🙉 Stress & Anxiety ☠️ listen to a great podcast 😎
“Doc, you always seem so calm…. Don’t you ever get stressed-out?”
Of course I do! I live on the same planet you do, LOL 🤣🌎🤨
This is a question that many patients ask, especially when we’re talking about how stress affects their health.
We all get busy and stressed-out at times; it’s human, right? But, and a big BUT, we need to be careful how we handle it and be aware how often we are in a stressed-state. Because, as we’ve all heard, STRESS KILLS ☠️
It’s been proven, time and time again, stress affects your body, your thoughts and feelings, and your behavior. Stress that's not dealt with can lead to many health problems, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, obesity and diabetes.
So, how do I handle stress and my response to it? I continually read and search out new kinds of information. Because sometimes reading or hearing about it in a different way, makes an impression or gives me a new tool, I can remember or use. This way I don’t get bored with the same old routine or same old stuff….
Right now can be a busy time for many of us. We might be a bit stressed-out getting the kids ready for school with their new routines, attending endless meetings, or figuring out how to pay for our summer vacation or kids braces….. Who could be stressed? Right? LOL 😎☀️🤣
A patient shared a helpful podcast with me the other day, and I’d like to share it with you today. It hits the nail on the head and offers a fresh take with great information and suggestions for dealing with stress and anxiety. It’s about 30 minutes long. You can fast forward through the infomercials (so annoying), or just stick with me for the short and sweet version.
Whether you think that you’re anxious or not right now, you’ll learn several ways to manage anxiety, why it consumes us and how we can navigate through it successfully without it becoming all-consuming.
Does this sound easier said than done? Well, if you ever get stressed-out (like the rest of us humans) stick with me, it’ll be fun!
Before we dive in, if you missed the last few blogs on“The placebo-effect, can it take off the pounds? 🤩 Start with your mind.” or “Selling people on themselves”,you can use this link, Here.
OK, Let’s learn how to navigate anxiety in a Healthy way
🤩👤🤩
Below is a shortened transcript of Jay Shetty’s podcast on “6 Steps to Manage Anxiety when it Feels Like it is Never Ending”. You can read excerpts of it below, or listen to the full length podcast using the link, HERE.
Please be aware, that there are several commercial interruptions when listening to the podcast that have been omitted in the shortened transcript below.
After the transcript, I’ve included the notes that I wrote down in my journal. I’m curious if you wrote down the same ones, or if you thought there was something else that resonated with you personally.
TRANSCRIPT OF JAY’S PODCAST
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“How many of you have something in the back of your mind that just keeps replaying? Could be a conversation, could be an event, could be a thought, and it just sits there in the back of your mind while you're going about your day, draining your energy.
How many of you have something similar in the sense that maybe there's someone in your life that you're worried about, maybe they're unwell, maybe they're going through a difficult time. And no matter whether you're at work, whether you're socializing, whether you're with your family, you keep thinking about that person and what they're going through.
Or, maybe you've moved states, or to a different country, or you're worried about a parent's health. You're always thinking that when you wake up in the morning, there's a certain level of anxiety or overwhelm of what could have happened to them, and I can empathize with how difficult that may be.
Maybe in the back of your mind you worry that you're going to lose your job, maybe you worry that things aren't going to work out. Maybe you worry that things are not going in the right direction, and there's just this underlying feeling you have that just stays there in the background.
This is super unnerving, draining and discouraging, because every time you feel a glimpse of moving forward, this brings you right back. Sometimes we get hit with something that's always just in the back of our mind. It makes our smile less large, it makes our moment of joy less pleasant, it makes our moment of escape feel fleeting and short-lived. We all deal with this complex emotion called anxiety, where we're not going through the challenge right now, but we feel like we are every single day. We almost put ourselves through this every single day.
That's why the philosopher Seneca famously said and wrote,
“We suffer twice, once in imagination, and once in reality”.
The visualization of a challenge, the visualization of a moment of pain, can often cause more pain if we're not using it as a processing tool. And when we don't use it as a processing tool, but we use it subconsciously; it keeps us in a state of pain.
So what do we do about this? How do we do it? We can't solve it, we can't get away from it. It's just something that exists there.
The first thing I'm going to share with you is anything that you worry about, anything that causes you anxiety, don't deal with it first thing in the morning, and don't deal with it the last thing at night.
When we wake up in the morning, we're barely awake. We're aren’t prepared to deal with anything stressful. And that's why when we wake up in the morning and we check our messages frantically, when we make a call frantically, when we run around and rush around; it creates more anxiety. It compounds that feeling of overwhelm, of stress, of pressure.
