The Mindset Mentor - 4 Ways To Deal With Anxiety

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. I talk about neurology, psychology, early childhood development, cognitive behavioral therapy, and how all those things come together to make you who you are so that you can learn about who you are, so that you can grow yourself, so that you can improve yourself and improve your life. So if that interests you, I put out episodes four times a week. Go ahead and hit that subscribe button. Today, I'm going to give you a step-by-step process to alleviate the stress and anxiety that is in your life. We're going to go through four separate steps and basically create a guide for you for stress management and anxiety that is in your life. We're going to go through four separate steps and

Starting point is 00:00:45 basically create a guide for you for stress management and create a plan so that you can have less stress and anxiety in your life. Because let's be real, we live in a stressful world. You know, over the past 100 years, a lot has changed for humans. Like, I can't even imagine how much has changed for humans. When I used't even imagine how much has changed for humans. When I used to talk with my grandparents before they passed away, it was like they had stress in their life for sure. But like, there's so much more going on right now. And we have access to so much more information. We're seeing all the crazy things that are happening in the world that we're getting a little bit more stressed. We're getting a little bit more anxious.

Starting point is 00:01:23 Over the past 10 years, it's a completely different world. And so I was talking with my wife, Lauren, about it. And just like how social media and smartphones have really taken off in the past like 10 years or so. Like when I was in high school, I didn't get a phone until I was 17 years old. And it was just a flip phone. It didn't really do anything. I could text and I could make phone calls and I could play snake. And that was about it. Now, all of the access that we have in our pocket, like smartphones didn't even come out until I was 20, 21 years old. And so, you know, it didn't have Facebook. It didn't have Instagram, TikTok, all that stuff, Twitter, all other phones. So our brains are just really not meant to deal with all of the constant stimuli with the TV, with the phone, with email, with notifications, with other people, with Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and Twitter and, you know, MySpace. I don't even know it exists anymore. Right. All these different things.

Starting point is 00:02:19 And if we're not careful, we're going to get really wrapped up and it's only going to become harder to get out of. And so knowing that we live in a stressful world, the real thing is how can we make sure that we get rid of or change as many things around us that keep us stressed out? If you don't work on stress management in your life now, you need to work on stress management. One of the things I love is that mental health has really become a topic that people talk about quite often now.

Starting point is 00:02:49 I have friends that come and talk, you know, over the past five years, so many friends have started talking about like, when I was at my therapist this, when I was at my therapist that. That didn't happen 10 years ago. So you really need to start working on your stress management and try to realize that your stress management is a really big aspect of your mental health, especially with all of the constant challenges that come with all of our modern living that we're in. So we need to figure out what our triggers are. We need to figure out

Starting point is 00:03:15 what we can do, what kind of stress management techniques we can have that can help us manage our emotions better, that help us live better lives. And so what we have to do, and we all have to do, instead of just sitting back and being like, I hope I can make it, what we really need to do is we need to figure out a way to be more proactive, to come up with a plan. And you know, with how fast the world is changing, I'm just thinking it's probably only going to get harder. So that means that you and I must get better. We must get better. And so that's what we're going to dive into today. We're going to talk about how to gain really conscious awareness of your thought process, of your internal environment, but also your external environment

Starting point is 00:03:54 as well. We're going to really sit down together. We're going to develop a proactive stress management strategy. We're going to go through different ways to journal to help you go through this and use journaling as a stress management tool. And then what I'm also going to do is I'm going to teach you a stress management technique from the Mayo Clinic as well. So let's go through it. And if you're taking notes, you should definitely jot this down. There's four A's that are inside of stress management. Okay, four A's. The Mayo Clinic created this practical guide to stress management to help you kind of figure out what each one of these, you know, if you figure out something that stresses you out, then you can say, which one of the A's is it and how can I change it around? So the first

Starting point is 00:04:36 one, as far as the stress management goes, the first A is avoid, is to avoid as many stressful situations as you possibly can, but you can't avoid them unless you first sit down and identify them. Can you create a life where you avoid as much stress as possible? And I don't mean avoid them completely in the sense of like, oh, I'm just going to, you know, my children stress me out sometimes. I'm just going to not go home. That's not what I mean. I mean, by looking at your life and figuring out what things stress you out. I'll give you a good example for me. I don't know why it's this way, but I hate grocery stores. I want to avoid grocery stores as much as possible.

