If you've been paying attention and you probably have, you've noticed that a lot
of things have happened. What to do when the world falls
apart?
Let's start with this. Take a few deep,
slow breaths. Just breathe. Okay? Now, I'm
saying this as a professional psychologist.
There are mechanisms in your brain that are triggered by your breathing
patterns that will either serve you well or maybe
work against you. I've said this to a lot of my clients.
Either your brain works for you or you are working
for your brain. And this is a way to take control of it. So,
please try this. Just try it. When you see the world
falling apart around you, you watch the news, you hear the stories,
whatever it is, okay? In through the nose
and hold. You only have to hold for a little bit. Maybe 10 seconds. I don't know.
Feel a little bit of a stretch and then out through the mouth
nice and slow. Ready?
Purse your lips a little, restrict the flow because you want it to be about
twice as long breathing out as breathing in. That has
a determined effect on your brain, on your neurochemistry.
And if you will do that, 3 to 5 times. In fact,
just practice this. Remember 3 and 5.
3 to 5 reps, 3 times a day for 5 days.
What's going to happen is you're going to start to program
and condition your brain to chillax, to calm down. To have more of a
relaxation response. See, what happens when the world falls
apart around us and you hear the stories of the pandemic and
earthquakes and hurricanes and... Oooh! We get into a little bit of a panic. It's
called the fight-or-flight response. Here's the thing the world is just the
world. And all of these events are neutral. I
get some flack for saying that. But honestly they
are neutral events until our brain starts to do something with it. And
interpret it in a way that causes us to panic
or to feel that fight or flight response. what i just shared with you,
slow deep breathing will help to reverse that
neurophysiological chemical response that you have to
threat. and it will begin to calm you. Okay?
Regardless of what's going on in the world around you,
the world's going to keep doing its worldly thing.
But this will help you to reclaim your brain. Now, breathing doesn't solve
anything. What it does is it puts you in position
to handle anything. And that's good news. Because maybe the world's going to keep
falling apart. That's tip number 1, do some breathing. Here's tip number 2,
what we focus on, we feel. What we think about,
comes about. So, focus on what's going well. Now, I know the world's falling
apart out there, right? But that's focusing on what's not
working. If we focus on the things that are not
working, we're going to feel a little panicky. We'll get into our
fight or flight response. Go do your breathing. See if you can
reclaim your brain. Bring it back in. And then let's focus on what's going
well. When you ask that question, something shifts in your mind. You start
to look for something different. I've done this experiment
sometimes with people in my office. I'll say, "Okay. Now, look around the room. I
want you to look around the room and find
everything that's blue. Ready? Go." And they start looking around the room and, "Oh,
there's there's that book over there and there's that little design on that
picture and that's blue. And, oh the couch is blue.
And your socks are blue." And they find all the blue things.
I said, "Now, close your eyes. Close your eyes.
Where are all of the red things in the room?"
And they're not even sure. Because they weren't looking for red.
They were looking for blue. And then I have them open their eyes. And they
immediately can find several red things in the room that they
didn't even notice before. Why? Because they ask their brain to look for the
blue things. What you focus on, you feel. What you
think about, comes about. When I say focus on what is working,
look around and ask your mind to look for that.
You'll be amazed at what you find. Even in the midst of
the world falling apart, you're going to find
several things that are working well. Simply ask your mind to look for it. And
it's going to change some things about how you feel.
To introduce my third tip for what to do when the world falls apart,
I'm thinking of an image that I saw on YouTube.
It was actually a live feed from the driver's seat
of a Tesla vehicle that's in orbit around the earth. Have you seen
this? Elon Musk who is the founder of SpaceX
and Tesla combined all of his resources to put a Tesla
into orbit. Why would you ever do that? Well, because you can, right? And I think
Elon Musk and I must have had a similar sense of humor back in high school.
Because on the dashboard of this Tesla that's
in orbit, there's a little sign. And do you know what the sign says? Some
of you know if you've read the same book. It's by
Douglas Adams. It's called the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.
