 97% of the **** that you're worrying about means nothing. So why are you focusing on it? Today we're going to be talking about how to deal with anxiety in these uncertain times that we're in. And I'm actually going to give you five keys that I came up with, five strategies of how to get past your anxiety. And what I want to say first before we dive into it is this is anxiety so you know is actually not depression. Depression is considered a chemical imbalance inside of your brain. Anxiety comes from your thoughts. Most of the time anxiety actually comes from your thoughts about the future whether that's worrying about something that's you know possibly going to happen or could possibly happen or might happen and or you know the anxiety of not being in control of the current circumstances that are happening in the world. So you're you feel like you don't have any control which is giving you anxiety. But anxiety comes from your thoughts. And so I'm going to give you the five strategies of how to overcome that. And the first one, the most popular one, the one that really makes the most sense for a lot of people is actually an acronym and the acronym is HALT H A L T. And that stands for hungry, angry, lonely, tired. And so if you feel like you're very anxious today, it's really important to ask yourself these questions. Number one, am I hungry right now? Number two, am I lonely? Number two, am I angry? Number three, am I lonely or number four, am I tired? Because here's what happens. All of these things that we're talking about changes the way that you think and if you change the way that you think, you change the way that you feel. And so if you're hungry, or maybe you've not even hungry, but you just haven't eaten well today, maybe you woke up, you had a lot of sugar, your, you know, your blood sugar jumped and then just dropped right down and plummeted. And now you feel like crap. Some of the times that I notice when I happen to feel the most anxious, I don't really feel anxious a whole lot, but sometimes when it does happen, I'll take myself through this and see what I feel. Usually I forgot to eat or I haven't eaten at all for that day. It's like two o'clock, three o'clock, I got up, started on phone calls with a team, started work and started recording podcasts, all of this stuff. And I realized it's two, three, four o'clock sometimes and I forgot to eat. And I'm like, why do I feel so bad? And the reason why is because my body is literally craving some nutrients to make it feel better. So that's the first thing to think about. If you're feeling anxious, are you hungry? Okay. The next thing is this, are you angry? Did something happen to make you feel like you're angry? If you're angry, that's going to, obviously that, that comes from the way that you think, so that's going to change the way that you feel. So there might be some sort of, you know, if you get angry, what's going to happen, those thoughts are going to create something inside of your body that's going to call neuropeptides, neuropeptides of the messenger from the brain to the body. That body is going to then create cortisol. It's going to create adrenaline and that's going to get your heart rate to spike and that alone can make you start to feel anxious. Maybe you watched the news that morning and you shouldn't have watched the news or you saw something on Instagram that just really drove you crazy or you saw something else that was happening in this world that made you feel like it was going to crap. And you're like, Oh my God, I'm not in control of this. It's really driving me crazy. Maybe you're angry about current circumstances. Next thing, are you lonely? Have you been alone for a long time? One of the things that people look past, besides the fact of improving themselves, is improving all of their relationships. We are beings that love to be around other beings. If you haven't seen anybody in a few days, maybe haven't left your house, maybe you haven't gotten sun on your skin. Whatever it is, that loneliness can actually start to make you feel anxious because you think, Oh my God, is it going to be like this forever? So am I lonely or last one? Am I tired? Did I get a full night's sleep last night? Truthfully, did I get a full night's sleep? Maybe I did sleep for seven and a half, eight hours, but maybe it was just terrible sleep. I was up a lot. I had to go to the bathroom. Then I was coughing and I had my allergies going crazy. Maybe I need a nap. So that's the first thing to take yourself through as you're trying to feel where this anxiety could be coming from. Hungry, angry, lonely, tired. Now, if you happen to have multiple of those, the more of those that you have in your current moment. So maybe you haven't eaten all day. Maybe you saw something that really pissed you off on Instagram and really made you mad from like the second that you woke up when your cortisol is actually at its highest. And maybe you're also having a crappy night's sleep. Three of those out of the four, you're more likely to feel anxious. And so what can you do now that you know, hungry, angry, lonely, tired? What can you do to try to fix it in this moment and realize you're not going to feel like this forever? The way that you feel is just like a cloud that's just passing in the sky. Right. It will eventually pass. This too shall pass. Everything shall pass. You're not going to feel anxious forever, but maybe now that you know those are four things that can make you feel anxious. Maybe now you can go through it and make a plan of how to not feel anxious in that moment. You can solve your problems from there. So that's the first strategy is go through HALT, H-A-L-T. Second strategy is this, you're breathing, right? When we start to change our state, whether that's from happy or angry or anxious, whatever it is, when we start to change our state, the first thing to change, believe it or not, is our breathing. And so if you're feeling the anxious feelings, maybe you should check in on your breath, check in on your posture. You know, a lot of times we're anxious. We keel over a little bit and we have like real short breaths. That probably sounded really creepy in this microphone, but who cares? Whatever. It's just instead of great breathing, it's and that alone, the breathing, the amount of oxygen in your body and the amount of carbon dioxide in