Starting point is 00:05:25 grocery stores. I want to avoid grocery stores as much as possible. I don't know what happened. They stressed me out. Maybe I was like, you know, beaten in a grocery store in another life. I don't know what it is. But for me, knowing that grocery stores stress me out, like some people love grocery stores. I don't know how. I hate them. I don't want to go in them. I want to go in them as little as I possibly can. All of that. I order all of my food online and I rarely walk into a grocery store, Whole Foods or Instacart. It is more expensive. Yes, I understand that. But for me, it's worth it because it is saving me a lot of time. It just gets delivered to my doorstep. I have to take it out of the bags and I put in the fridge. It's going to be more expensive, but it saves me a lot of time. But it's also peace of mind.

Starting point is 00:06:09 It stresses me out. I don't know why. Don't really care to know why. But I'm just not going to do it as much as I possibly can. So I'm trying to avoid that stressful situation. Avoiding doesn't mean that you're running away. This is important. You're just priorit. This is important.

Starting point is 00:06:30 You're just prioritizing your mental health. You're just learning to say no to unnecessary, maybe even for some of you, harmful stressors. There are some people listening to this podcast right now where there's people in your life that really stress you out. There are friends, there are family members, there are co-workers. Avoid as many stressful people as possible. If you can get them out of your life, get them out of your life. If you can't, spend less time with them. Avoid them as much as you possibly can. Does your job stress you out? Well, okay. Maybe you can't find a new job today, but now that you know that your job is so stressful because maybe your co-workers, maybe it's your boss, maybe it's your job and what it is that you have to do, maybe start opening your mind up to, hey, I think I should probably find a new job.

Starting point is 00:07:22 And so you start to figure out what it is that is in your life that stresses you out and you figure out which one of the A's it could be. All of the ones that you can avoid as much as you can avoid, avoid them. Perfect. The next one, the next A is alter. If you cannot avoid a stressful situation or a stressor, try to alter the situation. So let's go back to my stupid example of a grocery store, right? Like it's not that big of a deal. I just don't really care to go in them, right? What about when I forget something? It happens all the time. I forgot something and I had to stop by Whole Foods yesterday. So what I try to do is I try to alter the situation so that I can have as less stress as possible.

Starting point is 00:08:06 And so I never go to a grocery store and they're busy. I usually wait until the last hour that they're open. Almost nobody is there. And the reason why is because I don't have to wait any lines. I don't have to deal with kids throwing up on the floor or people running their carts into me, any of that stuff, right? Almost no one's there. So I'm in and I'm out. And the thing that I always do, I don't know who has problems asking

Starting point is 00:08:31 people for help, but for me, I go to the first person who works there. I say, this is what I'm looking for. Can you show me where it is? And I just try to get it over with as fast as possible. So I'm just altering the situation a little bit. You know, if you have other people that are in your lives that stress you out, you can't change somebody else, but you can ask them to change their behavior and the way they act to you. So for some of you guys that are people pleasers, there's some people in your life that are going to be in your life for probably forever. And you can't really avoid them all the time.

Starting point is 00:09:04 And so sometimes you need to alter the situation. And so if you're a people pleaser, a lot of times people pleasers have trouble with setting boundaries. You need to set boundaries and you need to talk to the person, ask them to change their behavior and the way they act to you. So maybe it's like, hey, they talk to you this way and it really stresses you out. It makes you feel bad about yourself, whatever it is. You need to have a real open, honest conversation. Say, when you talk to me this way, this is how I feel. Can you please change it? And see if you can alter the situation that's happening between you and that person. You know, and you communicate your needs and your feelings

Starting point is 00:09:41 more directly. And they might change, but they also might not change. Either they can alter or you can alter with them. And so that's something that you really need to figure out as far as each situation goes. If you, you know, can't leave where you work because maybe you've got a really great job in a neighborhood where there's, you know, village where there's not many people there, whatever it is. Can you change your working conditions around? Can you alter the situation? Can you make sure that that person who's stressing you out, you might not be able to fully avoid them, but can you alter the way that they talk to you? Can you alter how much you see them? See what you can do to try to alter the situation. The next A is accept. Sometimes you cannot avoid a situation. Sometimes you cannot alter a situation.

