Why You Are Feeling Anxious…
Summary
- If you want a thought or feeling to get bigger, run away from it. But if you want it to become smaller, run towards it.
- Many things in life require much less effort than we think.
- People often feel anxious not just because of their thoughts, but because they react to them by trying to avoid them.
- By avoiding a thought, you teach yourself to fear it, which can make anxiety worse.
- The real challenge is the brief moment of feeling scared when you first face a thought or feeling.
- I often remind myself to "do the opposite" of what I naturally want to do when faced with fear.
- Our natural instincts are to run and hide from what scares us, but facing those thoughts and feelings can make them easier to handle.
Video
How To Take Action
I would suggest implementing the "do the opposite" approach in your daily life. When a scary thought or feeling comes up, instead of avoiding it, try facing it head-on. Imagine you’re a brave explorer, ready to confront a mysterious path. This can help make the fear or anxiety smaller over time.
A good way to start is by practicing mindfulness. Set aside just five minutes each day to sit quietly and notice your thoughts and feelings without judgment. Picture them like clouds passing by. This is a low-cost, high-value exercise to teach your brain not to panic when a stormy thought appears.
Another strategy is to keep a journal. Whenever a fearful thought comes up, write about it. Describe what the thought is and how it makes you feel. This practice helps demystify the fear and can act as a release, shrinking its power over you.
For entrepreneurs or small business owners, apply these strategies when a daunting task appears. Feel scared to launch a new product? Lean into that fear by taking the first small step, like drafting an outline. The momentary discomfort becomes a lot easier as you practice.
Remember, our brains naturally want to run. By consistently choosing to face rather than flee, we train ourselves to handle fear and anxiety more effectively, making challenges seem smaller over time.
Full Transcript
if you want a thought to get bigger run away from it if you want a feeling to get bigger run away from it if you want something to get smaller you run towards it most things in life actually require much less effort than we think and so a lot of the times what you see is like people are very confused as to like why am I feeling anxious and they believe that the reason that they're feeling anxious is because they have these thoughts it's not because they have the thoughts it's because they then do something once they have the thought because they teach themselves the thought is bad by saying oh don't think that thought and I'm going to go do something else instead and then what they do is they train themselves to be scared of a thought things require a lot less effort than you think it's just that the effort it requires is that Split Second of feeling terrified at first and so I have this phrase I tell myself very frequently which is do the opposite I need to do the opposite of what my natural inclination is because my natural inclination is always to survive which means run and hide from scary things and what do we label as scary is thoughts and feelings that we don't like
