- Whenever you catastrophize,
you actually make yourself imagine
the worst possible outcome, the worst case in a situation.
And then you imagine
that you can't cope with that worst possible outcome
that you're going to find yourself in,
but it doesn't have to be this way.
Keep watching to find out how you can change
that way of thinking forever.
So catastrophizing means you are seeing the worst possible outcome,
"This is all going to go wrong.
"This is going to end in tears.
"This is going to be a disaster, this is a nightmare.
"I'm falling apart, I'm dying here."
And so, when you castrophize,
it cannot help but make you feel anxious.
And when you feel anxious, you're envisaging a threat
when there is none.
And this threat is imagined, but it feels very real.
So catastrophizing happens
when you see the worst case scenario through many stages.
Finding a small lump in your body,
"You know, I've got cancer, I'm going to die,"
thinking you're going to miss a train
and your business is going to collapse,
you're going to go bankrupt, you're going to lose the home.
Imagining your partner's a few minutes late and they've died,
and, "This is all terrible."
Your kid's not come home on time,
you think they're being kidnapped or they're out having sex
with some completely unsuitable person.
So catastrophizing means taking something very normal,
"I'm in a traffic jam," how normal is that?
"This is hell, I'm going to miss my meeting,
"I'm going to lose my job, then I'll lose my home,
"nobody understands, this traffic is killing me
"it's a nightmare.
"It's Christmas,
"oh my God, what a nightmare. I've got people coming,
"I can't stand them.
"I can't afford to do or buy all this food.
"I can't afford all the gifts.
"This is so stressful.
"I wish they weren't coming, I've got so much to do.
"There's no way I can do shopping, wrapping,
"cooking, prepping in this time I've got.
"This is hell, this is a nightmare,
"this makes me want to die."
You see, we use incredibly powerful words.
"This is killing me.
"I'm dying here.
"I can't cope.
"This is hell on earth."
And when you use those words,
because your words shape your reality,
when you use incredible words,
I have clients turning up at my office going,
"Oh, what a nightmare it was getting here.
"You know, that traffic jam killed me.
"It was torture being on the train.
"The Uber driver was a nightmare."
And really they're talking about a little bit of traffic.
It's not torture being in a store, in a line
to buy your shopping.
It's not torture being on the freeway.
But when you use those powerful words,
"It's a nightmare, a disaster,"
you have to feel all the emotions
that go along with the words you're using,
because your words are making you feel distraught
over something that isn't a big issue.
"I'm in traffic. It's a pain, but I can play great music.
"I can find a great audiobook and listen to that.
"Yeah, it's uncomfortable being in the store
"with a long line,
"but, hey, I've got money, I'm buying food for people I love.
"My kids teacher is driving me crazy."
No, you are letting them drive you crazy
by using the wrong words.
You're buying into a situation.
You are imagining something,
and your imagination is the most powerful part of you.
When you imagine, "I know I've got cancer,
"I know something terrible is going on with my body,
"I know this is all going to go wrong,"
the pictures you are creating,
and, indeed, the words you're using,
are having a powerful impact on your emotional state.
Every thought you think has a physical reaction
and an emotional one too.
When you're given placebo pills,
you think, "Oh, that's going to make me better," and that works.
So "placebo" means your thoughts are creating
a real effect on your body.
When you think, "I've got a headache, it's killing me,
"I'm in agony, I now can't do any of my work today,
"I'm going to lose this client,"
that's really extreme.
When you say, "I've got a slight headache,
"I'm probably dehydrated, I need to drink some water,
"hydrate myself, do some deep breathing,
"maybe take a little paracetamol,
"and in half an hour, I'll be fine,
"and I'll be back cracking on,
"doing what I plan to do with my day."
Our brains are actually hardwired
to focus on the bad things, because that's how we lived.
When we lived in the wild,
we learned not to go out late at night.
When I was in Africa,
I didn't leave my hut and go to the bathroom at night
when lions are around. I learned to be on my guard 24/7.
To this day, we lock our doors at night,
we put on the chain,
we put on the alarm, because we're planning to be safe.
But we're not thinking, "Oh, I need to lock all the doors,
"someone's going to come in, I'm going to get murdered in my bed."
When I put a seatbelt on every time I drive my car,
I don't think, "I'm going to be rear-ended,
"I'm going to fly through the windscreen, I'm going to die."
I think, "This is the law and it's keeping me safe."
But I don't catastrophize
when I get on a plane or in the car,
and I don't want you to do that either.
I want you to recognize the words you say,
"I'm going on a plane; what if it crashes?
