The Mindset Mentor - How To Rewire Your Anxious Mind

Episode Date: October 20, 2021

If you deal with anxious or stressful thoughts, this episode is for you! In this episode, I will teach you a few strategies to rewire your anxious thoughts. 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 Dylan. 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 live in the United States or Canada and you want to receive motivational text messages from me to your cell phone. Text me right now, 1-512-580-9305. Once again, 1-512-580-9305. Today, we're going to be talking about how to rewire anxiety out of your brain. Oh, it's an exciting one, huh? How many people out there are like, oh, need it? Raise your hand. So let's dive into it. I don't even want to mess around. So let's talk about anxiety. The good thing about anxiety, if you want to call it a good thing, is it comes from, majority of the time, it comes from your thoughts. It's not like, oh my gosh, like,

you know, if you look at, it's not like a chemical imbalance causes anxiety for most people. What it is, is it's the thoughts that we have in our head, which if it's the thoughts we have in our head, that's a really good thing because we can change our thoughts at any point in time. So if, and I've worked with a lot of people who have taken lots of medication for anxiety before, and they realize that they can get off of, and I'm not telling anybody to get off any medication. That is not my job. I'm not a doctor. I'm just a dude who talks about your brain and mindset and all that stuff. But what they realize is that they actually start to have less anxiety because of the fact that they're able to actually change their thoughts. Now, it doesn't happen right away. It takes some time, but it's 100% possible. And that's the beautiful thing about it.

But anxiety comes from your thoughts, not from chemical imbalances. And anxiety is usually some sort of fear of something happening in the future. And the beautiful thing about being a human is that we can imagine the future. We can be creative. We can think of all these amazing things that we could create in the future. But with that as well, we can also think of all of the crazy things that could possibly happen. We can think of all of the bad things that are happening in the world and how the world's going to hell and all of this stuff. And what's crazy about it is if you listen to lyrics 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 50 years ago, 60 years ago, I was listening to Bob Dylan last week and I was like, oh, he thought the world was going to shit 60 years ago. Maybe

that's just a thing that we've always thought, right? We can imagine the good, but we can also imagine the bad. And so when we talk about how to rewire the anxiety out of your brain, I want to bring in and talk to you about your brain. There's two major brain circuits that we're going to talk about today, and I'm going to explain them in a very basic form for them to make sense to you. So the first one is called the neocortex. The neocortex is the more advanced part of your brain of what we're going to talk about today. Anxiety is basically just anticipation of something bad happening in your future, right? So the neocortex is the thing that's able to project yourself into the future and start to think about what is really

bad that could happen. And once again, humans can imagine the future. We can imagine all of the wrong that could happen. And what's crazy about it, there was a statistic that came out a few years ago that said that 85% of the stuff that we worry about never even actually happens. That means that 85% of our worry and anxiety is completely useless because it never happens in the first place. And so we can imagine our future. We can imagine a beautiful, amazing future, or we can imagine, oh my God, today's going to be shit. It's going to be so terrible. And we can literally create that future based off of our thoughts. So anxiety-inducing thoughts would be something like, if you get into a car accident, and let's say it's a bad car accident. It's not terrible, but it's a bad car accident. The next time you get into a car, there might be

some anxiety around it. And rightfully so, because you could have died in the last one. So now you might have a fear of driving because of that. And so when you get into a car accident, now you have anxiety around fear, possibly. If you are sitting there and you think to yourself that maybe somebody's breaking into your house, and then you start to hear all of the noises, right? Like if you've ever watched a scary movie and then you decide to get up and go to the bathroom, you're for sure that there's a killer that's running down your hallway after you in the dark, right? Or you see something out of the corner of your eye. And we imagine a lot of the wrong things. There's not somebody in your

house, but your brain can project yourself into the future and create anxiety based off of that. So you got to ask yourself, why does anxiety exist in the first place? It was a mechanism that helped our species stay alive. So it's actually a good thing, but not a good thing if it's a thing that happens all the time and it's a chronic anxiety that we're feeling. So why does it exist in our brain? Think about this for a second. We all came from cavemen, cavewomen. And if you go back a hundred thousand years ago and you're walking, you and your caveman friend, Joe, you guys are walking next to a river and then boom, Joe gets attacked by a freaking alligator and you see him get, he's your best friend. Oh my God, my best friend's getting attacked by an

alligator, pulls him into the water. Joe's gone forever. You never see Joe ever again. Well, why is anxiety useless in that situation? Because the next time that you go by a lake, you're going to be on the lookout for an alligator. You're going to be a little bit more cautious. And that is the thing that kept our species alive versus being dumb and going back by the water in the exact same spot later on. So you have to realize anxiety isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's something that kept our species alive, but it's something that we all need to have under control. So if that's the reason why we have it, how do we get rid of it is really something that you want to think about. Well, this is part of your thinking brain. And so you can think through it if you want,