your body will change your state, change the way that you feel. And so there was a Japanese study that was done to find out how to change somebody's state as quick as possible. And they found that six deep breaths alone can change somebody's state from anxious to peaceful, anxious to calm. And so think about that for a second. If you're feeling anxious, check in with your chest, check in with your breath. Am I sitting up straight? Am I breathing? Do I need to sit and close my eyes and just take six really deep breaths? Cause if you can, it will change your state. One way that helps is this is a four, seven, eight. So that's four seconds in, breathe in for four seconds, hold for seven seconds and breathe out for eight seconds. So it's going to look like this. You breathe in, hold, breathe out. If you do that alone, four in, seven hold, eight out, six times. Your state will change completely, almost every single time. Unless there's like something really hitting the fan in your life, breathing will change your anxiety, change your state faster than almost anything else that will, um, and it'll help all the time. It doesn't help just when you're anxious. Like sometimes I noticed that I'm just in full hardcore work mode all day long and I'm like, man, my brain is all over. Like I need to just calm down for a second and I'll force myself to sit there. It takes literally a minute or two minutes at most to just sit there and take six deep breaths. And when I realized by like breath four, I can see, feel myself chill out. And then by breath five and six, I'm like, what number am I on? I always seem to forget because I become so relaxed in those moments. So that's a huge thing. So check in with your breathing. That's step number two strategy. Number three is anxiety. I actually did an entire podcast episode on this. So you can go back and listen to that podcast. But anxiety and excitement are the same in the human body. The only thing that changes them is your thoughts around them. So what I mean by that is when you're anxious, what happens? Your heart starts to beat faster. Your body starts to, uh, create cortisol. Your brain waves start to change. It's the exact same thing that happens when you're excited is cortisol starts to go through your body. You happen to have your heart start beating faster. Your breathing changes as well. And for a lot of people, and this seems crazy, believe me, I understand that this seems crazy, but I can't tell you how many emails I've gotten with people who have tried this and been like, holy crap, this actually works. And this isn't something that I made up. This isn't just an idea of mine. This is actually studied by psychologists and scientists is next time you feel anxious and you check in with yourself, maybe Holt isn't working. Maybe breathing isn't working is tell yourself this when you're anxious, tell yourself, I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm excited. You're actually tricking using your brain to trick your body based off of the way that you feel to think that you're not actually anxious about something that you're excited. I'm, I understand. I even, even saying this sounds dumb in my head. I promise you it works. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten emails and I've gotten Instagram messages and all this stuff where it's like, holy crap, Rob, that, that changing anxiety to excitement thing. Actually works and it does. So if you're at the point where you can't change it, you're trying to figure out, you're trying to figure out, you're trying to figure out, do it. All you got to do is just literally sit there and say, I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm excited. You will stand up and you will feel better about your situation because you've repurposed the feeling inside of your body based off of the thoughts that you decided to change as well. So that's number three, change your anxiety to excitement. Step number four is to focus on what you can control. Here's one of the things I noticed. I get questions about anxiety pretty much every single day through email, through Instagram, whatever it is. And usually when someone says I'm anxious, they're saying I'm anxious because of X, Y, Z that's happening in the world or because my boyfriend left me or because of the fact that my mom and dad are doing this or because I see all of these protests because of the fact that I see, you know, the bad that's happening in the world. What tends to happen is you're not anxious about what you can control. A lot of times you're anxious about what you can't control. Now, here's the thing. You can't control it. So what's happening is you're having a control issue. You're having a control problem where you're literally having a breakdown and anxious breakdown from things out of your control, which I get it. I've had it before too, but there's nothing you can do about it. We've already covered that because you just said you can't control it. Right. So what do you do? You start focusing on what you can control. So you could say, oh, my gosh, I'm worried about all of the terrible things that are happening in the world. Right. You're probably watching the news if you're having a lot of anxiety, all of these terrible things that are happening in the world right now. I just feel so bad about it. I feel so anxious about it. I don't know what to do. The first thing to do is to go. Can I control those things that I'm feeling anxious about and look at all of them and you think to yourself, can I control them? No, I'm looking at them. Doesn't look like I can control them. Okay. What can I control? I can control. Well, as Rob said, I can control my breathing. Maybe I should focus on my breathing. I can control my thoughts around what's happening in the world. Maybe I should change my thoughts. I can control what I do in this very moment. Okay. Well, then let me change that. What would make me feel better right now? What are things that make me happy? Maybe going and playing with my kids. Maybe going and going for a run or doing a workout. Focus on what you can control because one thing that I find majority of the time when someone's having anxiety, they're having anxious thoughts is they're focusing on things that are completely out of your control. And if they're completely out of your control, they will always be completely out of your