Starting point is 00:10:29 And in these cases right here, acceptance is really, really crucial. Acceptance though, and this is important, I want you to understand this, acceptance of some situations doesn't mean that you're denying yourself. A lot of times, though, our stress doesn't come from the situation itself. Our situation comes from us not accepting. We want the world to be different than it is. We want someone else to be different than it is. And then we say, it's not what I want it to be, so therefore I'm stressed out. When in reality, you would be less stressed

Starting point is 00:11:05 out if you would just accept the situation. You would be less stressed out if you just accepted that that's how that person is and not try to mentally fight them or fight the situation. And once again, like I said, acceptance doesn't mean that you're denying yourself. Acceptance also doesn't mean pretending that you don't feel how you feel. It's acknowledging that it's okay to feel that way. You know, somebody comes in and they say something to you and they're just brash or rude, however it is. Well, they might come in and might be rude and we don't want them to be rude, but there's a situation where they're rude and there's another situation which is we don't want them to be rude and you can't change other people. So sometimes if you just

Starting point is 00:11:49 accept that they're rude and you accept that that's how they are, it's a lot less stress because you're not having two battles of the rude and you don't want them to be rude. It's just like, oh, they're rude. I'm going to accept it. Whatever. Can't change them, but I'm not going to let this person's energy affect mine. I'm not going to let this person's energy affect mine. I'm not going to let this person's judgments or feelings. Those are not my feelings. I'm not taking on somebody else's feelings. Get out of here. I got my own feelings I got to worry about. And it's just saying, hey, I'm not going to take on what that other person is or saying or doing or how they are. You know, somebody screwed you over in the past. You could hold

Starting point is 00:12:25 resentment forever if you want to. Cool. See how that works for you, dude. Or you can accept it and you can move on. There's so many people that are stressed out today, like incredibly stressed out today over something that happened to them two years ago, five years ago, 12 years ago. It's like that phrase, these mountains that you're carrying, you were only meant to climb. You don't have to take this stuff with you. It's like another example that pops in my head. I've used this story a few times, but there's an old parable of two monks walking through a forest and they walk by a river and there's a lady that's trying to get across the river and she can't

Starting point is 00:13:05 really get across by herself. And one of the monks walks up to her and he says, ma'am, do you need help across the river? She's like, yes, I do. And so he picks her up, walks across the river, you know, walks through the river and drops her off on the other side. Then he goes back across the river, goes back to his little monk friend, and they start walking. And about an hour later, the other monk who didn't pick the lady up says, he's like, brother,

Starting point is 00:13:26 you know that we swore to not touch anyone else, to not touch someone of the opposite sex. And you just pick that woman up. And he's like, I dropped her off an hour ago. You're still holding on to her. And so it's this thing of like, he was, this happened in the past. He was just helping somebody across. But the other guy who was watching it happen was so caught in his mind

Starting point is 00:13:49 of like, you did something wrong. And it was like, Hey, that happened. I dropped her across the river an hour ago. You've been holding onto her this entire time. And so it's that kind of thing of just like, maybe you've put yourself through enough stress and sometimes just forgiveness is what's needed. And you don't forgive somebody for their sake. You give somebody for your sake. When you forgive someone, you're releasing yourself from the stress and the energy of resenting or blaming that person. There's also like forgiving yourself too. And I don't want to go too deep into forgiveness because I have an episode. If you just Google and scroll back, if you want to find my episode on forgiveness, you definitely can. It's much better than just this quick little summarization.

Starting point is 00:14:30 But if you need to forgive, you need to forgive. If you messed up in a relationship, you know, they broke up with you and you did something and you think, oh, I'm so stupid. I can't believe I screwed up. I'm not worthy of anyone else's love. So instead of thinking like that, it's like, hey, I messed up. I learned. I forgive myself. I'll never do it again. A lot of times, sure, we need to forgive other people, but more than anything else, we need to forgive ourselves. Just do better next time. That's fine. And then the last A is adapt.

