Take a moment to reflect, and slowly inhale.
Read in silence over each question below.  Exhale.
Sometimes a question will help you find a fresh perspective on whatever is making you anxious.  Sometimes a question will be irrelevant.  The questions below are presented in an order designed to be most useful for anxious states.  For other mood states, like anger and sadness, other groups of questions or sequences may be more useful.  The 10-second attitude shift is like a multivitamin:  there is something useful to nearly everyone.  Think about the situation that is making you anxious, then read over the list of questions below.

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What will this situation look like next year?  What will it look like many years from now?

What do you have to do today?  What can you put off until tomorrow?  What can you put off forever?

What is the reality of the upsetting situation?  What is the threat?  What is your goal?  How can you best work toward it?

What is so terrible about this particular moment, right now?  Are you making yourself anxious unnecessarily?

What stories have you been telling yourself about the anxiety-provoking situation?  Can you think of a story that helps you feel strong?

How much do you really need to worry about what other people think about you in this situation?  Could you afford to worry less?

Think of somebody you admire - someone who handles anxiety well  How would that person look at the situation that is making you anxiou?  What would that person do?  Can you do a little of that yourself?

What would you say to calm a friend in this situation? 

Are your ambitions getting too far ahead of your resources?  Can you do a little less?

What is the worst thing that is really likely to happen in this situation?  If that happened, what good things would you still be able to enjoy in your life?  What can you do now to make the worst case scenario less likely?  What can you do now to make the worst case scenario less threatening?

Are you using anxiety to distract or energize yourself?  Do you want to stop?

Can you remember times you worried and things worked out OK?

Are you rehearsing catastrophes in your mind?  Can you let go of that and relax a bit?

What is the most pleasurable or comforting thing about this moment, right now?

Can you imagine yourself in a totally safe place, protected and serene?

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.  He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will  begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden