 If you have stress and anxiety, realize that it is normal today. We're going to talk about how to overcome stress and anxiety. I'm actually going to give you my four step process for how to remove yourself from stress and anxiety. And with all of the stuff that's happening in the world right now, I don't think I need to tell you how important this knowledge is to be able to have a process to help you. If you happen to feel anxious or happen to have anxious thoughts or anxious feelings, but also if you happen to get extremely stressed out, this will help you as well. So I saw a statistic today that said that in 2020 alone, overdoses were up by 30%. And overdoses are people taking some form of a drug usually to numb a feeling. And a lot of times that feeling is stress, sadness, anxiety. And so if you can have these tools in your tool belt and you can remember this, it can help you as you're working through these. The first thing that I want to say about stress and anxiety, though, is this is if you have stress and anxiety, realize that it is normal to have it all day, all, you know, evening, every single second day. That's not necessarily normal, but to have some form of stress and anxiety is not necessarily showing you that you're broken. You're not broken. If you have anxious thoughts, you're not broken. If you have fearful thoughts, you're not broken. If you have worry that tends to creep into your mind too often. One of the things that I find with people before we dive in and actually talk about how to overcome the stress and anxiety is for you to realize that if you feel them, don't judge yourself. Don't think that you're broken. Don't think that the system that you have in your body, there's something wrong with it is what it is. It will happen and you have to understand that there's ways to get out of stress and anxiety. Now, I do want to be very clear when I talk about stress and anxiety, I'm talking about stress and anxiety. I'm not talking about depression. Depression, if it's a clinical depression, is a chemical imbalance inside of somebody's brain. I'm not talking about a chemical balance inside of your brain. And very rarely do people actually have any form of a test when they are, you know, actually clinically depressed. Very rarely do doctors actually say, well, let's actually test what's going on in your brain. It's usually they're like, OK, what are your symptoms? Here's some pills to get rid of it. A lot of times, and actually to be honest with you, to give you statistics, 61% of the time, they found that people are misdiagnosed with depression when they actually don't have depression. They have stress and anxiety. So I'm talking about specifically stress and anxiety. I'm not talking about depression. The first thing to do, though, is to realize that it's normal. Everybody's going to have stress and anxiety at some point in time in their lives. It's just about something that you can work through. Don't judge yourself. Don't think that you're broken. None of that stuff. What is happening is your body is identifying some form of a threat in its environment. That's really what stress and anxiety is. There is a threat. We need to become aware of it. We need to work through it. The problem is nowadays, is that threat is actually not something that's in your immediate environment. If it was 100,000 years ago, and we're talking about our ancestors, when they felt stress and anxiety, it was probably when there was a predator that was around them. Or, you know, they're walking by a lake and one of their tribal members gets attacked by an alligator and now they all have to figure out what to do. So in that case, that's where stress and anxiety actually come from and that's where they're useful. But when you look at it today, usually our stress and anxiety comes from our thoughts about the future or some future event that we're not necessarily in control of right now. So your body is doing what it needs to do. What it's actually doing is your body is sending your brain messages and you can either listen to the messages or you can ignore them. It's up to you. Or you can listen to the messages and you can work through them. So if you know that the feeling of stress and anxiety is the body asking itself or being aware that there is a threat, the first thing you can ask yourself if you're feeling stress and anxiety, is there a threat around me? And a lot of times you look around and you're like, actually, no, I'm just sitting inside of my house, you know, looking at Instagram in the air conditioning. And then you realize there is no actual real threat that's happening right in front of you. The threat, more than anything else, is actually coming from your mind. That's what it is. And so as we go through and we talk about this, your body's doing what it needs to do. You need to listen to it. You need to become aware of the stress, of the anxiety, of the worry, of the fear, all of those things. And realize that right now, where you currently are, or that moment where you are in stress and anxiety and fear, all of those 99.9% of the time, you're safe. And that's an important thing for your brain and your body to physically, emotionally, and intellectually understand and feel is the feeling of safety. Okay, I'm stressed, but am I safe? I am. Okay, beautiful. Well, now we can work through that. We can start to figure out what's going on. So ask yourself the question, am I safe? Look at your surroundings, look at everything that's happening to you and make a clear distinction in your brain if you're safe or not. If you are safe, I want you to intellectually, emotionally and physically feel the feeling of safety inside of your