Starting point is 00:15:01 We need to do our best to face stress and then figure out a way to adapt to it. There's no such thing as a world without stressors. It's just about we need to be better. So long-term stress management really involves us adapting to unavoidable stressors. Yeah, we can change all of them and get rid of all the other ones that we can, but there are some unavoidable stressors that are going to be in our life. That means altering our perspective to view the stressors as challenges rather than like a crisis. So therefore we see it as a challenge and we become more resilient by working through it. Just get better. I have this, this note card that's right next to me when I work every single day and it just says, be better. Just be better. If you want your life to be better,

Starting point is 00:15:45 be better. If you're not good enough at something, be better. Just make sure that every single day you keep leveling up yourself. Get better. Don't ask the world to cater to you. Don't ask the world to cater to you. If you're wanting the world to change for you, you're going to have a really hard life because the world's not going to change for you. And then so what you do is you take your journal out and you start writing through these things and you want to create a stress journal and it can be a really, really highly effective strategy for stress management. What you're going to want to do is this, okay? You're going to want to identify your triggers. You're going to want to understand your emotional responses. And then you want to develop coping

Starting point is 00:16:23 mechanisms for those. So the idea of this is to learn yourself, to sit down with a pen and paper and write down what triggers me. What is triggering me? What's triggering me right now? When you find yourself stressed, take out a pen and paper and write it all down. I know most people listening are not going to do this because a lot of times it's in one ear and out the other, but I promise you, if you do this, it will absolutely change your life. Whenever you're stressed out, whenever you're triggered, whenever something's going on, take out a pen and paper and get all of it out of your head and get it onto a piece of paper. Ask yourself, what is triggering me right now? Ask yourself, what do you feel?

Starting point is 00:17:02 No, I feel this way. Ask yourself, why do you feel that way? Well, I feel this way because of X, Y, Z. And then ask yourself, what can you do about it? You will learn more about yourself than you ever have. You'll start to see triggers before they come up and you'll be able to navigate them way better. And you'll start to develop coping mechanisms when you do get stressed out.

Starting point is 00:17:23 When you do get triggered, when you do get stressed, when you do get anxious, whatever it might be. Just instead of getting all wrapped up in it, what I want you to do is get curious. You know, there should be no judgment in this. Instead, take a really compassionate, curious approach and just start to get curious about yourself. When you journal through these things and start to figure out what's going on internally inside of you and your head and your body, all the feelings that you have, journaling can be a really, really good emotional response. Dump all of your feelings, all of your thoughts onto a piece of paper and work through them. When it's in your head, it's really hard to process.

Starting point is 00:17:57 When it's on paper, it can be planned and it can be worked through. I always say it, everything in this world is figureoutable. I don't think it's a real word, but everything is figureoutable. Can you just figure out how you can, can you just look at your thoughts and your feelings and say, I'm going to start to figure these out. I'm going to start to see these before they come up so I don't have to worry about them anymore. Ultimately, this is really, really important. If you want to have a less anxious, less stressed life, go through these four different A's and start to make a plan so that you can start to have an actual step-by-step process of how you each and every one of you go through your stress and anxiety a little bit better.

Starting point is 00:18:35 So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on Instagram stories. Tag me at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And you've probably heard me say it before, but if you love this podcast, you're going to love Mindset Mentor Plus. I designed it to help you actively integrate every single one of these episodes into your life. And so for every single episode of the Mindset Mentor that comes out, Mindset Mentor Plus subscribers get more. You're going to get multiple page detailed worksheets that you can print out, you can underline, you can highlight, you can put your notes on. They're these mini masterclasses so that you can go more in depth than just the podcast.

Starting point is 00:19:09 And it comes with journaling questions, it comes with assignments, it comes with challenges. So therefore, you're not just listening to these episodes, but you're integrating them into your life so that you and your life can improve faster. This is also where I do my monthly Q&A sessions and much, much more. So if you want to learn more about it, go to mindsetmentor.com. Once again, mindsetmentor.com. And with that, I'm going to leave it the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.

The Mindset Mentor - 4 Ways To Deal With Anxiety

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