 I want you to think about the things that are making you anxious and ask yourself this question. That alone, 90% of the time, makes somebody go, so let me tell you what I've been doing. It's super simple, but it is ridiculously profound. We're going to be talking about something that I should have probably talked about quite a long time ago, but I talked quite a bit about anxiety and all of those things in March and April and as things were going on. And then I had a conversation with a friend about COVID, about all the things that are happening, and I'm not going to give you my world perspective, because who needs to hear another opinion in this world? So I'm not going to give you any opinions on anything, but what I will tell you is how I know how to work through anxiety, how I've helped myself get through anxiety, how I've had my friends help get through anxiety, have had clients get through anxiety and stress and depression, all of those. And there's a lot of heavy that's happening in the world. We can admit it. And first off, we probably need to admit it. This has been, for most people, a heavy year. It has been a lot of unknown things that we did not see coming up that have come up. And you can feel really heavy if you're a person that's very kinesthetic. You can feel lost if you're a person's very head and analytical type of person. You might just be ready for this to be over. I'm actually pretty sure that everybody who's listening to this is ready for this to be over. But at this point in time, it's not. It just isn't. And so what comes down to is us accepting that. And I'm here to tell you, everybody, it'll be all right. It will eventually work itself out. And the quicker that we just accept that it is the way that it is right now, and that it will eventually be all right, that I think the easier it'll make our lives until it gets to at least some feeling of normalcy. And I'm going to try to help you feel better. And I was having a conversation with a friend of mine and we were talking about COVID and the fact that she's going home to her parents for Christmas. And she has a lot of anxiety around possibly bringing COVID home to her parents for the holidays, which is the worst Christmas gift you can give your parents. But she's afraid of giving that to her parents going home for the holidays. Completely understandable. Makes a whole lot of sense. And she was talking about that. But more than anything else, what she was really anxious about is the fact that COVID is still around fact that we're still dealing with this thing. What are we nine months into it? And she was just talking about how she was anxious and stressed because of that. Then the conversation went a little bit further and she was talking about, you know, the other thing that scares me a lot as well as the economy, like I don't know what's going to happen with the economy with all of the inflation that's going on with, you know, about 20% of the world's money or the US's money was just printed this year. You know, and just what's going to happen with the economy. And then she went into rolling into how she's also having these anxious thoughts around getting these test results that she's waiting for her dog. And, you know, the, the, the issues that's happening with her dog and the fact that her dog might have cancer. And she's just at this point in time, it's a waiting game for all of them, right? So it's a waiting game for the test results for the dog. It's a waiting game for seeing eventually if COVID's ever going to pass or what's going to happen with our lives next. And it's a waiting game to see what's going to happen with the economy. And I let her go through and talk about it and talk about it. And then what happened was I mentioned to her that the things that she's having all of this stress and anxiety around, she has absolutely no control over. And that's what's giving her stress and anxiety, right? So she has no control over what's going on in COVID. She has zero control of that. She also has zero control over the economy. And she also has zero control over test results from blood work that was done a few days ago for her dog. Zero control over all three of those things. Now, before I go any further, I want you to think about the things that are making you anxious and ask yourself this question. Do I have any control over those things? All of the things that are bringing you worry and fear and anxious thoughts, do you have any control over them? Or do you have those anxious thoughts and feelings around them simply because of the fact that you have no control over them and you want to have control, but you don't. So your anxious thoughts could be coming from the fact that you want to have control over something that you absolutely will never have control over. And you haven't just fully accepted that lack of control because of those things, three things that I mentioned to you about my friend, none of them, literally none of them, she can't control. She cannot do anything about those. And it's not that those things don't exist. They all exist. It's that she's fighting them in her mind and that is bringing in the anxiety. So what are you fighting? Are you fighting things? And the other thing that she's not doing, she's not accepting. She's not accepting that they exist. They are here. They are the way that they are. She's just not accepting them. She is resisting the way that the world currently is right now. Right? That's what, at its simplest form, she is resisting the way that the world currently is. She's resisting the COVID. She's resisting the economy. She's resisting the dog's test results. She's just resisting. And this is not uncommon. I was reading an article the other day. It says depression has gone up four times, 400% from the exact same time last year. And I think a lot of the reason why is because people are feeling all of these anxious thoughts. And at the same time, they're not accepting the way that the world is in there. They're not allowing themselves to learn and grow and get better in these times and be able to work through it because they just so badly want the world to go back to quote, unquote normal, whatever bit of normalcy that they can have again. And if you've listened to my podcast before, you've heard me say this, your level of stress, anxiety, worry and fear and depression, unless you're clinically depressed, there's a completely different, that's a whole other episode that we could do, but your level of worry, anxiety, sadness, fear, all of those things, anxiety, all of that, your level of it will be in direct proportion to how much you're resisting the way that the world is. So if you're extremely anxious right now, I guarantee