As the nurses prepared me for surgery, they hooked me up to a heart rate monitor. They seemed puzzled as they checked my readings and double-checked the machine. "Your resting heart rate is 36 beats per minute!" one of them exclaimed.

I couldn't help but smile, thinking about how the physical demands of soccer have trained my heart to beat at a slower pace than average. This happened every time I underwent surgery, all of them ironically caused by playing soccer.

"Just like a low resting heart rate is the byproduct of intense exercise,” entrepreneur and investor Naval Ravikant said, “low anxiety is the byproduct of intense self-examination."

When you intensely examine yourself, you understand that you are not your mind. Your mind is your tool. You are the consciousness observing the mind and can use it to your advantage. Anyone who has meditated for a while can prove this. You see your thoughts and emotions pass; you are the awareness observing them come and go. You are not them.

So, how can you discard anxiety?

One way to achieve this is to follow the principle of Raja Yoga, the branch focused on the development of mental faculties:

Once you realize your anxiety is not you, it is not something you are born with, it is not something you cannot detach yourself from. That it is caused by a thought. And that thought causes anxiety. And that thought originates in your mind, which is not you; it is your tool.

So, if your mind is your tool, then, like any other tool, you can use it. You can control it. “Worry almost always comes before anxiety,” psychologist Nick Wignall writes. “Worry is unproductive thinking.”

Knowing this, you can assert a certain level of control over worrisome thoughts. The more you control those thoughts, the less anxiety you’ll have. The result? A calmer mind. A more peaceful mind. Free from worry, fear, and anxiety.

Simple? Yes. Easy? Of course not.

It is certainly easier said than done. There’s no question about that. It requires practice, consistent practice. Patience and determination. Daily meditation. Intense self-examination.

And it requires you to realize, to believe that you are not your mind. Truly believe it. Otherwise, it will be very hard to discard it. How can you discard something you believe is yourself?

I know for certain that my anxiety is not as low as my resting heart rate. This is because a certain level of anxiety is natural and expected in life. But as I have learned to separate myself from my thoughts, I have also improved my ability to manage them.

And you can do the same, just acknowledge this truth.