The Mindset Mentor - 4-Step Process to Help With Anxiety

Episode Date: April 1, 2022

If you feel anxious or down at any time, this process will help you feel better in the moment while being able to identify if there is anything that you can do right now to feel better. Follow me on IG for more inspiration here: https://www.instagram.com/robdialjr/ If you live in the US/Canada and you want to receive motivational texts from me, text me now at 1-512-580-9305 or click here https://my.community.com/robdial Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. And if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you want to receive a Monday morning email from me with my intentions going into every single week, go to mondayemail.com right now. Once again, mondayemail.com. I'll send you an email every Monday morning with my intentions going into every single week. So therefore, if you want to check out my intentions, if you want to steal them, you can and put them into your week as well. Today, we're going to talk about a four-step process to help you with your anxiety. And we're going to talk about when you have anxiety,

when you feel a little bit down, or also just when you don't feel really great. And I'm actually going to tell you a story so you can kind of understand how this works in my life. So the other day, we were driving to dinner, and it was about seven o'clock. We had reservations at seven. And I just felt kind of like, if I were to put it into a word of how I felt, it wasn't anxiety, wasn't frustrated. I was just kind of like, wow, that's how it was, right? There was nothing that was wrong. But the world was just kind of blah. The color of the world had kind of been stripped from it. The saturation had been turned down. And I think that a lot of times, people will feel the way that they don't want to feel.

And then they think that there's something wrong with them. And then they get stuck in this idea of how they're supposed to feel. And they're not feeling the way that they want to feel. And then they get down on themselves. And now they don't feel the way that they want to. And now they're thinking bad about the way that they feel. And then it's like this shit storm that just goes down and down and down and down and down. And I think a lot of people can sometimes get stuck in this. And the first thing that you need to realize is if you don't feel

100%, if you don't feel amazing every single day, there's nothing wrong with you. Humans go up, humans go down. The idea that something is wrong if you don't feel 100% all of the time and that you must be fixed, that is more of an issue than actually the way that you feel. So when you can understand what I'm going to teach you today, you can kind of sit in the moment and you can a little bit self-diagnose as to why you're feeling anxious or why you're feeling frustrated or why you're feeling sad or why you just don't feel 100% at this point. Because if you can't self-diagnose in that moment, then maybe you start to think too much and you start to think about how you feel and then it

goes downhill because you don't feel great, first off. And then second, that turns into something is wrong with me, which is completely unnecessary to go into. And then that something is wrong with me turns into this is something that I need to fix. And then that turns into, why does this always happen to me? And then you get all in your own head, you get all in your own feelings. And now you feel worse than you did because you've now created a story and a circumstance that is just going downhill. And so I want to dive into this and kind of help you where if you ever find yourself in a position where you don't feel amazing, you don't feel 100%, you feel like maybe there is something wrong, or you feel very blah, you can remember this, okay? The acronym is

HALT. And this is what I did in the moment while I was in the passenger seat, just literally on the way to go get dinner. And it's H-A-L-T. It stands for hungry, angry, lonely, tired. Okay? Usually when someone's having anxiety or they're feeling anxious about something, they're usually feeling hungry or they're feeling angry or they're feeling lonely or they're feeling tired. And the more of those that you have, the more likely you are to feel worse. So if you're just hungry, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to feel bad. But if you're hungry and you're angry and you're tired, there's a chance you could feel like shit. And so when you can literally take a step back and take yourself out of your own head, you can look at how you're feeling as if you're just a doctor diagnosing a patient.

And you look at yourself like you're a third person. You can go, okay, let me actually think about how I'm feeling. Let me think about all of this. And I may be able to self-diagnose so that I can essentially get myself out of this situation. So the first thing, let's dive into hungry. Everybody knows what hungry means, but usually when you have an empty stomach and you haven't eaten for a long time, you can have low blood sugar. When you have low blood sugar, your energy can go down a lot. And for me, to be honest with you, I don't really eat much until about 1, 2 o'clock in the day. And so for me, I feel amazing for a while if I don't eat. So if I don't eat from dinner until 2 p.m., I feel fine. I've kind of trained myself to be that way. But if I go to like 5, 6, 7, 8 o'clock and it's been not 24 hours,

there's a chance that I can get irritable. And so if I go longer, I can sometimes feel a massive dip in my energy. Depends on the day. Sometimes I can go till 5 o'clock and I still feel amazing. Sometimes I go till 1 o'clock and I'm like, man, I feel a massive dip. And so you could have an empty stomach and that could be a part of it, right? So we can self-diagnose, did I eat today? And if I ate today, what did I eat? Because you could be hungry or for being honest, you just have a stomach full of crap, right? You had heavy, greasy food