you are extremely resisting the way that the world is. You're extremely resisting something that is out there in the world, right? If you're having low levels of anxiety and just a little bit, maybe it's just bubbling under the surface, which I feel is, for most people, how it usually works. It's not that it's full blown anxiety. It's just, it's just a little bit of anxiety that's bubbling under the surface all day every day. And the reason why is probably because you have a low level of resisting the way that the world is. You're wishing, all right, well, yeah, you know it is this way, but I just wish it would go back to normal. I'm just so, I just want to go back to work. I want to see my friends again. I want to be able to hug my mom and it's not that it's a full blown panic attack for you. It might just be that you're just resisting versus full acceptance. You know, there's a shaman that I've worked with in the past and then psychedelics with, and he says just surrender harder, right? Just surrender harder. That's what we all kind of need to do right now. And actually what we need to do probably for the rest of our lives is just surrender harder. I'm not saying surrender to the powers to be. If you think that the, you know, the economy and the COVID and all that stuff is being put on by some masterminds behind the scenes. I'm not saying surrender those. I'm saying surrender. The fact that it is the way that the world is right now. And at this moment, there's nothing that I know of that we can do about it. So do I want COVID to exist anymore? No, hell no, of course I don't. But what can I do about it? What can I personally do about COVID? Right? I'm just a college dropout. I don't know about COVID. I don't know. I think about all that science and stuff. I can barely formulate words sometimes. How am I going to save the world from COVID? I'm not. So do I want it to be here? No, but it is here and I've got to figure out a way just to accept that. And you can either resist or you can accept. And those are the two things that you can really do. Yeah, it is the way that it is. It's not what I would have chosen, but it is the way that it is. And what you have to realize is that's completely my decision. And you can resist or you can accept. And that is completely your decision as well. It's fully 100% up to you. And what you have to realize is that the more that you're resisting, the more that you're stealing away your joy in the present moment, your joy is being stolen from you in this present moment because of your resistance. Your joy, your happiness, your peace in this moment is being stolen from you because you won't just fully accept that, Hey, the world is the way that it is. Right? If somebody breaks up with you, your joy is stolen from you. If you're resisting and going, God, I just wish that we would be back together again. And you're thinking about how the past used to be. And you're thinking about your love and all of the times that you hung out and watched Netflix and chilled and had all of those great moments. You're like, God, I just want it to be that way again. But it's not. And guess what? The more that you're resisting the fact that it isn't the way that you want it to be, obviously, the more that it's going to be holding you back, the more anxiety and stress and worry and fear you're going to be having around that thing. And you have to realize if your joy is being stolen from you in the present moment, your life is just a collection of present moments. That's all that it is. There is no past and there is no future. Everything that has happened to you and will ever happen to you in your entire life is in the present moment. Nothing has happened to you in the past. The past is just a present moment that has passed, right? Nothing has happened to you in the future yet, but when that future thing does happen, that will be a present moment. And so if we're really serious about this and trying to make ourselves feel better, we need to be very aware that our entire life is just the present moment. The only thing that does exist and will ever exist for us is the present moment. And if we're resisting COVID, if we're resisting the economy, if we're resisting a breakup, if we're resisting test results, all of those things, we're resisting it and having our joy stolen from us in this moment when we fully can experience the love and the joy and the happiness and the peace that we truly want to, if we were to just step into it and accept, stop resisting and go, what is great about this moment right now? And just allowing ourselves to sink into the present moment more than anything else. And the perfect question asked yourself, and that's what I asked my friend, I said, okay, now that we've gone through all these things, I got a question for you. The question is, are you okay right now? She's like, what do you mean? I was like, in this moment, in this very second, are you okay? And she's like, well, yeah, I mean, I'm good. You know, I've got this coming up and this, I was like, no, no, no, no, no, I don't care about bills. I don't care about anything that's happening in the future. I don't care about any of that. In this very second, are you safe? And are you okay? She's like, yes. And I was like, now just think about that thought just just marinate on that thought. How does it make you feel? And she's like, it makes me feel a lot better. And the reason why is because all of the stress and anxiety that we have is all for things that could possibly be happening in the future. And we make up all of these ghosts and demons into the future that could possibly exist. But in reality, it's never about those things. It's always about this present moment right now. So if you feel anxious thoughts, if you feel like there's something wrong, I want you to ask yourself in this moment right now, am I okay? Not, oh my God, I have to pay tomorrow or later on at five o'clock. I have to make sure I'm at this appointment. No, right now in this moment, this very second, are you okay? And the answer is yes. Can you sink into that feeling of being okay? Don't sink into the feeling of the anxiety of the possible things that could happen in the future. Can you sink into the feeling of being just fine right now in this present moment? Feel the feelings of what it feels like to be fine in this moment. Are you okay? You are. Okay, I feel better. I feel at least a little bit better. And if I can continue to notice when I feel anxious thoughts and start to repattern myself to go, am I okay right now in this moment? Yes, I am. Okay, am I okay? Right? 