And when we do something just before we go to bed, we're programming our subconscious to be thinking about it at night. We're programming our subconscious to be attentive and aware of it while we're asleep. So now what we've done is we've depleted our sleep, which has diminished our focus and energy, which is diminishing our intellect and our ability to deal with the situation when we wake up.
We have weakened ourselves so deeply that we don't have the ability to deal with it. So when we wake up in the morning, we want that time to be the time to set a foundation. For you, it may be fifteen minutes, for someone else, it may be an hour.
You want your morning moments to be moments that are foundational, that are sustainable, and that are consistent. Maybe you wake up every day and you write a grateful thought in your journal. Studies show that when we have grateful thoughts, we can't have worry-filled thoughts at the same time.
So think about that really carefully. If gratitude is renting space in your mind, worry can't rent the same space. If you're having a thankful thought in your mind, anxiety can't rent the same space. So we want to make sure that our mind is occupied in gratitude. We want to make sure that the person staying in our mind is gratitude. And this is a practice that we have to build consciously until it becomes subconscious.
Here's what's really interesting about patterns of thought, patterns of behavior. Patterns are people. We have to recognize that when we were young, we subconsciously absorbed patterns that became our reality. Maybe there were things your parents said. Maybe there were decisions your parents made. Maybe there were ways they operated that defined who you were.
And now what we have to do is plant conscious patterns that become OUR subconscious. The biggest mistake we make is that we believe that the way we are now, is who we are, and that we can't change….
… The truth is we are simply a set of patterns, a set of systems that CAN be changed and transformed. As Dr Joe Despenser says,
“We have to break the habit of being yourself”.
He talks about how to lose your mind and create a new one. We think our mind is made up. We think our mind is what it is. But actually our mind is just made up of patterns. Our mind is just made up of thoughts. Our mind is just made up of subconscious beliefs that can all be re-programmed.
The two key times of the day that our subconscious beliefs are reprogrammed is first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Using these two times of the day will help you re-program your subconscious.
We want to start our day with gratitude. We want to start our day with a thankful thought. And for a grateful thought to work, it has to be expressed. It has to be specific, and it has to be personalized.
When you write something in your journal, you also want to share it with that someone. You want to express it to that person. Maybe you're going to write a text message in the morning to that individual and express it. You want it to be specific. When someone is specific, it touches your heart. If someone said to you, ‘thank you so much for how well you made that presentation at work; it was brilliant’. That goes a long way. You want it to be personalized. You want it to feel like it was only about you. We all want to feel like you can’t just say that to anyone else.
“Expressed, specific and personalized is how gratitude needs to be shared to be impactful”.
I think many of us think that using a gratitude journal is to be grateful for the sky, for the plants and the moon, and whatever else it may be. Being grateful to people is the most reciprocal form of gratitude, because when you get to share it with someone and see the look in their eyes, when you get to see how it impacts them, it can be transformational……
….giving gratitude and reciprocating back with grattitude are both good for the heart. And I think when we start our mornings that way, we focus on an amplifying gratitude so much that the pain we're feeling, the stress we're feeling, diminishes. It's not that it goes away, it's that we have the strength to deal with it.
This is the point I want you to take home. It's not about getting rid of pain. It's not about moving on from pain. It's not about just saying it doesn't exist anymore. It's about having the strength and the courage and the support to deal with it.
So we talked about the importance of what to do in the morning, but it is equally as important to figure out the evenings. When we program our subconscious mind before we go to bed, we have the ability not only to get better rest, but to wake up feeling more energized and ready for the day.
So many of us, just before we go to bed, do something that induces anxiety. Maybe we'll think about something that's been on our mind. Maybe we'll watch something that makes us feel anxious. Maybe the last thing we'll say is, ‘I really hope that doesn't happen’, or ‘I'm really worried about this’.
Usually it’s not something you're saying out loud. It might be to your partner or whoever you're talking to on the phone, but often it's a subconscious idea. This is natural. When someone asks you the question about what's keeping you up at night, it's probably this thing, the pressure at work, the challenge with your partner, the worry about your parents.
It's something very real that you can't just say ‘I'm not going to think about it’. If I say to you, don't think about it, that's the worst advice…. So what we need to do, is we need to recognize that we can't remove the thought.
Often we think our life is about reducing noise, reducing negativity, reducing the thing that's keeping us up, and that's actually really difficult. But what we have to do instead, is we have to drown out that noise through something else.
A good example is, let's say your next door neighbor or the apartment next door is throwing a party and the music is really loud. Now, when you went over there and knocked on their door and said, ‘hey, can you keep quiet for a bit, I'm trying to focus’, they didn't do it. They didn't listen, and your persuasive skills didn't really work. Now you have two choices. You either listen to that music, or you turn on some of your own music, you turn up your TV, and you focus on what you need to do.
