Worry, fear, panic, anxiety, those are the biggest thieves of our productivity and
happiness. Today at Live On Purpose TV, how to stop worrying about everything.
So today at Live On Purpose TV, we get to do a quick primer on worry which is one of
the euphemisms or one of the words that we picked to describe anxiety. Anxiety is
a clinical condition, a diagnosis, it's also a common experience that we as
human beings have. I'm thinking of a quote that I heard from Dan Zadra who
said, "Worry is the misuse of imagination." I like that. Worry is what? It's when we
imagine that some unwanted thing is going to happen, right? I mean is that a
simple enough definition of it? And we don't know what's going to happen. Notice
that we don't know how are you doing next week, you don't know but you've got
something to do with it. As you imagine what's coming for you, there are two
directions that your imagination might go with this. You might imagine that
things are going to get better than they currently are, that would be an upgrade.
You might imagine that things are going to get worse than they currently are,
that would not be an upgrade, that's where worry is triggered.
Let's take a look at the two components of anxiety or worry or fear, pick any of
those words that fit whatever your experience is with this. There is a brain
component, there's a mind component. The brain and the mind are not the same
thing, your brain isn't your mind any more than
your toe is your mind, it's part of your body, your mind is you, the thinker, the
one that's doing the cognition and the evaluation and the creation for that
matter. So let's talk about each of those. First of all, the brain, quick version
different parts of your brain do different things. The part of your brain
that controls your fight-or-flight response is the part that's causing the
problem here. To understand, just understand that different areas of your
brain have different jobs. Like the part that controls your eyes, eyesight vision,
it's clear in the back of your head, it's called the occipital lobe or the visual
cortex, that's located in the back part of your brain. There's another part that
controls your muscles, there's a part that controls speech and language and
there's a part that controls keeping you safe in the face of danger. We're going
to collectively call this part of your brain your limbic system, it includes the
amygdala and some other structures that trigger the release of chemicals into
your bloodstream that prepare your body to do one of those two things, to fight
or to run away, fight or flight. This fight-or-flight
response is actually a very important mechanism to keep you safe and alive,
it's the way your brain is supposed to work.
The problem that we run into is that the limbic system, being in a primitive area
of your brain, doesn't do any thinking, it's not a higher cognitive area like
this part behind your forehead, the prefrontal cortex is more commonly
associated with thinking, logic, problem-solving, all of that kind of fun
stuff, limbic system is not interested, it doesn't have that responsibility so it
simply reacts. Now because it's in a primitive part of your brain, the limbic
system cannot discern and quite frankly, it doesn't care, between a threat that is
real and a threat that is perceived, it's all the same thing to your limbic system,
that's why we go on rollercoasters. Do you like roller coasters? Some people
do, some people don't, it gives you quite a thrill to be on a roller coaster. Why?
Because your limbic system is perceiving a huge threat and based on that threat,
it secretes chemicals into your bloodstream, the combination of which
causes a sense of thrill or euphoria or terror, depending on how we're interpreting it.
Did you know you can get the same feeling driving your car off of a cliff?
Yeah, physiologically same feeling.
Psychologically, it's a whole different ballgame. As long as we feel that we have
control over it, we call it entertainment, like the roller coaster. As soon as we
don't sense any control over what we're feeling,
we call it terror, fear. Physiologically, it's essentially the same reaction so in
a condition of anxiety or worry, chemically, what's happening here is a
result of that limbic system response to threat which triggers chemicals into our
bloodstream and we're off to the races with the feelings, okay,
and it'll either be positive or negative, depending on the context. So that's the
brain piece, what are we going to do with the brain piece? We want to calm down
that limbic system response. The quickest way that I know to do this is through
breathing, slow, deliberate, intentional breathing, that will allow you to reverse
that process of the fight-or-flight response, it alters or restores the blood
flow back to the higher cognitive areas of your brain so that you can actually
get the thinker involved, we're going to need that for the next step. So whether
it's breathing, meditation, yoga, mindfulness practice, exercise, there's a
lot of ways that you can calm that limbic system response. We've posted some
videos about some of those ways, do a little bit of research find what works
well for you but we want to calm down that
fight-or-flight response, okay. That's the brain piece, let's go over to the mind.
Now the mind is you, it's the thinker, it's the decider, it's the agent inside
of the machine, that's the part where we get to look at our own thinking. I've
talked to you before about metacognition. Metacognition is that process of
thinking about our own thinking and that's a key to our success here, as we
think about our own thinking, we'll be able to take a higher
level of control and exercise choice over what direction our thinking is
going. Here's the bottom line for anxiety, there's a conscious portion of our mind
and a subconscious portion of our mind. Conscious means aware, awareness like
you can explain to me what's going on consciously, you're aware of it.