99.999% of the time, you're okay right now in this present moment. And there's nothing to be worrying about or anxiety that you should have, but you're bringing it up and forcing it onto yourself. Right? So if you have anxieties of anxiety or stress or fear or worry that you've been feeling, my question to you is this, what are you resisting? If you're anxious, if you're worrying, if you're fearful, if you're feeling those negative emotions come up, what are you resisting? Think about that for a second. What is it? What is it that you're resisting? Is it a breakup? Are you not accepting the breakup, wanting it the way the world to go back to the way that it used to be? The fact that you're not person's not in love with you anymore, what is it that you're resisting? And the question is, are you okay right now? Are you okay? And the other thing we have to do is we have to accept and that we can control almost nothing. Like we literally can almost control nothing. Like literally you can barely control your own battles after Taco Tuesday. Like you can literally control almost, you can't control other people. You can't control your children very well. You can't control the weather. We can barely control our own thoughts most of the time we can't. We can control almost nothing. And this is me telling you this as a recovering controlaholic where I realized on one of my, on my very first psychedelic journey that I did that I was a control freak. I control issues and that was causing all of my stress and my worry and my anxiety in my life. And the past three years, three and a half years since I've done it have been a complete unraveling of just letting go of all the control and noticing it when it comes up and realizing that the more that I let go of control and the less I try to control everything, the more amazing my life becomes. And so we can't control our first thought, but you can always control your second thought. And so even if the first thought comes up as an anxious thought, well then notice it, identify it and then go, is that the thought that I want? No, it's not. Okay, what is a better thought that I want to replace it with and replace that thought with a new thought? You can't control your second or you can't control your first thought, but you can always control your second thought. And if you change your first thought enough to whatever the second thought is enough over and over and over and over and over again, you will eventually repattern your brain and your thoughts and your second thought will eventually start to become your first thought. If you're naturally a negative person, identify that negativity and replace it with positivity. And if you do this over and over and over and over and over again all day, every day, hundreds of times every day, depending on how much negativity pops up in a year, two years, three years, five years, you'll notice that your new first thoughts are positive and not negative anymore. We can repattern our brain by noticing it and by taking control of it. You can't control your first thought, but you can always control your second thought. And then what do you do? It's very simple. Right now, am I okay? In this moment, it's very second. I am okay. Okay. Good. Number two, accept. Accept. Stop resisting. The world is the way that it is. The more that I resist, the worse I'm going to feel. So if I can just accept, I'm going to feel better. And number three, ask yourself this question. This is something that I had. I was feeling a lot of, it was probably about five years ago. I got off a plane and flew into Austin and it was like, I came from Florida and Florida was hot and it was amazing. And I was on the beach and I flew back into Austin and it was like 19 degrees and just like it wasn't even snowing. It was like that really frozen rain and it was cold and it was hailing and it was just a crap day outside. And I got off the plane and I was like, oh gross. This is disgusting. I'm waiting for my Uber to come pick me up. And it's like wind is just like howling. It's like 30 miles an hour. It's cold. I came from amazing, beautiful Florida to cold, rainy, windy, wet Austin. And I started to notice my feelings change towards being in Austin at that moment. I didn't feel good. I was like, David, why don't I just stand? I started to get really kind of anxious about why don't I just stay in Florida? I could have stayed in Florida for an extra week, whatever it was. And then I made myself reframe what was going on. And I asked myself this question, this is a question I have for you, is what's beautiful about this moment? And I forced myself to answer what was beautiful about this moment. And so I looked around and I started noticing different things that I could feel are beautiful. And my gosh, I have my health. I have, you know, people who love me in my life. I have, you know, a business that I love running. I have things that I love doing. I have, you know, a time tomorrow to go work out with one of my best friends and I started noticing what was beautiful about the moment. And by noticing that thing that I felt was beautiful, I was actually starting to unravel all of the feelings of anxiety and stress that I had about coming back in to the way that it is in the cold and the rain and the sleet and the snow and all of the crap that we had that day. And so I think I want you to do is number, number one, ask yourself, am I okay? Number two, accept it. And number three, ask yourself this, this one question, what is beautiful about this moment and reframe your thoughts in the current moment, the current present that's being stolen from you and reframe it to finding what's beautiful in your life and what's beautiful in this present moment. And this right here that I'm going to share with you is a strategy that I've used for tons of my clients before in the past. And it's actually a strategy I've used for myself. And it's actually a strategy. The reason why I'm talking about it is because it's a strategy I had to use for myself at four a.m. in the morning a few days ago. And I don't know if you guys have ever done this before where you wake up in the morning, it's early in the morning, maybe you have to go to the bathroom or you hear noise or dogs are barking or something like that. And then immediately a thought comes through of something that needs to be done or something that you have to do or it could be an anxious thought, I don't know what it is for you. But that first thought gets your brain going and then once your brain gets going, it's gone. You can't stop it. And so a few nights ago, we've been super, super busy in my business this week. We have an event that we're planning, which we'll tell you about later. We have a mastermind that we're planning that's coming up as well. Another three day event. We have tons of other amazing