body. Most of the time, if you can literally just feel the feeling of safety and emotionally, intellectually, and every single aspect of you to sink into safety, a lot of times your anxiety and your stress will go away and it's just, okay, I am safe. I am okay right now. There might be something in the future that I'm thinking about. Okay, I can work through that. I can get to it when that future comes, but I'm not in that future moment. What moment am I in? I'm in this present moment. That's what moment I'm in. Okay, so if I'm in a present moment, then can I just work through this present moment right now? Absolutely I can. And so we're focusing on a threat. That's what we're focusing on. But I've identified that I am some form of safe. Okay, good. Now what I can do is I can go on to step two. I've identified that I'm safe. I've identified that I'm okay. Step two is to stop identifying yourself with your feelings. So a lot of people say I'm stressed. I'm anxious. If you've been listening to the podcast long and if you've heard me say it, do not ever identify yourself with a feeling that is not you. Don't identify yourself with something that is not empowering. Don't ever say the phrase, I am if the words that are gonna follow it are not the most empowering things that you can say to yourself. So to say that I am stressed, I am anxious, is that empowering? It isn't. Stress and anxiety is a feeling and it's an emotion. It's like a cloud that's passing. You'll never look at a cloud that's passing and say I am that cloud. Or if it's the weather, if it's raining, you don't say I am rain. You're not. It's just, okay, the weather is passing. I know that eventually the rain will stop. I know that eventually that cloud will pass. So there's no reason for me to identify myself with it. So step number two after you've identified step number one, which is that you're safe, step number two is to go, okay, I am not stressed. I happen to currently be feeling the feelings of stress or I happen to be working through my stress. I am not anxious. I am just currently feeling a little anxious. And for some of you might be like, this doesn't seem like it matters much. It matters a lot because you're not identifying yourself with this feeling, with this emotion, which is just like a passing cloud. You're not that. You are the human behind that. And if you want to get even deeper, you're the soul that's inside of the human behind that. You're not anxious. You're not stressed. You're just happening to feel those feelings right now. And we all know feelings, they're fleeting. You can be happy one moment. You can be stressed one moment. You can be sad one moment. You can be anxious another moment. Do not identify yourself with any form of a feeling unless it's the most empowering thing that you can identify yourself with. So step number one is to identify that you are safe. Step number two is to stop identifying with the emotion or with the feeling because you're not broken. There's nothing wrong with you. That is not who you are. Step number three is that you need to breathe. And if you've been listening to me for long enough, you've heard me talk about the importance of breath. If you've been looking at any scientific research recently, it seems like the breath is like this amazing thing that people are just starting to finally uncover and identify as this thing that just changes human states remarkably. And so you've probably heard me talk about six deep breaths can absolutely change your state immediately. And it's very simple. It's just in through the nose, out through the mouth. The key of it though is to literally make your inhale, come in and make your exhale longer than your inhale. The exhale is the more important part. And the reason why is because the longer the exhale, the more it actually slows your heart rate down when you're feeling stressed and when you're feeling anxious, your heart rate will go up. Absolutely. I'll give you a perfect example. I wear a heart rate monitor on myself at all points in time. It's called a whoop. And literally, I was watching the very last game of the NHL Finals, Stanley Cup Finals. And I'm a Tampa Bay Lightning fan because I come from Tampa Bay. The last two minutes, I literally turned my heart rate monitor on. My heart rate, resting heart rate went from 1.7, I'm sorry, went from 75 all the way up to 120 in the last three minutes because I was feeling stressed and anxious like we got to win this game, we got to win this game. It's only the last two minutes. We're only up by one. So just the feeling raised my heart rate. So if I want to lower my heart rate, I got to breathe in through my nose. And then when I exhale, here's the key, is to act as if you're breathing through a straw. That's how you want to do it. So the inhale can be, and then exhale can be, that alone lowers your heart rate. Do that six times. And there was a Japanese study that found that six deep breaths, exactly like I just showed you, can completely change the state of somebody and help them get rid of their anxiety and their stress. So the exhale has to be longer, act like you're breathing out of a straw, get your lips to be like if they're wrapped around of a straw. And the exhale is what lowers your heart rate. Okay, so now we've identified, first off, number one, there is no threat. I'm okay, I'm safe right now. Number two, I am not this anxiety. I am not this stress. Number three, now I'm starting to work through it and I'm actually starting to breathe. I'm trying to bring myself back to a centered state. The last one is now to become self-aware. When emotion is high, logic is low. The worst thing to try to do is to try to think your