Subconscious, sub means below, like subway, submarine, subcontractor, subconscious
below awareness, you're not aware of what's going on down in your
subconscious mind. Now you can become aware of it but by definition,
subconscious means that it's below your awareness, that's where the problem
originates, in our subconscious mind, there's a question, a nagging question
that ties into anxiety and worry. The question is, what if? What if? What if this,
what if that? What if I fail? What if I get rejected? What if I die now? It's
subconscious so you're not always aware of it, you can become aware of it but as
long as it's in the subconscious realm, we've got a little problem that happens
because your subconscious mind has a nasty habit of answering its own
questions, answering its own questions and if you don't give it a conscious
answer, it will come up with its own and it's got a default answer to the
subconscious what if question and that default answer is, "Oh my gosh, you can't
handle that. Oh, we can't handle that!" Okay? In probably that tone of voice because
it gets really panicky and there's this nervousness around if you can't
handle something, if you believe that you can't handle something, what does that
look like to that limbic system, protective system in your brain? Huge
threat. Could there be a greater threat then you can't handle this? I don't think
so. That triggers the chemicals, we're off to the races with fear, anxiety,
panic, and worry. So here's the key, we get to answer the what if's, this is
simple but simple and easy are not the same thing, we get to pull those what if
questions up from the basement of our subconscious and answer them truthfully,
in the light, according to principle and the answer that we're looking for is,
"I can handle that" with a level of confidence that allows us to get free
from the anxiety and the fear and the worry. How to stop worrying about
everything is to get to the answer that you could handle anything, anything.
Do you believe that? There's a lot of reasons why I believe that. Including
things that my clients have shared with me. Had a little kid whose parents were
murdered, he's the one that found him, could you handle something like that?
I asked him the same question, he's like, "Oh man. Hey, but I am handling it huh?" You see
what I'm talking about, there is no human experience that you can't handle. Now I'm
not saying that it would be easy or fun or painless, what I'm saying is, you could
handle it. I had one of my clients challenge me on that, well what if it
kills me? Oh yeah like you can't handle that.
People die everyday, that's harder on the survivors, I'm pretty sure. No, not to
be morbid about that but could you handle it if you died and not to burst
anyone's bubble here but nobody gets out of this alive. There's a predictable exit
strategy to this earth life and it's called death, could you handle that?
I guess you'd have to, right? One of my clients said that after I challenged him
about a belief of something that he couldn't handle and I walked him through
it. What if and in his case, this was a 15 year old boy who's afraid
that his mom would die, okay. Mom tried to reassure him by saying, "Oh honey, I'm not
going to die." She doesn't know that and in fact, it's a lie at some point, she will
die, won't she? So it wasn't serving him, his
subconscious mind knew that she might, that she could so we answered the what
if and as I pushed him along, I walked him through the whole thing, what if your
mom does, "Oh I don't don't want to think about" I know, I'm not asking you to set up camp
there, I'm asking you to visit and see if we can come up with a different answer.
I said what if she does then what's gonna happen, is somebody is going to break the
news to you, it's not going to be fun, it's going to be tearful, you're going to feel some
things. I walked him clear through putting on a suit for the funeral and
putting his boutonniere on the casket and it was a little brutal for him to
think about it but at the end of that, I saw him take a breath and I asked him,
could you handle that? His answer was brilliant, he said, I guess I'd have to.
and then he breathed in a way that showed me that he had released the
anxiety and said, now come on back, your mom still with us, isn't she? Yeah and I'm
grateful she is. Could you handle it if she does? Yeah, you could. See, as soon as
we get to the I could handle an answer, we release our subconscious from holding
us captive with that answer that says we can't handle it and it resolves the
anxiety. So you got two tools here that you can use, practice breathing, get that
limbic system to calm down, take care of the physical mechanism that houses your
mind and then on the mine site, answer the what if's, answer them truthfully,
let's get to the answer that you can handle it.
Folks that is the answer
to anxiety and worry and it's simple, simple and easy aren't the same thing so
it's going to take a little bit of work and get some help if you need it, there
are people like myself, there are professionals who will counsel and coach
with you to help you answer those what ifs.
The truth is, you can handle it, whatever it is, confident of that. You've got this.
You can tell I get excited about this topic. I think together, we can put an
all-out war on worry and fear and anxiety. Make sure you share this episode
and subscribe right down there.