things that are coming up and it's all good stuff. But the problem is I woke up to go to the bathroom and immediately one thing that I had to do popped into my head. And then it was a cascade of all of these different things. Oh my gosh, I'm behind on doing this. I've got to reach out to this person. I got to get a quote for this. I've got to get this, this I have to negotiate this price. And it started to become all of these anxious thoughts rolling into my head. One of the things that's very, uh, that's a huge misconception is because I'm a, a mindset guy that I must have this perfect mindset and nothing holds me back, but nothing can be further from the truth. The reason why I am the quote unquote mindset guys, because I have to work on my mindset sometimes more than other people, just to motivate myself to get shit done. And so what happened was I had the first thought, I had the second thought, third thought, and I was sitting in bed for about 45 minutes. So it's about four o'clock in the morning, right? I'm in bed and I'm like, I'm not falling asleep. It's not happening. And I was like, I have to get up and I have to use my strategy on myself and I had to get up and I had to get my journal. So I went into the living room. I got my journal four o'clock in the morning and I started journaling some of the stuff that I needed to, and I'm going to take you through exactly what it is that I did for myself and what I've done for many other clients as well. You know, I've worked with a lot of different people that have anxiety problems. Um, and this is just one of the strategies I've come up with. And the first thing is the awareness that I'm having anxious thoughts. That's the first thing, right? Like the first thing is, is now you have to, you're inside of your head, you're having issues, thoughts you're inside of your head, you have an issues thoughts, you've got to pause and notice as the observer what's going on here. Okay. Yep. I've done this before. I know exactly where I am. I'm in the middle of anxious thoughts. I need to then remove myself outside of my head. You know, it's like the quote when you, when you take yourself, uh, if you don't take yourself out of the jar, you can't read the label, uh, inside of the jar is inside of my head. I need to take myself out of my own head, become the observer and say, what is actually happening here? Oh, too many thoughts, too many anxious thoughts. And, uh, one of the things that, uh, about anxiety is that anxiety comes from your thoughts. And when you Google and actually start to look up and research anxiety, there is no cure for anxiety. And the reason why is because it comes from your thoughts. There's no actual, Hey, you have anxiety. This is the chemical that you should take. Now I will tell you this, people do have that you can go to a doctor and if you have too much anxious thoughts, they will give you stuff to then make you feel different and put different chemicals into your brain, but it's not a chemical imbalance. Right? So I've had anxiety attacks before in the past. It's been a long time since that's happened. I've been around many people in the middle of anxiety attacks. I've worked with many people who have anxiety. Some of them that have such crippling anxiety, they literally cannot even leave their house. Their social anxiety is so high that they haven't left their house in two to three years. And the reason why is because it all comes from the thoughts. And when thoughts are in your head, they're extremely hard to deal with. Right? It's like trying to grab water. Like when your thoughts are in your head and you're trying to work through thoughts, it's like trying to grab on to water. Like you will never really grab it. It's always going to get away from you. Right? So thoughts can't stay in your head because thoughts are too abstract. You need to get all of your thoughts and put them on paper because to try to wrangle up your thoughts and to try to figure out what's going on and figure out how to work through them is like trying to punch somebody in the dark. Like you're not going to see that person and maybe every once in a while you take four, five, six swings and on the hundredth swing, you might hit that person, but then they're gone again and they move. That's kind of like figuring out your thoughts in your own head. And too many times people are trying to figure out their issues. They're trying to figure out what's going on in their head. They're trying to figure out why they feel the way that they feel. They're trying to figure out why they're sad, why they're depressed, why they're anxious, why their life isn't going the way that they want to, but they never get a freaking pen and paper and write down what's actually going on. Right? So I sat down with my journal and I wrote down a few questions. Right? If you have ever learned how to journal for me before in the past, it's super simple. You just ask yourself questions and then he forced yourself to answer it. So I was writing down and I noticed that I was having anxious thoughts. So I said, what am I having anxious thoughts about? And I just wrote them down. And there was like 17 things. There was like a massive list of all of these things that started flooding through because I had so much I had to be like, so much was on my plate. So many plates were spinning at one time. Kind of what happens sometimes when you grow a business and, you know, the higher you go, the harder the wind blows. Right? The wind was blowing hard this morning, that morning. And so the first thing I wrote down is what am I having anxious thoughts about? And I wrote all the different things down. And I just, you know, brain dumped, put them all down. Okay. I've got to do this for this person, this for this person. This thing has to happen. You know, I got to make sure that I plan all my podcast episodes. I've got to record all the podcast episodes, this, this, this, this, all of these things. I put them all down in a piece of paper. Right? Then what I did is I took each individual one and started working through it. Right? I started working through each individual one and then helped myself come up with a plan. And so let me show you how this works. So next time you feel some anxiety, now this isn't going to help you in the middle of a panic attack. I promise you that because by the time you're in a panic attack, you're already too far. Like you're too far. You just have to wait till that calms down. But if you feel just anxious thoughts, you feel sad, you don't feel right. This is something that you could use. So you write down and say, what am I feeling anxious about? What am I not liking? What am I fearing right now? Whatever it is that's there