In the same way, you can't just drown out a thought that's perplexing you. But what you can do, is you can increase the voice you want to hear. So this is where we want to subconsciously program our mind.
When I'd been going through health challenges or difficulties, I often had an affirmation before I went to bed that said, ‘I am happy, I am healthy, I am healed’.
There's something really powerful about the words I am, because it's an acceptance of something we're already feeling, not I want, which feels like it's in the distant future.
I am happy, I am healthy, I am healing. I have repeated this affirmation to myself when I've been going through physical or mental health challenges so that I can remind myself that I'm moving in the right direction. And I have found that the repetition of that affirmation has started to consciously reprogram my mind towards moving and finding progress.
Without the repetition of the ‘I am’ affirmation, what ends up happening is I end up stewing, I end up feeling stuck. I end up feeling like nothing's moving in the right direction. So that's definitely something to look at. What are we doing before we go to bed?
A lot of people will say to me, Jay, I'm experiencing anxiety, and the first thing I'll ask them is, what did you watch last night? Many people say that they watched one of their favorite shows. I am not against any shows, but I promise you that these shows are designed to create cliff-hanger chemicals. It's all about what's happening in the next episode. What are they going to do? Oh, my gosh, did you see what happened to them? Will they make it right? That's the reaction the show is trying to create.
Now, this makes for great entertainment, but what we don't realize is that our body and mind are going into that mode just before our head hits the pillow. So now your body and mind are in a state of anxiety before you go to bed, which becomes your natural headspace throughout your sleep, which is then disturbed when you wake up.
I have also found it really helpful to program how I want to wake up. The example I always give is, you don't set your alarm the time you wake up. You set the alarm the night before. You program some thing to ring or have a tone when you wake up in the morning, but you set it the night before. In the same way, we have to set our programming and mindset the night before, I am waking up energized, rejuvenated, and ready for the day. I am waking up with health, vitality, and energy.
Having that as your repetitive affirmation before you go to bed gives you a chance again to subconsciously program your mind. I highly recommend a powerful morning and evening routine that is away from the area that's challenging you. And you may require thirty minutes of time before bed and thirty minutes of time in the morning, or maybe fifteen minutes before bed is enough. Even five minutes …. before bed and five minutes when you wake up can help to journal all your anxieties and all your thoughts (to really get them off your mind, to really get them out of your mind and onto the page)……
So five minutes before you go to bed and about five minutes after you wake up, just journal all of that anxiety, and put it out onto the page, to actually feel that release. I think we often feel it's a weakness to have a release. We think that I've just got to solve it in my head. I've just got to deal with all of it. I've just got to tolerate all of it. And the truth is you can try that, but it can feel like you start to carry a real weight. And I feel that for a lot of people we're just carrying a heavy weight because we keep adding to it.
The weight subconsciously continues to build and build to when we have a really tough moment where we do want to release it, and maybe it comes out at a person, we laugh, maybe we take it out on someone at work, maybe we take it out on a friend. It does come out. It always comes out. But, it may not come out in a healthy way.
It's also really important to recognize that when we have things going on, it's okay to stay busy. I think sometimes being busy gets a hard rap, and I understand, rightfully so. But when you've got something on your mind and it's bringing you down, sometimes staying busy, staying active, is really healthy because it allows us to process it in different ways
I find that when I have a busy day, when I have a busy schedule, when I'm moving around, it allows me to make sure that I deal with what I'm struggling with at the right time, and then not let it bleed into the entire day. That's what I mean by keeping busy. I'm not saying ignore the issue. If we ignore the issue, it will just grow. If we ignore the issue, it will actually get stronger and bigger and come back harder.
It's important that we stay busy by creating times of the day where we do focused work. Working out is similar by being physically active. When you have something on your mind, it allows you to release it, releasing that energy in a different way.
A lot of people say something, especially in spiritual circles, that we just have to tolerate it. We just have to accept it. And while there is truth in that, there's a beautiful metaphor that says, we should be as tolerant as a tree. What I love about this statement is that a tree is extremely tolerant. It deals with all the seasons. It deals with the cold, it deals with the heat, and all the time it provides shade to others. It provides fruit to others. It tolerates that the soil around it may not be great, so the roots grow in a particular way to get its nutrients.
We have to be as tolerant as a tree. But the thing is, a tree can't move. So if a tree could move, it probably would. And so if you can move, if you can change, you can shift. We shouldn't just tolerate and accept. We should learn to tolerate and accept the things we can't change, but the things we can change, we should change.
