn how to fight disease. The same process is necessary for our mind: without problems to solve, the mind wouldn’t develop the capability to solve problems.

You see, we have this set-point at which everything like our blood chemistry and nervous system activity is completely balanced — this is called homeostasis. Our body is constantly working to bring us back to this baseline, and the more we push ourselves out of this comfort zone the more our bodily systems upgrade to match the challenge.

The easiest example to follow is that of muscle development. If we want to become stronger, we progressively overload our muscles with external force. The muscle is strained and slightly tears (i.e. it’s stressed), but adapts by growing stronger so it’s prepared to handle that same force the next time around.

But what happens if we overload too quickly? The strain incurred is so great that we get injured, and we miss out on the beneficial adaptation.

The same is true when we’re building resilience to anxiety: we want to develop the ability to return to a peaceful baseline when we feel anxiety arising. Just as with building physical strength, we can intentionally expose ourselves to the experience of anxiety so we’re able to adapt to the stressor.

How does this work practically? Well, the physical symptoms of anxiety tend to be an elevated heart rate, rapid breathing and adrenaline pumping through the body. Sound familiar? When we exercise, we’re actually simulating the effects of anxiety in the body — an apt, controlled container in which to gradually expose yourself to stress.