in front of you, you write it down. You take it out of your head, you put it on that piece of paper. Right? The next thing you ask yourself is what's the worst that could happen? Now you might think, this is not a good question to ask somebody who's in the middle of having anxious thoughts. But it is because I'm going to show you exactly why that is. Right? So what's the worst that could happen? The next question is what's the best that can happen? Right? Because I want to contrast the worst that can happen. And then the last step is what last question is what is my next best step to make me feel better right now? Right? So let's go through those questions and talk about why they're important and exactly how to work through them. Okay? You write down the question, what am I feeling anxious about? And you write down all of the things that you might be feeling anxious about, all of those. Right? We all have things that can pop up in the back of your head. We all have busy moments. We all have stressful moments. We all have sad moments in our life. But what we're doing by actually writing it down and not letting it be on the, you know, in our head anymore, we're putting on a piece of paper is we're basically in that room trying to punch somebody in the dark and we flip the lights on and we're like, oh, they're right there. I see them. That alone 90% of the time makes somebody go, okay, it's on a piece of paper. I feel so much better about it because it's not abstract anymore. It's there. It's, it's, it's literally tangible. I can see it on that piece of paper. Usually that starts the relief. And a lot of times people don't know what's making them feel anxious. And so when they're able to take it, put it down and identify it already just by writing it down makes them feel so much better. Right? So that's the first thing. Let's identify. Maybe it's one thing. Maybe it's 17 things like it was for me, right? Now let's go into what's the worst that could happen. Here's why this is important is because when you don't put it on paper and you're dealing with it abstractly, your brain makes up these fears that are completely illogical and are ridiculous. Right? Oh my gosh. If I don't, you know, end up getting this done, I'm going to lose my house and my kids and my family. And like, that's where your brain immediately goes to the worst possible outcome. So I'm going to put down what's the worst that could happen so that I can literally see it and go, oh my god, that's ridiculous. That's never going to happen. Right? Because 99.9% of the time it never gets as bad as your brain actually makes it before you put on a piece of paper. So when you write down what's the worst that could happen and it's like, oh, I could lose my job and my family could be homeless and my kids could be homeless and my wife could divorce me and I could be a terrible father. And then you look at it and you're like, uh, yeah, but that's not going to happen. Like that's, that's ridiculous. And usually that's what happens when you actually take it and put it down on paper and you see it. You identify, you once again flip the lights on so that you can see what's going on in your head. So what's the worst that could happen? I want to identify that and I want to get clear on what that is because then I can go, ah, that's not going to happen. I'm not going to let that happen. Right? Let's go to the next step. What's the best that can happen? Right? So let's look at it positively. So if I'm up all night, I'm going, okay, like for instance, we have this event that's coming up. I have to get the event, the contract, the AV video team. I've got to negotiate all that stuff. I've got to get the place figured out. You know, we've already got it. I've got to get the contract signed all of that stuff. I've got to get the audio video team completely separate. Got to get them negotiated, get the contract done for them. Then I start thinking about all the things that I'm planning and the worst that could happen is that it doesn't happen. Right? And that would suck, but it's not, the world's not going to end. The best that could happen is we have, you know, a bunch of people show up to it. Everybody gets there safely. They feel amazing. They're able to make new connections and a hundred lives are impacted. Right? That's pretty damn exciting. And so now I'm looking at the what's the worst that could happen and going, ah, that's probably not going to happen. And then I'm looking at what's the best that could happen. And I actually feel better about this thing that I was having anxious thoughts about. They kept me awake for a while. Right? Usually it doesn't go as good as you think it's going to go, but it goes way, way, way, way, way, way, way better than the worst that could happen. Right? If there's like a medium ground and the worst is all the way over to the right and the best is all the way over to the left, usually in that medium ground is going to swing a little bit much more towards the left than is the right. So I want to actually identify what is the best thing that could happen through this. Like, so if you're in the middle of a divorce and that divorce, obviously you don't want to go through. That sucks. I can't even understand what that would feel like to go through something like that. Right? But you could go, what's the worst that could happen? You can work through and they say, what's the best that could happen? Will we go through this divorce? We go our separate ways and I become a free person and I can refine myself because I felt like I lost myself in that relationship. And then you're like, oh my god, what can, what, how amazing would it be for me to find myself and who I truly am and who I've grown into because I grew apart from this person. And then maybe you actually get excited about divorce because you're like, that sounds awesome. I do want to get this divorce. Right? So it can take something that seems positive and turn it into negative. Right? So what's the best that could happen is the next question. And then the last question is what is my next best step to make me feel better right now? Right? What is my next best step to make me feel better right now? What action can I take to make me feel better? Right? So for me, what it was, I was like, okay, if I'm looking at all these things, I put down all of the action plans of exactly what I needed to do in all of those 17 categories, all the stuff that that I need to do. I was like, oh okay. Yeah, I can do this tomorrow morning. Once, you know, once everybody wakes up and I can get on the phone calls and I can negotiate and do all this stuff, I can get my team on it as well. So I was like, okay, I'm looking at all this stuff. It's