and the body needs to shut down in order to digest. Digestion is the number one, most energy consuming thing that your body does. So if it's three o'clock and you don't feel really great and you're like, all right, am I hungry, angry, lonely, tired? I'm not hungry, but man, I just had a huge meal and it was a bacon-wrapped cheeseburger. Yeah, there's a pretty good chance that that's going to bring your energy down because your body's got to process a lot of stuff right there. And so you can sit back and take yourself out of the jar and read the label and say, okay, is there something going on with my body's digestion

or my lack of food that I've been having for the day? So that's the first thing, hungry. Second thing, angry. Are you angry at something or someone? And if you are, get out a pen and paper. Who or what is it? What would make you feel different? So sometimes you just need to feel angry for a little while.

There's nothing wrong with feeling angry, but there is something wrong with feeling angry for a long time. There's still some people that are angry about something that happened 10 years ago to them. That's ridiculous. It's not the circumstance anymore that you're angry about. It's the fact that you continue to hold on to anger that is the actual issue. But if it's just anger and you need to be angry, you need to yell a little bit, go for a run, get out some energy, fine. There's

nothing wrong with that. But sometimes it's been going on for too long and it's not the circumstance anymore. It's how you feel or how you're viewing or how you're thinking about the circumstance that is making you quote unquote angry. But I always say the quote because I think it hits home with a lot of people. Just as Eleanor Roosevelt said, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. So if you are angry, it is not something that just happened. It is something that you are allowing to happen. So if you don't want to be angry anymore, you are the only one that can take yourself out of that. Okay, so are you angry? Hey, this podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp.

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and join over 1 million people who have already taken charge of their mental health with the help from an experienced professional, and get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com slash dial. Next up, are you lonely? Have you been alone for too long? Do you just need to get around some good people? And when I, I'm saying good people, not just get around people, because you need to be careful of who some of these people are. You know, don't just be around just anyone because, you know, you may have heard me talk before. Some people are batteries and some people are vac Don't just be around just anyone because you may have heard me talk before. Some people are batteries and some people are vacuums. Batteries are people that you want to

get around. There's people that give you energy, that make you feel amazing. You're in their presence and you realize when you're in their presence, you actually get more energy from being around that person. And when you leave their presence, you have more energy after being around that person. And then there's some people, to be real, they're vacuums. They suck the energy out of you. They talk about their problems. They talk about their issues. They talk about a bunch of stuff that you really don't care about. They just literally try to throw all of their crap onto you. And you leave their presence after being around them for like 10, 15 minutes. You're like, man, I feel so drained, right? So if you're lonely, don't just get around people. Get around the right people, people that can shift your internal energy. Maybe you need to talk to somebody. Maybe

there's something internally that you need to speak about. Okay, so lonely is the other one. And the last one is tired. I think people are finally, crazy enough it took this long, finally starting to take sleep much more serious than they ever have. But not enough people are taking it as serious as they should. I think if we studied how much people sleep and then we figured out what's going on in their lives, we would realize that a lot of people's problems internally, the way they think, the way that they feel, the energy they have, and externally, their relationships with everyone around them, their business, their finances, all of those things, we would realize that a lot of problems actually come from the very simple thing of just lack of sleep.

Sleep should be a priority for you. And I was reading an article that said that a lot of people think that they don't need as much sleep. They think that they can get like five, six hours of sleep. There's a study that find that 97% of people need at least seven hours of sleep. So unless you think you're one of those one out of 33, which there's a 33 times more likely chance that you're not one of those people, you probably need seven hours of sleep at least. And so for me, I've been going to bed earlier and earlier because I've been trying to get eight and a half hours of sleep recently because I noticed a big difference in that.

And I try to use myself as a guinea pig. So I've done like, hey, what is my energy like when I have six hours of sleep? What is it when I have six and a half? What is it when I have seven? What is it when I have eight, eight and a half, nine hours of sleep, 10 hours of sleep? I can sleep for a really long time. And so I'm using myself as a guinea pig to see what is the right one for me. And so for you, prioritize your sleep. So that's what it is. Hungry, angry, lonely, tired. So let's go in

