 One thing that's made a really big difference in my life is if I have this idea about something that I want to change, but I'm not fully convinced that I can do it or it's really going to make a big difference, I just commit to a 30 or 100 day challenge. So in this video, I thought I would introduce a challenge for this month that you could try and see if it really helps you. Hey guys, Alex Hein, author of the book, Milk the Pigeon, a field guide for anyone lost in their 20s on Amazon and Audible. Now there's something cool down below this video, which is for the waitlist for my program, Reinvent Your Life, which is a monthly program for Modern Health Month, the tribe and community here, where each month we go through a personal development challenge for 30 days and every week you get a new video and a new habit and affirmation to work on. That only opens once every month or every other month, and so the link below is for the waitlist if that appeals to you. So let's talk about some ugliness before we get to this challenge. Let's talk about the anatomy of an anxiety breakdown, or I guess you could technically call this a nervous breakdown because that's basically what I had no matter which way you call it. So imagine this, I'm in my third year of my doctorate, I'm still working 20 hours a week, the only student doing that that I'm aware of. I'm still trying to grow my business, pay off as much student debt as possible. So I was literally working so much that I would go see patients on a five hour shift, get off, and 10 minutes later, like in my clinic close, I have to take a coaching call on my way back from the clinic to go home and then study for three more hours. And then work on my business for two more hours. Imagine that almost seven days a week, maybe with the exception of Saturdays, which was just a five hour day. And, you know, all throughout school, I'd noticed some little problems sleeping. You know, if the stress increased or if there was a deadline or midterms or finals, I wouldn't sleep well. But then it would go back to normal. Now, in this third year, I was having that happen more and more. And then I went through this breakup at exactly the wrong time. It was the fall of I think last year before COVID began. And it was a breakup where I didn't have a lot of peace surrounding it. I was wondering if I was making a mistake, you know, telling this girl was an amazing girl that I wasn't really sure about the future. And after we broke up, my sleep started getting worse and worse and worse. Even though there was no conscious thought, I was ruminating, but not excessively. And eventually my sleep degraded so much that it devolved to the point of me only being able to sleep three hours a day. So I went from being like every once in a while, I can't sleep to I can't sleep for more than three hours at a time. So I don't know if you've ever had that happen. But now imagine what happens when you can't sleep and you only sleep for three to five hours. And then the next day, you can only sleep for three to five hours. And then the next day, you can only sleep three to five hours. And then the next day you're like, how many times can this happen for you just die? Like, I mean, I'm like anxious, nervous wreck. I'm like spontaneously sweating. I don't want to eat anything. I'm starting to feel fear when I go to bed. So the bad news was that that went on for a long time. And eventually got to the point where I was like, I might actually just die. Like something bad might happen. I might crash my car and pass out. I mean, there's just so much fear and anxiety happening because I was sleeping so few hours and for no reason. I wasn't like up on the internet. I wasn't drinking coffee 10 times a day, just nothing. Around this time, as I'm developing, you know, steady clinical anxiety, clinical depression could have been diagnosed with major depressive disorder for sure. As I'm developing this, I find this book from a physician, I think 100 years ago, and the book is called hope and help for your nerves. And it's a physician who specialized in treating a lot of people with these kind of nervous breakdowns, nervous system disorders, where they would develop these kind of problems with serious anxiety or serious anxiety. Like serious depression and serious insomnia. Like, for lack of a better word, life threatening insomnia, like you can't, you can't exist because it's so severe. And one of the things that this doctor shared in there really helped me. She said, you know, one of the biggest things is the alarming symptoms that happen. And you just have to remind yourself that this idea of floating along with it, that things won't get worse. They're just going to repeat and play their course out. And if you just welcome them, you're not afraid of them, then it loses the nervous system energy that it that keeps waking you up because it's fear. So I started doing this practice, which was my version of the ultimate surrender experiment. And anytime these weird symptoms would happen, or more likely for me