And right there on the dashboard is a sign that says,
"Don't panic." That's significant if you know the story,
the book. But it's also significant for what we're talking about here.
When the world is falling apart around you,
don't panic. It's often the worst thing that you can do.
One of my colleagues in the speaking industry,
Aaron Linsdale is a brilliant man who knows
a lot about survival. He trekked solo from the Hercules Inlet on the coast of
Antarctica to the south pole. A distance of over 700 miles, he did it
under his own power. And Aaron is an expert in survival
situations. I've seen some of his YouTube videos
where he explains how you're going to survive
falling through the ice for example on a frozen river.
Well, what are you going to do? Especially if you're swept under the ice. He says
the very worst thing you can do is panic. Which is what most people do. If you're
swept under the ice, you've got seconds, maybe minutes
to take care of the situation. If you spend it panicking, you're not
thinking through what you can do to save yourself.
Don't panic. Yes, the world is falling apart.
Perhaps. Don't panic. Think about what it is that you can do
to improve your situation. That's going to be a better use of your mental power.
I like what Dan Zadras said about this too. He said
worry is the misuse of imagination. And we have a pretty good imagination,
don't we? When things happen around us then we imagine that other things are
going to happen and we start to predict this and that. And
really most of what we predict never happens anyway. So,
don't panic. For our next tip, I want you to practice saying
something. In fact, say it right now. "I can handle this."
Go ahead and say it. I know there might be people around that can hear you.
That's okay. They need to hear this too. I can handle this. How does that feel?
Sometimes it feels a little goofy because it's like, "Well, I don't know if I
can handle it." Right. But you don't know that you can't
handle it either. In fact, you have 100% track record right now
of having handled everything so far your entire life.
Right? Okay. So, maybe you're not so proud of how you
handled certain things. But the factoring means you did handle
it one way or another. You've handled everything so far. Why
would this be any different? And I submit to you that it's not. I
think that you can handle this too. And my experience as a professional
psychologist is that people are enormously resilient.
This includes you. And I don't care what it is that's happening around you.
Not to sound cold but it just doesn't matter.
We have examples of people throughout history who have handled things that are
far more difficult than whatever it is that's fallen apart
right now for you. Not to diminish the pain, the difficulty, the challenge.
That is all real. Here's the truth: You can handle this.
How would you feel if you knew that? If you believed
that you could handle anything including all of this.
Does that change the game a little for you?
It's true. So, practice saying, "I can handle this."
Simple but a powerful tip. Now, as you play with that one and you realize that
you can handle everything or at least you're playing with that idea now,
here's the final tip for today: As the world falls apart around you,
forget about yourself and get to work serving helping other people. This
is powerful at a number of levels. Let me just tell you psychologically
one of the best things you can do about fear and anxiety is get the focus off of
yourself. Shift your focus to other people. How
they're feeling? How they're doing? And not to increase your own sense of panic
but to identify what you can do to serve
those people or to create value for those people.
I have to tell you, one of my clients is a corporation
that specializes in I.T services. When the rest of the world was
saying, "Oh, these are challenging times." This particular client was saying, "Oh,
these are times of opportunity." And they certainly are. In my book, I
coined a term --probertunity. Problems and opportunities often come in
the same package. And because this company was willing to
see these times not as challenging times, but as
times of opportunity, they have stepped up
and created services and products that didn't exist before
this whole challenging time started. How are you
looking at it? Are you willing to look at this as times
of opportunity for you? And it will be if you shift the
focus from yourself onto other people and how
you can uniquely create value for them, answer their problems, serve them
in their challenge. That creates an opportunity for you. But it also
helps you to handle these challenging times. No doubt about it,
these are challenging times. You've got this
and you don't have to do it alone. Join a community that will help
you to do your daily mental hygiene at Live On Purpose Central. Come and
check it out. That's my invitation to you. I want you
to see what resources are available to you.
Here's the website: go.liveonpurposecentral.com.
I'll see you there.