four o'clock in the morning, 4.45 in the morning. I can't do anything about it right now for most of these. So what's the next best step for each one of these? Did them. Okay. I wrote them all down. Now what I'm going to do, the next best steps to make me feel better right now. I was like, what's the next best step? I need to meditate and I need to focus on what I'm grateful for. Because I have so much to be grateful for in my life. Like it's amazing that I'm focusing on these things that are kind of trivial. And you know, I'm not saying all of people's things that they're stressing out about are trivial like mine happen to be. But it's not going to ruin my life in these circumstances. So I was like, you know what? I need to focus on gratitude because if I come from a place of gratitude, if I come from a place of love, equanimity, peace, I'm going to go into all of these 17 things and feel better. So I was like, all right, I'm going to meditate. I'm going to focus on gratitude. You know, maybe for you guys, it might be like, okay, I need to have a conversation with this person. That's the very first thing I need to do right now. Right? Maybe it's like, I need to go work out. I need to go for a run. I need to call a friend. I need to call my business partner because this thing that happened to us has really been stressing me out and I haven't had the conversation I need to. That's why I'm stressed out. You know what? Screw it. I'm going to have the conversation right now. Right? Because then what happens is I've identified my anxiety culprit. Right? I've shined the light on it. I've identified what could happen. The worst that could happen. I've identified the best that could happen. And now I have the action that I need to take in order to make me feel better. And by doing all of this, at literally 445, 5 o'clock in the morning, made me feel so much better and I went from not being able to fall asleep to, okay, I've got everything on a piece of paper. It's all ready to go. As soon as I can start doing work in the morning, I was like, I'm going to put on meditation. I'm going to feel some gratitude. I'm going to try to make myself feel better. And I consciously breathe for 20 minutes. And I was consciously, and when I was breathing, I was going, I'm going to feel my body relax with every single out breath. For 20 minutes, I was like, I'm going to consciously feel my body. And I went from this high vibrational buzzing state of like, oh my gosh, anxiety, stress, stress, anxiety, to calm, peace, felt amazing. What happened? Fell asleep. I was like, whoa, wake up a couple hours later on my couch, did my morning routine. I got my journal, I looked at all of the things and then one by one started knocking out every single one of them and had a super freaking productive day and all of the anxiety around everything was gone. All of the stress around everything was gone. Why? Because it was all in my head. I needed to take it out of my head. I needed to shine a light on it. I needed to work through what's the worst that could happen, the best that could happen and what is the immediate steps that I need to do right now to make my self feel better. So I woke up, I did my morning routine, I got my journal, looked through all of the stuff that I had, started knocking everything out because I had my action plans. I had exactly what needed to be done. But the most important part was number one identifying what was going on, excuse me, then what did I do after that? I actually went, you know what, I'm going to write it all down. I took it all out of my head and I put it down on a piece of paper, right? Get it out of your head, put it down. So you're not trying to grab water anymore, so you're not trying to punch that person in the dark, flip the light on, see the person and go, oh, there it is, that's the thing that I need to work towards. So know that when you're feeling anxious thoughts, there is a strategy to get out of it. This is the four steps, the four questions to ask yourself. Next time you feel stressed, worried, fear, anxiety, any of those negative feelings, I want you to use this, try it and I guarantee it'll make you feel better. I'm going to give you my number one tip for overcoming anxiety and I'm going to be honest with you, it's actually way more simple than you could think, but that doesn't mean that it's easy. It's actually, even though it's so ridiculously simple, I know that for a majority of people listening to this, it's going to be really hard for you to actually do this to relieve your anxiety and I'm going to be completely honest with you. Recently, I've been so freaking busy, I've been spinning so many plates, we have so many events that are coming up, we're hiring new people, we're creating new programs, we're making sure that we give our clients who are currently paying us the best possible experience that they can, I'm on lives, I'm talking to people, I'm coaching people, all of this stuff. It's literally like a rocket ship and with a rocket ship, it's all good stuff, but if not kept at bay, it can creep up on you to be like a holy shit moment, there's a lot going on and I'm kind of stressed out about it and for me, I noticed the anxious thoughts starting to creep in and so that's what I'm going to tell you is what I've been doing in the past couple weeks to kind of keep them at bay, but especially not just me, but with all of the stuff that's happening in the world right now, all of the uncertainty of what's going on, is the virus still here, is it are we staying in lockdown, we're in lockdown, we're not in lockdown, we're back in lockdown again, are we wearing masks, we're not wearing masks, could I die from this, there's so much anxious thoughts that are coming from this, this is going to help so many people if you can just do this and your brain even though you're trying to keep it at bay, your brain's constantly in the background thinking is this happening, is this not happening, am I safe, am I not safe, how should I do this, how should I walk, how should I, am I able to walk up to person, shake their hand, are they going to be, there's so many things, so many variables that are just all over the place for people, I'm going to teach you how to try to keep those things at bay and how to calm them down so that you can operate at the highest level possible for you and before I tell you my secret there's one thing that it's going to piss a lot of people off, it's maybe not piss people off, it's going to make you sad, one thing that makes it absolutely worse is caffeine, I said it yes, your coffee, if you have anxious thoughts throughout the day, if you feel really way too stressed throughout the day and you're drinking coffee