control. There is absolutely nothing that you can do about those things. So you can either allow those to push you over the edge of anxiety and make you feel even worse or you can reframe what you're thinking about and go, you know what? Yeah, those things are happening in the world. Those things, they are the way that they are, but there's nothing that I can do at this moment. So what can I do? I can focus on me. I can focus on my breathing. I can focus on my body. I can focus on going for a run or doing jumping jacks or going for a workout. I can change my state and I can only focus. I can only change myself. I can't change anybody outside of me. I can't change the world events. I can't change any of those things. So why don't I focus on the things that I can change the thing that I can change me, my thoughts, my body, my reactions, my breathing, all of those things. So if you're feeling anxious, focus on what you can control. And then number five, one of my favorite things to have people ask themselves, right? When you're feeling anxious, ask yourself this one question. Ready? In this moment, am I okay? It's that simple. In this moment, am I okay? Because anxiety, 99% of the time comes from things that are possibly going to happen in the future. Maybe they'll happen in the future. Maybe they won't happen in the future. And so if you're focusing on what you can't control, you're focusing on things into the future, which aren't presently in this moment, then your course you're going to have anxiety. So you ask yourself this one question. In this moment, am I okay right now in this second? Because here's what happens. People sit there and they go, oh, you know what? Well, here's what's happening. What's happening is I've got bills to pay. I might not be able to pay my bills next month. Okay, I get it. But ask yourself, in this moment, am I okay? Because here's what's going to happen. Your brain will go squirrely. You'll go, okay, in this moment, am I okay? I am. But I've got to think about my bills. I've got to pay them. Yes, of course you do. But in this moment, am I okay? Yes, I am okay. But I really still need to figure out how to pay these bills. Of course you do. Yeah, no crap. You do. We got that. But in this moment and sometimes you just have to pull yourself back and pull yourself back and pull yourself back in this moment. Am I okay? And the answer to that is yes. In this moment, you have food, water, shelter, clothing, maybe a few people that love you. You've got this podcast or this video that you're watching or listening to. If you're listening on the podcast, you've got what you need in this world. You're going to survive. You're not going to die. You're going to be okay in this very moment. This second right now, am I okay? I am okay. Well, that should take some stress away. Maybe I should focus on my breathing because if you come from a place of calm, cool, collected, you're usually going to find the, you're going to find the answers to the problems that need to be solved. But if you're coming from a place of stressed out and anxious and don't know what I'm going to do, it's going to be a lot harder to figure out what you need to do when emotion is high, logic is low. So if you are freaking out about the future, that's a really bad place to try to find solutions for the future. But if you can say in this moment, am I okay? I am. Okay, let me focus on my breathing. Let me come from a place of calm. Let me try to lower my state and maybe make sure, you know, HALT and my hungry, angry, lonely, tired. Let me try to solve these problems. Let me get from a better state. And when I am in a better state, my logic will be higher because when emotion is high, logic is low. So how do I get to a state where I'm calm, cool, collected, I can look at my current circumstances and then I can figure out how to change them for the better. Here's the crazy thing. I've got statistics I want to tell you guys, just so you know, the average person has about 60,000. And this is from the National Science Foundation. This isn't from like, you know, joshmo.com that just puts out some random articles. The National Science Foundation says that the average person has about 60,000 thoughts per day out of those thousands of thoughts. About 80% of them are negative. Holy crap. 80% of them are negative. 95% were exactly the same repetitive thoughts from the day before. They're thinking the same negative thoughts every single day. So another interesting study from the study of, it was actually 2005 from Cordell University, scientists found that 85% of what people worry about never even actually happens. So if you're sitting there being anxious and worrying about what could happen in your future, 85% of what you worry about won't even happen. Secondly, 15% of the things that did happen, 79% of the people said that 15% of the things that did happen were easier to handle than they actually thought they would be. So 79%. So 85% of things you worry about never even happen. 15% of those things that do happen, 79% of the time, you actually realize they were easier than you expected them to be. In conclusion, that means that 97% of our worries are baseless and result from unfounded pessimistic perception. 97% of the crap that you are worrying about means nothing. So why are you focusing on it? 97% of them either won't happen or when it does happen and won't be as bad as you think that it is. So how can you take yourself from the state that you're in, calm yourself down and figure out how to get through the things that could possibly be happening in the future from a state of peace, calm, cool, collected in a great place versus sitting there anxious, not making the best decisions because when emotion is high, logic is low. So those are the five strategies that I have for you. Number one, halt, hungry, angry, lonely, tired. Number two, check your breath, check your breathing. Number three, change your anxiety to excitement by telling yourself that you're excited. Number four, focus on the things that you can control. And number five, ask yourself this question right now in this moment, am I okay? Hey, thanks so much for watching this video. If you want to learn even more about mastering your mind, click right here and watch this video as well. The issue is not that you're overthinking. The issue is what you are thinking about.