"I'm going on the subway;
"what if something happens down there?"
You have to stop using dramatic language.
And it really works to pay attention
to the words you're using.
Ask people around you,
"How often do I say, 'This is hell,
"'this is a nightmare,
"'this is killing me,
"'this is driving me crazy,
"'this is terrifying'?"
A beautiful model came to see me
and said, "You know, I've got all these problems.
"I've got gut problems and stomach problems and headaches."
And the word she used was "nightmare."
She said, "You know, I just got this huge makeup contract,
"what a nightmare.
"I've just been offered this job modeling
"and I've got to ski for this thing, this is a nightmare.
"Whenever I get on a plane, people hit on me,
"it's a nightmare."
I said, "Why is it a nightmare?
"I don't understand the nightmare."
She went, "No, no I didn't really mean that."
I said, "But you keep saying 'nightmare.'
"You've said it three times in the space of a minute.
"And do you understand when you use the word 'nightmare,'
"'It's a nightmare, what a nightmare,
"'that's a nightmare, oh, nightmare,'
"you're actually living as if your whole life is a nightmare.
"You're a beautiful model
"with a contract worth millions of dollars,
"and people hit on you because you're gorgeous,
"that's someone's fantasy dream come true.
"And if you don't like it, either leave your job,
"put on a baseball cap, glasses, and read a book on a plane.
"You can change it, or you can accept it.
"But what you can't do is, 'I can't accept it, I can't change it.
"'I can't accept it, I can't change it.'
"You can change it by changing your language."
I worked with someone who had gut issues, and guess what
he said every day? "I'm losing my sh*t.
"I will lose my sh*t
"if I have to deal with this one more time."
And then he began to get chronic diarrhea.
It was like, "Wow, why do you even think that's unusual?
"You've been telling your mind for years."
I met a doctor who said, "You know, when I read your book,
"I realized something.
"I say, every day, 'This is doing my head in.'"
She said, "And do you know, I got a brain tumor?
"And I knew that I used that word,
"'Doing my head in, I can't take it, this is doing my head in.'"
So take a minute and notice the words you use and then stop.
If you say, "My kid is killing me,
"my kid is driving me crazy,
"this kid is making me insane,"
how about saying, "Hey, my kid is age-appropriate,
"this is what they do when they're two.
"And they're not two for very long. Soon, they'll be 18.
"They won't be keeping me up all night,
"I won't even see them"?
"My boss is a nightmare,"
why not say, "My boss is a challenge,
"but, hey, I know how to deal with my boss.
"I've got great skills and I'm good at my job"?
"This commute is going to be the death of me,
"I'm dying under my paperwork."
"I can deal with my commute,
"and I'm getting through my paperwork bit by bit,
"I'm on it, I have got phenomenal coping skills."
In fact, changing "killing me," "driving me crazy," "nightmare,"
"hell on earth," "dying,"
if you start to say this magic phrase,
"I have got phenomenal coping skills.
"I can deal with anything, this is a challenge,
"this is a situation, but I can deal with it.
"It's okay because I've got amazing, phenomenal,
"incredible coping skills."
You're saying to your mind not, "Oh, don't give me any stress,
"I can't deal with that,"
you're saying, "Whatever you put in front of me,
"I can deal with it, it's all going to be okay."
You know, last year, my house got completely flooded,
and it was a challenge, it wasn't a nightmare.
And every time I had to walk down there and see the builders
and look at the damage, I'd play Bob Marley's song,
"Every little thing is going to be alright."
Then I'd play a song by East 17,
and it goes, "Alright, alright, it's really alright."
And every time I walked to my house
and looked at it, I'd think, "Everything's going to be alright,
"how lucky I've got insurance," everything was alright.
But, you know, I had a choice, I could go, "Oh, this is hell.
"Oh my God, these builders are hell,
"they never turn up, they're getting everything wrong,
"they're lying to me,"
or I could say, "It's really alright."
Because you have a choice every day, and here's your choice,
you can choose to rationalize how bad, how awful,
how terrible things are,
or you can choose to talk yourself out of it.
So you have a choice,
choose to be negative and catastrophize
or choose to stop that and look for the positive.
Because you know what
you can't choose?
You can't choose what you do to your body
when you go into the negative,
"This is hell, this is a nightmare, I can't stand it."
Somebody wrote to me and said, "You know,
"I listened to you talking
"and the most amazing thing happened.
"I realized how much I say, 'I can't stand it.
"'I can't stand my husband leaving his pants on the floor.