in the morning, it is making it way worse, way worse, so I would recommend if you're having anxious thoughts, if you're having you know if you're getting anxiety, if you're getting some little bit of, feels like you're a little bit depressed or that you're sad or that you're super freaking stressed out, wean yourself off of coffee for a little while, right, if you can't go cold turkey and you got to wean yourself off, switch from from coffee to when you're making coffee do half decaf, half caffeinated and try that out for a little while and if you can't do that go green tea just do something that has less caffeine so it you can start to not be so dependent on it, you'll notice your stress levels, your anxiety levels go down a ton, so let me tell you what I've been doing, it's super simple but it is ridiculously profound once again just because it's easy and it's simple doesn't mean that it's easy to do and to make yourself do and if you're dealing with anxious thoughts this definitely won't be easy but it's worth it and it works, here's what it is, I've been breathing and you guys are listening to me or probably like no shit we all have right but I don't mean just breathing, I mean extremely intentional breathing and if you've ever been on a live with me before, if you've ever been on a zoom call, a facebook live, a live event, I try to start every single meeting that I do every single morning when we do our team calls we start off with breathing every single time that we get everyone together for our mastermind we start all of it with breathing and I'm going to go much deeper into what I do, the reasons why I do this the science behind it for all of you analytical skeptics that are out there I'm going to go through all of these things in just a minute but I want you to try this with me okay we're going to do something that we've never done before in a podcast we're going to breathe together and don't turn me off and be like oh I know how to breathe trust me with this right there's a lot of science behind this if you're hanging out at home or you're in a good place you can close your eyes while you do this if you're driving your car don't recommend closing your eyes and breathing with me but you can still breathe all of this will take about one minute okay here's what we're going to do you and I are going to do six deep breaths together okay reason why is because there was a Chinese study that was done not too long ago and they found that if you do six really deep slow intentional breaths that it can completely change your state because the breathing changes your heart rate and your heart rate changes the the breathing and your heart rate both of those together change the hormones that are put into your body so instead of cortisol and adrenaline which can be very stressful it can start to calm yourself down and give you some dopamine some oxytocin some serotonin the things that start to calm you down and so here's what we're going to do we're going to breathe in through the nose you don't need to do it with me I thought I'll count it with you we're gonna breathe in through the nose and when we exhale we're going to exhale through the mouth now when you do this on your own it's really important to try to make your inhale and your exhale as long as you possibly can and so when you do it you could breathe in the nose you go and then breathe out and go if you wanted to but actually what you want to do is you want to try to take your lips and make the smallest hole that you possibly can and breathe out and that will actually slow down the breathing process and there's a fact it's literally a fact that when you'll you start to do a long exhale that it actually makes your your heart start beating slower and when your heart starts beating slower obviously that will calm you down we're not going to do that you can do it if you want to but in a typical time when you're doing these 60 breaths it'd be more of and you just let it out as slow as you possibly can but for time's sake just breathe with me instead we're going to do a little bit different okay so if you can do it close your eyes if you can't close your eyes don't close your eyes but I'm going to count you through all you got to do is just breathe with me so inhale through the nose exhale through the mouth so inhale exhale inhale exhale inhale exhale inhale exhale inhale exhale and last one inhale and exhale okay how do you feel? do you feel a little bit better? do you feel a little bit calmer? do you feel a little bit less anxious? a little bit less stressed? right it's literally just breathing but it is intentional breathing is obviously what's important now here's the important things as as you go through this what we didn't do is we didn't even go a little bit more advanced the more advanced is when you breathe in I want you to breathe in to your stillness find the stillness that you can in your breathing in and in your exhale what I want you to do is I want you to breathe out the bullsh** breathe out the stress breathe out the worry breathe out the to-do list breathe out the thoughts breathe out all of those things I want you to just try to connect to the stillness that is inside of you do you feel different? I know if you did it right you probably do even if you didn't do it right you probably still feel different slow intentional breathing has been shown scientifically to reduce anxiety and depression inside of people don't underestimate the power of your breathing and I'm going to go deeper and tell you guys what I've been doing just besides that to help you guys out with the anxiety and anxious thoughts and stress and worry and all that stuff but if you just look at what's important to humans right like food for instance you cannot eat food for weeks you can go without food for weeks and still live water you can go a couple days without water but breath maybe a couple minutes so if we're ranking breath, water, food on the importance scale what's the most important? clearly breath is breath is the first thing to change whenever your state changes when you get excited it's clinically shown that the very first thing to change in somebody during excitement is the breath inside of somebody when you get anxious feelings when you feel anxiety the very first thing to change in you before your hormones before your thoughts any of those things is your breath when you feel fear the very first thing to change inside of you is your breath and so what do we do is if we want to change our own state we intentionally change our breathing to intentional breathing and that's how you bring your body back to normal since I've been telling you I've been so freaking busy and little bit anxious and stressed out