 If you're like me, fear of change can cause all sorts of anxiety and that's exactly why we need to talk about it. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution and welcome back to another video where this week we are diving deep into the topic of anxiety and please do me a favor because not only is anxiety a huge issue but a lot of people have way too much stress which can then lead to anxiety because of their fear of change. So I want you to do me this favor and share this video. Share this video because I'm going to talk about my personal experiences with change, anxiety and what I do to overcome it so this video really might help somebody okay. So I have been going through my own anxiety and depression lately and when I sat back and looked at it a lot of it was purely based on fear. I have a lot of changes happening in my life right now a lot or whether it's work or with my relationship and nothing bad with work or my relationship but the thing is especially for those who are anxious like one of the things that we crave that we want that we need is structure. We need things to stay the same. A lot of us are creatures of habit. We set things up in a certain way we get used to them and then we don't have to worry about change because when change occurs or change is coming our way if change is coming in the future we get fear because we project into the future and our brains our brains can become our worst enemy and it thinks of every terrible outcome that can possibly happen and this is something that can consume me. My brain will just latch on to every single terrible situation that might happen. I believe it was Mark Twain who said something along the lines of and I'm going to misquote it so I will put it right here but he said something along the lines of the worst things to ever happen to me in my life have never even happened something along those lines and that is just what our brains do. Now this comes from an evolutionary psychology standpoint like we're supposed to have these responses to change because if our settings change way back in the day our ancestors when they were hunters and gatherers if things change you might be in danger you might die another tribe might be coming in to overthrow you a wild animal might come and bite your face off something crazy but in this day and age we don't have to worry about so many things so this fear this fear of change is consuming us but there are some ways to get through it and one of the biggest issues is that when our fear consumes us when our anxiety consumes us it is shutting down the prefrontal cortex okay this is our cognitive part of the brain this is the part of the brain that goes more based on facts rather than emotions so one of the best things that I've done is talk to people and talk to people about my fears it was very hard for me to acknowledge that the issues I was dealing with was purely fear based and like once I realized that I had to start telling people I had to start telling my girlfriend my friends my family like not the whole world but I had to just talk to some people that I can fight and say look I'm scared I'm scared okay and I had to let them know that and this leads into the next way that I overcome my fear of change one of them is my friends my family the people who love me the most the people who I surround myself with they point out my skills they point out the things I've done in the past they point out the fact the pure fact that I have overcome adversity and challenges throughout my life when I am faced with challenges when I'm backed into a corner when worst-case scenarios come my way I fight my way out of them all right this is something that I forget like I do struggle with imposter syndrome it is easy for me to forget all of the triumphs that I've had so it's very good to get an outside perspective and have people remind you of these things so once that ball starts getting rolling then I'm able to instill my own confidence something I try to teach my clients a lot and it's something that I work on a lot myself it's something called non-identification okay is separating myself from my thoughts okay my thoughts are just my thoughts I mentioned in the video I did yesterday we cannot control our thoughts thoughts arise thoughts come thoughts just appear out of nowhere we are not in control of our thoughts so it's important for me to step back and say okay these are my thoughts now this technique that I use is to have a conversation with these thoughts okay to look at these thoughts and say okay what is true what is false about these situations so when my brain is worrying and going nuts something that I can remind myself of is all of the situations I've had in the past like just to go back to my early stages of addiction like I'll do videos about this once I get back to a week about addiction recovery but like my first year of recovery was the hardest thing I've ever done so I thought until my second year of recovery I'm talking about being broke no money I had a few pairs of clothes everybody hated me I had no job nothing just absolutely nothing and look where I'm at today look where I'm at today look what I accomplished when I had all of the odds against me look at that so like just for example with work when things are changing at work and I'm afraid of these changes the reality is and you got to balance confidence with cockiness because cockiness gets us into trouble but I have to be confident in the fact that no matter what I get tasked with I succeed I succeed I actually work the best when I'm under pressure like it's something that I have a difficult time acknowledging but like I love pressure I love the struggle I love the fight because it gives me so much to work towards so when I'm sitting in fear I need to remind myself like Chris you've accomplished so so so much I've done a video in the past about uh how to reframe your story into a hero story I'll link it up in the info card but we need to remember this everybody watching this every single person watching this video you have overcome some sort of adversity in your life and you can do it again and we have to remind ourselves of these things when we are living in fear once I realize that then my anxiety starts to subside I can start to calm down and then I get into the last place the last place where the anxiety is pretty much non-existent and that is acceptance I accept the fact that are certain there are certain situations in my life that I have zero control over absolutely no control over once I can just compartmentalize those things the things that I have no control over now now we do what I talk about on this channel every single day we focus on the solution we focus we pinpoint we hone in on all of the things that we're in control of this is acceptance this is understanding what we can and cannot change when we focus all of our energy on the things that are within our power and within our control then we start to succeed then we start to overcome our anxiety okay but anyways like I said please share this video like man I didn't realize I was going to get so passionate when I started filming this but man share this video hopefully it inspires some people hopefully it motivates some people hopefully it motivated you hang on to this video come back to this video anytime you find yourself living in fear of change all right but anyways if you like this video please give it a thumbs up and if you are new here I'm always making videos to help you out with your mental health make sure you click that little round subscribe button and a big thanks to everybody supporting me over on patreon and if you would like me to help me spread this message of hope please click or tap right there and support me on patreon as well all right thanks so much for watching don't fear change and I'll see you next time