"'I can't stand my kids
"'not putting the jar back on the peanut butter.'"
She said, "And I've had collapsed foot arches for years,
"it's very painful.
"When I stopped saying, 'I can't stand it,'
"you won't believe this,
"my foot arch has stopped hurting.
"Because I understood how much I said, 'I can't stand it.'
"And I just stopped saying it overnight.
"I paid attention and I stopped."
So you can choose to be negative,
you can choose to be positive,
but you cannot choose what it does to your body
when you go into, "Oh, my life is hell,
"my life is a nightmare.
"If one more person ghosts me, I'm going to jump under a train.
"If one more person lets me down,
"I'm just going to stick my head in the oven."
You know, when we say these crazy things, we don't mean them.
We say, "Oh, if I look at a cake, I get fat.
"I'm out of control, I'm a train wreck.
"Look at the state of me." Stop it.
It doesn't help you at all, it just makes you feel worse.
Your language is yours to change.
Your beliefs are yours to change.
And your thoughts are yours to change.
And we've had an amazing last year with COVID
and restrictions.
And I couldn't get back to my home in America
for nearly a year.
That was a challenge. I had to go to Mexico,
I didn't want to go.
I had a great time,
I found this little place called Todos Santos,
it was like, "Wow, I love it here."
In fact, I was counting the days to get home.
I had pets and a flooded house
and things that I hadn't expected when I left.
But then I thought, "You know, I could actually stay here longer,
"I'm really enjoying it."
So, sometimes, in adversity, we think,
"Well, you know, I was really sad
"when that relationship ended,
"but, hey, I've found someone better.
"I got fired and I thought it was the worst thing in the world,
"but I got a better job."
So don't allow yourself to drift into catastrophizing
because it's horrible for you,
but it's also horrible for everyone around you.
When I'm working and people say, "Oh, this is a nightmare."
I go, "Look, if we can't change it
"and we can't accept it, what's the point?"
I recently was going somewhere and we turned up and
we went, "Oh my God, this venue is awful, I hate the venue."
I said, "Look, we can't change the venue now.
"So we've always got a choice,
"can we accept it
"or can we change it?
"If we can't change it,
"we've got to accept it and look for some good things.
"We can dress it up and make it better than it is.
"We can work with it."
But when you can't accept it and you can't change it,
you go round in circles.
Accept it and look for some good things about it
or change it, or at least change the way you talk about it.
And you don't just have to use my methods,
although they are really good,
you can use breathing, you can use meditation.
You can even notice your kids and how they talk to you.
My little girl came home and did this,
"Mommy, how does Philippa get on the ceiling?"
I went, "I don't know, darling, tell me more."
She goes, "Well, Philippa said
"if we make a mess, she will go up the wall.
"If we don't put our crayons away, she will go up the wall.
"And if we don't eat our lunch, she will go up the wall."
And my daughter was fascinated
by imagining how this person could get up the wall.
And, you know, when I had a baby,
I noticed how many people would say,
"Oh, yeah, the waking up at night is killing me,
"I'm dying, I'm going insane.
"I'm going insane with sleep deprivation."
And I get that when you have a baby that keeps you up,
but you're not really going insane,
it doesn't last that long.
And there are things that you can do to deal with that.
But the biggest thing is you've got to notice it.
You can't fix what you don't understand.
Notice your language, and then change it.
And if you want to take this further,
we have amazing RTT® therapists who are trained
to work with people who are stuck in a pattern like this.
We do something called root cause therapy,
where we take you back to understand.
Maybe your mother said, "This will all end in tears.
"It's all going to go wrong.
"Nobody can have everything, something's got to give."
Sometimes you just learn how you learned negative language,
negative expectations.
Here's something you hear a lot, "'I want' never gets, don't ask."
Then you think, "Oh, I mustn't ask for anything.
"And here I am, and if I ask for nothing, what do I get?"
The answer is nothing.
So when you go back and see these simple, seemingly simple things
that have colored, effected, and influenced your entire life,
it changes everything.
It changes your relationship with money,
your relationship with others,
your relationship with yourself.
RTT® is amazing at showing you
how you got to be the way you are,
and then showing you how you can change it immediately.
If you want help with anxiety or feeling stuck
or knowing that you catastrophize,
if you want to have phenomenal coping skills all the time,
click the link below.
And if you want to learn more about helping people
who experience issues like anxiety,
if you would like to train to do what I do,
to be a kind of version of me,
then click the link below
and we'll send you an RTT® brochure.
Thanks for listening, see you really soon.