over the past week how have I been using this? I've been sitting down and forcing myself to not just do six deep breaths but to do this as long as possible until I can feel that the anxious thoughts the stress the worry the fear whatever's popping up in my head is going away until I feel different and if I'm being honest with you it usually takes about 20-25-30 minutes to feel this way this is the hard part about it this is why people have so much struggle to meditation is because there's so much anxiety that comes up so many anxious thoughts the to-do list the fears all of those things come up and it's basically like your subconscious your ego fighting against you to you know the easiest way to think about it is if you put a child to bed the little kid will fight and fight and fight to going to bed even though they need to go to bed and they're wanting to go to bed and they're angry and they're crazy because they are so tired they fight to not go to bed and that fighting and staying up makes them even more angry and even more emotional that's exactly what happens when you sit down when you're anxious and you try to meditate all of the anxious feelings will do everything that they can to make you not sit down to meditate and so what you want to do when you sit down I literally have been doing this every morning for about 25 minutes and I can feel myself start to get even more anxious during the first 5, 10, 15 minutes of meditation and then eventually my body kind of calms down and it's like okay we're not going to do this we're going to chill and so what you want to do is you can either feel the breath going in your nose and out of your mouth in your nose, out of your mouth and just pay attention to that feeling or what I've been doing is feeling the muscles around my stomach I can feel the muscles on my stomach when I breathe in I can feel them go out around my diaphragm and when I breathe out I can feel them going in and all I say is breathing in in my head I'm saying breathing in and breathing out and breathing in and breathing out and your mind will wander it'll go all over the place it'll try to fight it'll try to say no this isn't what you should be doing but just like you know like I know that for for our puppy he goes crazy sometimes he bites Toby and Toby's 12 years old and our puppy's 8 years old 8 months old and he goes crazy on him and we have to train him not to do those types of things so what we'll do is we'll hold him in place and be like no that's not what you do and he'll fight and fight and fight and fight and then she's like and he literally does a breath if you've ever noticed when your dog goes to lay down what do they do? they go and they breathe out that's what dogs do to calm themselves down so you have to realize that you have to sit there and you have to fight through the anxious feelings because you're going to feel more anxious when you sit down to breathe promise you that and so what I do is I do this breathing slow in through the nose slow out through the mouth for 15, 20, 30 minutes sometimes 45 minutes at a time and I can feel myself fight it and fight it and fight it and fight it and fight it and fight it and fight it and eventually it's like and it just kind of gives out and what am I doing? I'm destroying the anxious thoughts I'm getting rid of the anxious thoughts I'm getting rid of the stress I'm getting rid of the fear I'm getting rid of the worry anything that's going through my mind I'm telling my mind I will not allow you to act the way that you're acting because anxiety and stress and worry and fear all come from your thoughts they do and so I'm telling my mind I'm not going to allow you to do this I'm not going to allow you to do this I'm not going to allow you to do this and it's going to fight and it's going to fight it's going to fight it's going to fight and then it's going to go all right fine and it might take 15 to 20 minutes to even get to the all right fine but if you don't want to feel anxious anymore then that's just something that you need to do it's not that you don't have enough time it's just that you're not willing to do it don't ever say that I don't have enough time just say it's not a priority right so if you're wanting to stop being so anxious if you're wanting to calm down If you're wanting to stop worrying, it comes from your breath because your breath is in charge of every feeling that you have and you break through those feelings and that's what you're trying to conquer is those anxious thoughts, the worry, the stress, the fear, the feelings. You're just trying to get all of those to subside and eventually you'll find a place where you'll be in and it might take you some time, but you'll go, you know what? I feel pretty good. I feel like this breathing exercise is done. You don't even have to call it meditation because I guess it's not even meditation. It can be if you want it to be. Or you can just say, you know what? I'm just going to breathe. I'm not going to put any time to it. All I'm going to do is I'm going to wait until my anxious thoughts, my stress, my worries, my fears, all of those things subside and then I'm going to give myself a few minutes to rest in that peace and know that I can always come back to this peace. And when you do this, you'll realize that your day is completely different, completely different. So you do this when you first wake up because that's usually when your cortisol is at the highest, which means you're stressing out, which means that you're worried that you have anxious thoughts. And it's the highest for me. Cortisol is usually what wakes you up and cortisol is the stress hormone. So I feel it in the morning. So I forced myself to calm down. I forced myself, I'm going to be the one that's in charge of my brain. I'm not going to let my brain be able to do whatever it wants to do. I'm going to wrangle it and I'm going to make it calm down and I'm going to get rid of my anxious thoughts, my feelings, my worry, my stress by simply going back to the breath. This is something that you can do at any moment, at any time, anywhere in the world throughout the day. This is something that will make you more powerful because when you can control your mind, you can control everything else around you. But once again, it's so simple, but it's not easy. You've got to force yourself to do it and you've got to know, last thing I'll say, you've got to know that your mind is going to fight you for a little while and it's going to be really freaking hard to stay still. You've got to go against those feelings and eventually, like a child who's just fighting not to go to bed, eventually they're going to fall asleep. Eventually, your feelings are going to subside.