during the day, I was sometimes okay. But when it came time to sleep, that intense fear would come over me, because the only thing that made me feel better was sleeping. And it was the only thing I couldn't do. It's the only thing you cannot force to sleep. So I would just repeat that over and over. Nothing will get worse. I'm fine with whatever happens, whatever you have to do by. Even if you have to die, then just do it. Then just die. Like, I can't do anything. There's nothing left to try. So I would do that. I would say, do what you have to do. If you need to have a panic attack, have a panic attack, and you're going to feel anxious body trembling for the next 10 days, then just do it. And eventually, as I started doing that, I noticed that every now and then, maybe one day a night or one day a week, I could sleep. And eventually, after a few months, I got up to five or six hours a night of sleep. And eventually over a period of time, the most serious, scary symptoms started going away. Almost two years before those symptoms went away, which is effectively now. So besides that being the scariest medical thing I've experienced in my life, it really made me understand what living your life as a surrender experiment would look like. I mean, there is that Michael Singer book, The Surrender Experiment, but that's easy to do on a daily life. Like in daily life, that's much easier to do. It's not so easy when you have an illness, like maybe someone watching this has cancer. You know, maybe you're going through what I just went through, and you're at antidepressants or Xanax, benzos. That's far harder when there are perceived serious ramifications to your health. So this is the 30 day challenge I want to introduce because it can help you in lots of parts of your life. So your 30 day challenge is no matter what difficulty comes up that generates friction or stress or worry. You do this physician's advice, you float along and you just say, I'm fine with whatever. It's okay, do whatever you have to do life, do whatever you have to do body, do whatever you have to do breakup, bankruptcy, fear about coronavirus, do whatever you have to do. It's okay. I know it's cutesy and trite and doesn't seem like it would ever do anything useful for a real serious problem. If you're about to like lose your home or lose your kid in a custody battle, but you're going through a breakup. It's the worst breakup you've ever had. You're freaking out, you're holding on your white knuckling life, go through the mantra. It's okay. I'm fine with whatever and whatever way this has to go. Maybe it is bankruptcy. You lost your job during coronavirus. You're so broke. You're so worried about what next you have all these bills. It's fine. I'm okay with whatever life you do what you have to do. And as you keep doing this, I'm not saying your cancer goes away or your debt goes away or you get your ex back or something. All I'm saying is that you're developing a surrendered approach to life where your nervous system is getting a break. You don't have to hold on so tightly. And the crazy thing is a lot of the time if you do that, you're still going to get the same outcome you want. The general gist though is not that it's going to solve all your problems overnight. The point is that no matter what happens, you're going to be training your nervous system to be cool with what's happening. It's fine. All right. Throw your worst at me life. Let's just see what happens. This illness. Fine. I surrender body. Do what you have to do as long as you have to do it. I'm basically at the mercy of the seas. And I found that, yes, you know, I still had that problem. I still had the health stuff that took two years to go away. But it was a general role. I'm okay. Whatever happens. I'm okay. I'm fine. Do what you have to do. I'm okay with whatever happens life. And as I did that, you know, I noticed now years later that even when things come up my personal life or my business or dating or my family or in the economy or in the world, my nervous system has that imprint now that it's okay. I'm fine and I can handle this. So that is my 30 day challenge for you. I think it's going to really help you, especially in these times. But if you are going through some kind of struggle or difficulty, I hope that it helps you the way it helped me. Now again, inside my course, the reinvent your life program, each month is a link below this video for the waitlist. But each month for a whole year, we go through one category of your life and you get a weekly habit video and an affirmation for an exercise to work on that very week to reinvent your life over a year. We go through every single category of life over a year and then we have a live hangout every month, new weekly videos that we vote on. What category do you want me to create content on next? And that's all within that private community. So you want to join the waitlist when it opens up next, next month, add your name to the list right below this video. Otherwise, I'll catch you guys in these next videos here.