reverse and go back to the car when I was feeling very blah, right? It was seven o'clock. I had eaten almost nothing all day long. So I was hungry, literally on the way to go get dinner. I hadn't eaten very much. And so I was sitting there and I probably had low blood sugar. My energy was low because I hadn't eaten anything for the day. Okay. So that was the first thing. Check, check that box. Angry. I wasn't angry. I was, you know, had a great day. Everything was fine. There's nothing that was wrong. Lonely. I wasn't lonely. I was on the way to the restaurant with my fiance and we were going to one of my favorite restaurants. So I wasn't lonely in any sort of way. And then tired. I was tired. And here's the reason why. Because the day before, we had people over my house for my birthday. And I had friends that didn't leave until late. And I had to be up at a 7 a.m. call that I could not move. And normally, I will move calls to

prioritize my sleep. But this point in time, I had too many people that were supposed to be on a 7 a.m. call. I could not do it. So I had a whole lot less sleep than I normally did. So I was hungry and I was tired. No wonder why I wasn't feeling great. No wonder why I was kind of feeling shitty. And just knowing that that was the reason why I was feeling the way that I was feeling made me feel better because I was able to look and go, oh, there's nothing wrong. I'm just hungry. I'm on my way to go get dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, and I'm tired. I'll get some sleep. I'll go to bed earlier tonight. But just knowing that I had figured out the reason why I was feeling the way that I was feeling made me feel better. There was nothing wrong with me. And I was able to self-diagnose in that moment

and immediately just knowing made me feel so much better. And so what happened? So then we go to the restaurant. I'm still feeling a little bit agitated, probably a little bit hangry. We had dinner. We went to Mexican restaurants. Like I said, it's one of my favorite restaurants here. And I felt so much better after it. And then we came home, went to bed early, woke up, felt amazing the next day. But it's important to know that you are able to understand the way that you feel. One of the things that I think is one of the saddest things about the way that we're raised in society

is we're not taught how to understand our feelings. We're not taught to even really process the way that we feel and understand our emotions. And so when someone does feel like shit, they think there's something wrong with them versus maybe being able to take a step back and saying, hey, what is the reason why I feel the way that I feel? And maybe it is the way that they feel because of their sleep. Maybe it's because they're angry because there is this deep connection that's very rarely talked about between our brain and our body. Our brain and our body has this very, very deep connection.

So if we're sitting there and we are angry, and we're sitting there and we're angry, and we're lonely, and we're tired, this brain and body connection, we can start thinking things and actually from our thoughts make ourselves feel worse. And then we're like, oh, I'm broken. Maybe I should go see somebody and I should get some medication. Maybe there's nothing wrong with doing this if somebody does have, somebody actually does need medication. But the interesting thing about it, there's a study that was done about five years ago

and found out that 81% of people who are diagnosed with depression are misdiagnosed. 81% of people diagnosed with depression and put on medication have been misdiagnosed. So if we could understand ourselves more and be educated more as to why we feel the way that we feel, first off, what we are feeling. A lot of people don't know what they are feeling and they can't really understand it. But then you know what you are feeling. Then you start to understand why you're feeling the way that you're feeling and then have a way to help yourself feel better. And it's a very simple thing that you can work through. Am I hungry? Well, first off, how do I feel right now? Okay, I feel a little bit down. Don't really know why I feel down. Okay. Am I hungry? Am I angry? Am I lonely? Am I tired?

And you can go through each one of these and go, okay, you know what? I am a little bit hungry. And if I'm being honest, I'm a little bit angry. Am I lonely? No. Am I tired? No. Okay. Hungry. What can I do to make myself not be hungry? Well, I could go get some food, have something healthy, so it makes me feel better. Angry. What is it that's making me angry? Well, you know, there was this whole thing that happened in the business and I got to talk with, you know, this person, my employee here, they messed this up. I'm pretty angry about it. And what I've been doing is I've actually been running from the conversation versus actually having the conversation. So what should I do to make myself not angry?

Well, I should probably have that conversation, work this whole thing out, and that alone will make me feel better. And now what I'm doing is I'm literally checking off the boxes as to why I feel the way that I feel and what the next best step is to at least try to make me feel better in the hungry category, in the angry category, in the lonely category, and in the tired category. It's not hard. It's very simple. But what it requires from you is awareness. It requires you to be aware as to

what you're feeling and why you're feeling it and how to work through it. If we could all be more aware and then have extra tools like this in our tool belt, we would all be able to pull ourselves out of the way that we feel in certain situations to make ourselves feel better. So we feel feel better, we take action and we take action towards the future we're trying to create. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. The only way this podcast grows is from you guys sharing it. We're one of the top 75 in the entire world. And the only way that we grow is from you guys sharing it. So if you could continue to keep sharing it, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. Once again, when you share it on your Instagram stories, tag me at R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And I'm

going to leave it the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.