way out of a panic attack or think your way out of stress or think your way out of anxiety. No, first you've gotta bring your body back to a stable state before you do anything else. That's the most important thing. So step number four is to become self-aware. Don't worry about trying to figure out why you're feeling the way that you're feeling when you're feeling it. Let the feelings pass, let the cloud pass and do what it's going to do. Now, once it has passed and I feel back like I'm onto a level of calm and equanimity and peace and joy and I feel a little bit better at least, now I can become self-aware. I can take out my journal, I can start my pen and paper, figure out what made me feel that way. Why? Because I want to avoid it. If I'm walking and every single time I walk down the street, I fall in a hole in the sidewalk and twist my ankle, wouldn't I want to make sure that I don't do that next time I walk down the street? Wouldn't I want to at least avoid that next time? Of course. So if I've noticed that I've mentally or physically through anxious thoughts and feelings fallen into a hole inside of the sidewalk, maybe I should figure out how I can avoid that hole in the sidewalk next time I go by it. And so I get a pen and paper and I start to figure out what's going on. Now that I've brought my levels back down to somewhat normal, I'm gonna ask myself, what was I focusing on that made that happen? So when I felt that rush of anxious thoughts, that rush of stress, what was I focusing on? What was I thinking about? What was I ruminating on? What were the majority of my thoughts being consumed by? And here's almost every single time what it is. You're being consumed by thoughts of a possible future, something that might happen later on down the road, but hasn't even happened yet. And what's actually causing you the stress and the anxiety is the fact that in this present moment, you can't control the possible future moment. And so the anxious thoughts is actually a control problem, wanting to control the future when in reality there's no way that you can ever control the future. You can't and you know you can't. And so you actually start to ask yourself, what was I thinking about? What was I identifying? What was I ruminating on the entire time that made me feel the way that I felt? Because I don't like feeling that way. And I don't wanna feel that way again. So I'm gonna journal through it. And next time I notice myself start to go down the rabbit hole of worrying about that thing that's coming up in the future. Maybe it's a deadline that you have at work. Maybe it's a bill. I can take myself out of it. And this is a key that one of my mentors gave me. Just say this phrase, not right now. And it sounds ridiculously simple. It sounds like it wouldn't work. But if you just tell yourself, not right now. And let your brain know that that's what's going on, that we're not gonna focus on it. Interestingly enough, your brain will start to release these things when you train yourself to just release it. Since one of my mentors taught me this, if I start, there's a lot of times that I'll wake up in the middle of the night, three o'clock and I'll go to the bathroom and I'll come back and thoughts of business and things that have to be done in my to-do list will come into my head. And I don't know about you, but that'll keep me up for an hour, two hours sometimes. That doesn't happen often, but when it does happen, my brain goes down this rabbit hole of thoughts and to-do list and all of these things. When I learn the strategy from a mentor, it literally just allows me to get rid of it. The thought is, not right now. So when I wake up, I go to the bathroom, I come back in a bed and I think about, oh, there's this thing that I have to do. I have to be up at seven, I have to do this, this, this, this, this. Oh, I've also got this in my to-do list. I just go, hey, brain, not right now. And my brain kinda goes, oh, oh yeah, okay. That's fine. It sounds so ridiculously simple. It sounds like it wouldn't work. And when my mentor told me about it, I was like, it's definitely not gonna work. It freakin' works. My brain's like, oh, okay, cool. It's like a dog that's chewing on a toy and you take the toy from it and you're like, no. And I was like, oh, all right, cool. I guess that's what I gotta do. It's just the way that it works. So now that you've realized what you have stressed out about, you can figure out what got you there. And now when it comes up again in the future, you have a way to work through it so you know how to release yourself from it. The question that you want to think about is what can I control right now? So what can I control right now? I can't control that future. What can I control right now? I control how I feel right now. I can control how I think right now. So let me go ahead and try to pick those things up. I want to work through those two things. How can I make myself feel better right now? Not later, not thinking about the future. How can I make myself feel better right now? Stop taking yourself out of the present moment. If you can bring yourself back into the present moment and you can remind your brain and your body that you're safe, next time you start to feel a lot of stress and anxiety and you can breathe through it. A lot of times you can literally feel the stress leaving your body, feel the anxiety leaving your body. And at that point, you're in power to take your life back. Hey, thanks so much for watching this video. If you want to learn even more about Master Your Mind, click right here and watch this video as well. Simply changing the way. I want you to be aware of this right now. How are you sitting?