Welcome to today's episode of The Mind segment to our podcast, I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you want to receive motivational text messages from me, from me directly to your cell phone, text me right now, one five one two five eight zero nine three zero five. Let's give one five one two five eight zero nine three zero five. Today I'm going to talk about anxiety and I'm going to give you a formula to remove yourself from any anxious thoughts, any anxious feelings in any anxiety that happens to be going on in your present moment or anything that might come up for you in this right here 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 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, I 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 you can't stop it. And so a few nights ago, we've been super, super busy.

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, a three 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 vow to reach out to this person. I'm going 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 that's a huge misconception is because I'm a mindset guy that I must have this perfect mindset and nothing holds me back. But nothing could 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 a 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.

And this is just one of the strategy 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 thoughts, you're inside your head. You have to change your thoughts.

You've got to pause and notice as the observer what's going on here. OK, yeah, I've done this before. I know exactly who 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, if you don't take yourself out of the jar, you can't read the label inside of the jars inside of my head. I need to take myself out of my own head, become the observer and say what is actually happening here?

Too many thoughts to me, anxious thoughts, and one of the things that about anxiety is that anxiety comes from your thoughts. And when you Google and actually start to look up in 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 is 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 while you take four or five or six swings and on the 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 to try 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, rather anxious, why their life isn't going the way they want to, but they never get a frickin 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.

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 you force 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 seventeen things. It was like a massive list of all of these things are started flooding through because I had so much I had to 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. 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 of the different things down and I just, you know, brain dumped.

Put them all down. OK, 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 on the podcast episodes. This, this, this. There's all of these things. I put them all down on 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, 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.

OK, 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 that alone 90 percent of the time makes somebody go, oh, OK.

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, it already, just by writing it down, makes them feel so much better.

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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 to 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 because ninety nine point nine percent 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 can happen and it's like, oh, I could lose my job in 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 you look at it and you're like, 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 can happen? I want to identify that and I want to be clear on what that is, because then I can go.

It's not going to happen. I'm not going to let that happen.

All 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, OK? Like, for instance, we have this event that's coming up. I have to get the event, the contract, the AVI video team. I've got to negotiate all that stuff. I've got to get the the place figured out. You know, we've already got I've got to get the contract signed, all of that stuff.

We've got to get the audio video team completely separate, got to get them negotiated, get the contract done for them. Then I start to think about all the things that I'm planning in. 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 as 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 one 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 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 that 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 can happen, right?

If there's like a medium ground and in 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 and 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 you say, what's the best that can happen? When we go through this divorce? We go our separate ways and I become a free person again.

I can refind 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, shit, that sounds awesome. I do want to get this divorce right so it can take something that seems positive and turn into negative.

Right. So what's the best that can 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, OK, if I'm looking at all these things, I put down all of the action plans of exactly what I needed to do and all of those 17 categories, all the stuff that I need to do.

And I was like, oh, OK, yeah, I can do this tomorrow morning once, you know, when everybody wakes up and I can get on the phone calls and I can negotiate and do all the stuff, I can get my team on it as well. So I was like, OK, I'm looking at all this stuff. It's four o'clock in the morning, four forty five in the morning. I can't do anything about it right now for most of these.

So what's the next best stuff for each one of these dirham. OK, but I wrote them all down. Now 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. I need to focus on what I'm grateful for because I've so much shit to be grateful for in my life. Like, it's amazing. And I'm focusing on these things that are kind of trivial. And yeah, I'm not saying all of those things that they're stressing out about are trivial, like mine happened to be. But it's not going to ruin my life in these circumstances. 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'm going to meditate, I'm going to focus on gratitude, you know, maybe for you guys it might be like, OK, 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 is really been stressing me out.

I haven't had the conversation 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 shine a 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 literally for 45, five o'clock in the morning made me feel so much better. And I went from not being able to fall asleep to, OK, 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 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 I consciously breathed 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 freakin 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 thing can happen. And what is the immediate steps that I need to do right now to make myself feel better. So I woke up, I did my morning routine, I got my journal look 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 No 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. I get it out of your head, put it down so you're not 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 up.

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 a four steps, four questions. 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 you make you feel better.

So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share with someone you know and love. Please share it on Instagram stories and tag minut Rob Dale, Obediah ALJ. Ah, and I'm going to give you the same way. I leave you every single episode, make it your mission, make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.