What will sometimes haunt my dreams still is just like a general feeling of morose, anxiety
everyone experiences a version of anxiety or worry in their lives.
I don't know why I opened up and talked about it
but I guess I was just sick and tired of just having it inside of me for 20+ years
and I was ready to make a change.
What helped me the most
that I want to impress upon all of you
Is that I realized that part of my identity
Is saying No
to things I don’t wanna do
and you are all in school and you all have a lot of teachers
and a lot of people around you, that tell you all day what you have to do
but it’s your right to choose what to do and don’t do
It’s your right to choose what you believe in and what you don’t believe in
Is your right to Curate your life and your own perspective
We all go through things, we all go through struggles, right?
There’s probably everybody in this room that goes through struggles the same exact way
and I think that’s what we all have to realize
It’s the something that every single person goes through
And maybe we go through it in a different or more intense way for longer periods of time
But it's not
there’s nothing wrong with you to be a sensitive person
that cares a lot, that takes things in a deep way
Is actually part of what makes you amazing
I also struggled a lot with anxiety and depression
If you start to feel like you’re twisting things around you
and you start to feel like there’s no sunlight around you
And you are paralyzed with fear
Here’s how you can help yourself
First you have to understand what anxiety is
and you have to understand the connection between worry which something we all do
and self-doubt which something we all do
and anxiety
Anxiety, is what happens when your habit of worrying spirals out of control
It’s important for you to foundationally understand that anxiety and worry are the same thing
It’s just your body starts to get agitated and that’s when we call worrying anxiety
Your heart races, you might sweat a little bit
you might feel tightening in your chest
might feel a pit in your stomach
you have a surge of cortisol
You can actually beat it
This is how you gonna do it
So all day long you going to have moments where your thoughts drift
like you'll just be hanging out with your friends
and then, suddenly you like I’m not sure that that person likes me anymore
you know I haven’t heard from my kids lately I wonder if they are dead
you know oh, you know what check like, you just start worrying about stuff
why?
because it’s a habit
Because when you’re not paying attention
your brain shifts from you being a decision maker and paying attention, to you just kinda spinning things on auto-pilot
and one of your habits is worrying
The second you wake up then you notice holy cow I’m talking some negative garbage to myself right now
5.4.3.2.1
You've just shifted the part of the brain
You've shifted from the basal ganglia, which is where your habit loops are spinning
and you've awakened your prefrontal cortex
You've, also interrupted that pattern
Now what you going to do because your mind is actually ready to receive a different thought
because of the counting
Now you can put in an anchor thought
Like if you’ve a monitor
If you’ve got a vision about the way that your business is gonna turn out in five years
If you just have a thought that makes you really happy and proud
in a sort that
Now, why is this work?
It works because of the counting and I’m not kidding.
We know based on research, that positive thinking alone, not effective.
In some instances; trying to force yourself to think positive can actually make the worries worse, why?
Well, the reason why is because it's really hard to just change the channel.
What we have to do first is basically interrupt it
and turn off the TV and then turn it back on with the prefrontal cortex awakened.
So the counting is essential and so you can start using this today
And the problem that I have with anxiety is the
physiological side of it
I got shallow breathing
Rapid heart rate
and most terrifyingly the blood is actually leaving the prefrontal cortex
and so you're getting into a position where your higher-level cognition is actually being shut down
because it doesn't have blood flow
and then I began to visualize that what I was trying to do?
Was get myself into a calm state where the blood could actually go back to the places that i needed it
So that my higher-level ability to rise in, would kick back in
The first thing that I started to do to be able to consciously control that was meditate
In meditating what you're learning to do at least for me and i don't consider myself a meditation expert by any means
but this was one of the huge ones for me, and meditating was learning to breathe from my diaphragm
Even one breath from my diaphragm had a really big impact
breathing from your diaphragm
Instead of from your chest, right so most people breathe like this
And it's all in your upper chest, you're not getting a very deep breath
So in meditating and learning to breathe from your diaphragm and learning to consciously calm yourself down
meaning you're lowering your heart rate, you're breathing much more deeply from the diaphragm
Getting the blood reallocated to the parts of the brain that are actually useful
That meditating was my first step into that
Now, when there are really hard times
There are so many tools that you can use to help yourself in those times
and it does get better and easier as life goes on
and you start to get to know yourself more
And what will trigger certain instances of anxiety and where you feel comfortable and safe
So I’m just saying don’t ever feel like you’re a weirdo
because we're all weirdos