Living with anxiety can make daily life feel overwhelming — especially when it comes to things like working, connecting with others, or staying emotionally steady.
But there are habits that help. The WISE Wellbeing Assessment, built in collaboration with Neurozone®, has identified four behaviours that are especially helpful for people with a history of anxiety. These habits aren’t quick fixes, but they’ve been shown to support greater emotional stability and psychological resilience over time.
If you live with anxiety, or you’re supporting someone who does, these are four practical habits worth exploring.
A quick look at the data
These four habits were found by looking at the wellbeing scores of 303 WISE Wellbeing participants with anxiety. The Neurozone team compared behaviours with resilience outcomes, and these four showed the strongest predictions of improved wellbeing.
Grouped together, these habits fall into two helpful categories:
Relationship Strengtheners
These behaviours are about connection, safety and belonging. They include:
- Trust in Personal Life
- Identity in Personal Life
Emotional Boosters
These habits help build emotional steadiness and shift focus away from fear and uncertainty. They include:
- Enthusiasm
- Negative Thought Pattern Reduction
How to grow these behaviours in daily life
1. Build trust in personal life
Having safe, reliable relationships with friends or family can help ease feelings of fear, self-doubt and isolation.
Try this: Ask someone close to you for something small — like a favour, advice or support. Then notice how they respond. These small moments of connection can help build trust over time.
2. Strengthen identity in personal life
When the people around you share your values or interests, it can strengthen your sense of belonging and reduce the feeling that you’re going through things alone.
Try this: Reflect on what matters most to you. Do these values show up in your relationships? If not, think about how you might bring them into your conversations, connections or daily choices.
3. Increase enthusiasm
Feeling eager or excited about something, being able to motivate others around you, and getting easily inspired can help shift your focus away from anxiety and toward possibility.
Try this: Think of someone in your life who inspires you. Notice how they express it through their tone, body language, or words. What do they do that feels energising or positive? Try adopting one of their habits the next time you feel stuck.
4. Negative thought pattern reduction
Anxiety often brings self-critical or pessimistic thoughts. Noticing and questioning those thoughts regularly can shift your inner narrative and reduce anxiety over time.
Try this: When a negative thought appears, pause and ask yourself:
- “Is this thought really true?”
- “What’s the evidence for and against it?”
- “What’s another way to see this?”
- “What would I say to a friend in the same situation?”
Final thoughts
These four habits were identified using real data from WISE Wellbeing participants with anxiety. They aren’t about “fixing” anxiety, they’re about supporting the parts of life that help make it more manageable.
When people feel connected, hopeful and in control of small choices, they often feel more able to handle challenges. That’s what resilience is all about.
If you’d like to learn more about how WISE Wellbeing can help, speak with your local WISE team or employment consultant.