If you're dealing with an issue, it's important to leave no stone unturned in solving the problem. Often what we do is we go into acceptance before action. But it's the other way around. If you've taken every action you possibly can. If you've taken every action within your control, if you've taken every action that will help you get out of the situation you're in, and then it doesn't shift, then we can practice acceptance and tolerance.
But if you haven't tried everything, if you haven't pushed and questioned and been curious….. I often find this when I'm struggling with my health. It's so easy for me to say, ‘you know what, that's it, can't do anything else’. And I've realized there's another modality I haven't learned about. There's another guide, there's another teacher, there's another doctor, there's another healing process that I haven't opened my mind to.
Please, please, realize this. Whatever you're dealing with, first, deal with it, with action. Before we get into this pseudo spiritual place of I accept it and surrendering, we have to take action! The strestatement of the universe helps those who help themselves. We have to start with helping ourselves before we expect help from anything else.”
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MY NOTES
Did you find Jay’s words powerful? He has a way of phrasing things as if you both were sitting together discussing a random topic that then just hits the bullseye right on. At least this podcast did for me.
Maybe you got something different out of his discussion than I did. But, here are several key take-aways that I jotted down in my journal.
Do I have something sitting in the back of my mind that is affecting my energy (sick patient, relationship, child, parent, financial)?
Anxiety keeps us in a state of pain and unrest.
We suffer twice, once in imagination, and once in reality.
Anything that I worry about, don't deal with it first thing in the morning, or last thing at night.
When I have grateful thoughts, I can't have worry-filled thoughts at the same time.
I am simply a set of patterns, a set of systems that CAN be changed and transformed.
Use first thing in the morning and last thing at night to re-program my subconscious.
Expressed, specific and personalized is how gratitude needs to be shared to be impactful.
My mind is made up of subconscious beliefs that can all be re-programmed.
It's not about getting rid of pain or moving on from pain. It's not about saying it doesn't exist anymore. It's about having the strength and the courage and the support to deal with it.
I need to recognize that I can't remove the thought.
Life is not about reducing noise, reducing negativity, reducing the thing that keepings me up at night. I need to drown out the noise through something else.
Focus on what I need to do. Increase the voice I want to hear to subconsciously program my mind.
The words I am are powerful, because it's an acceptance of something I’m already feeling, not I want, which feels like it's in the distant future.
I am happy, I am healthy, I am healing!
Without the repetition of the ‘I am’ affirmation, what ends up happening is I end up stewing, I end up feeling stuck. I end up feeling like nothing's moving in the right direction.
Use I am as my repetitive affirmation before I go to bed to help me subconsciously program my mind.
Take five minutes when I wake up to journal all my anxiety, and feel the release.
When I've got something on my mind and it's bringing me down, stay busy, stay active. It allows me to process it in different ways.
When I stay busy, I deal with what I'm struggling with at the right time, and won’t let it bleed into the entire day.
Don’t ignore the issue. If I ignore the issue, it will just grow and get stronger, bigger and come back harder.
Leave no stone unturned in solving the problem. Take every action within my control, if I’ve taken every action that will help me get out of the situation and then it doesn't shift, I can practice acceptance and tolerance.
Have I tried everything? Is there another guide, another teacher, another doctor, another healing process that I haven't opened my mind to?
Whatever I’m dealing with, first, deal with it, with action.
The universe helps those who help themselves. I have to start by helping myself before expecting help from anything else.
THE BOTTOM LINE
“We suffer twice, once in imagination, and once in reality”
“The words I am are powerful, because it's an acceptance of something I’m already feeling, not I want, which feels like it's in the distant future. I amhappy, I am healthy, I am healing.”
“It's not about getting rid of pain. It's not about moving on from pain. It's not about just saying it doesn't exist anymore. It's about having the strength and the courage and the support to deal with it.”
No matter what, people seem to find a way to worry and be anxious, even if they don’t think they are. As a result, they do something much worse – they say no to their true desires and emotions, reject the power of self-healing and rarely find time for themselves to contemplate and reach a state of peace and health.
I genuinely hope that this blog today gives you a sense of courage. I hope that it gives you a sense of comfort, and I hope that it gives you a sense of some practical tips and insights to solve anxiety challenges you or a loved one may be having.
As always, if you’d like to talk more about what we covered today, make an appointment with me using the link: HERE.
Or, you can give me a call at (973) 210-3838
I want to hear from you! What questions or insights do you have about anxiety and learning to reprogram your mind? Did you find this newsletter helpful?
Share your thoughts in the comments on our
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