but thinking through it can be really hard. So I'm going to give you a couple different options. Number one is meditation. And here's the thing about it. The reason why I love meditation is because it shows you how uncontrollable your mind is at this moment when it's something that you fully should be under control of. And, you know, so if you sit there and people are always like, oh my gosh, I don't do meditation so hard. I'm going to be honest with you. If you're not doing meditation because it's hard, that means you're weak minded. And hopefully you don't take that the wrong way. I'm not trying to be an asshole. Just being honest with you here. But if you're sitting there and you can't control your brain, your brain's going, get up, get up, get up, get up, get up, get up, get up, get up, get up. And you get up, guess who won? And it ain't you.

It's your brain. That's something that you're supposed to be in control of, is your brain. And so when you sit down, the first 15 to 20 minutes of a meditation for me usually is, get up. You got so much shit to do. Stop. What are you doing? This isn't productive at all. And so you literally have to, for me at least, I went to a 10-day silent meditation retreat and they teach you just to let it go and let it go and let it go. And eventually, it'll calm down. And you can't calm a whirlpool by trying to stir it up anymore. You have to just let it eventually start to calm down. That's how it calms down. And that's a lot of our brains, how they work. And they're going crazy and all

over the place. So that's one option of what you can do to help your neocortex, that side of your mind, the anxiety side of your mind with the neocortex, which is thinking and projecting into the future. Meditation to calm yourself, to show yourself that in this moment, you're fine. Another really good question to ask yourself if you're starting to feel anxiety about something that you're thinking about is to ask yourself this question, right now, am I safe? Hey, stonks, memes, and rocket ships, day trading, all that can be fun. But if you want to grow a long-term wealth and make it to the moon, you should open up a Wealthfront investment account today. After answering just a few questions,

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really what it's coming down to is it's coming down to your brain anticipating some sort of attack or no safety coming in your future. And so if you can prove to your brain that you are safe, you can show your brain how your fear is completely illogical. Your fear is not real. It's not actually something that you should worry about. And then you can start to actually realize how ridiculous the fear that you are fearing, whatever it is that's coming up, the anticipation of something in the future actually is. We're worried about what people are going to think of us. We're worried about getting judged online. Oh my God, someone might not like the photo that I put up. It's kind of ridiculous. If our ancestors, let's be real everybody, I say this all the time. If our ancestors could come to us

today and see the stuff that we're worrying about, they'd beat the shit out of us because they'd be like, what a bunch of weak-minded people. You know what we had to go through? We had to fight off lions. We had to fight off tigers. And you're sitting here worrying about if Stacey in accounting doesn't like the photo that she just put up on Like, it's like, what? None of that actually makes any sense. And so, you can, the point is to show your brain how ridiculous it is that you have that fear, that anxiety of whatever it is that's coming up in the future. And it's not even a real fear. If you've been listening to me long enough, you've heard me talk about fear before, and I don't even call them, there's two different

types of fear. There are the primal fears where it's like, you might actually be attacked. You need to run from someone who's running after you down an alley. That's a primal fear. A intellectual fear is worrying about something that there's no harm involved in it. And so I don't even call them fears. I call them scary. So I was like, there's a really scary. Oh my gosh, look at my scary popping up about other people's opinions. Oh my gosh, look at my scary of Nancy that's in accounting worrying about my Instagram photo. Is she going to like me? And you start realizing that shit's stupid. And so what you do is you prove to your brain as if you're in a debate with it of look at how stupid this thing that we're fearing together is. And that's the first thing that you

do. So that's the neocortex side of it, right? The other side of it is the amygdala side of it. The amygdala is just a, literally, it responds quick. It is the react first, ask questions later. The amygdala is one of the oldest parts of your brain. And literally, it is just where fear comes from. It just pops out from that thing. And a good example is if you're walking in your house, you see a dark shadow at night and you react and then you just realize it's your jacket. Well, that's coming from your amygdala. It's like, oh my God. Oh no, it's just my jacket. Okay. Or you're walking outside and you're like, oh my God, it's a snake. And then you realize, oh, it's just your freaking garden hose that you left out that's curled up. Right? It's like react, then ask questions later. Loud noises. Boom. You hear a loud noise. If

you're sitting there right now where you are and you hear loud, boom, you're going to react. That's a primal part of you. It's built into you to react to something like that. That is your amygdala. And it's the reason, if I'm being honest with you, why you really can't talk yourself out of a panic attack is because your amygdala is turned on and it is 100% fight or flight or freeze. It is geared up and ready to go. And so you kind of just have to try to calm yourself down through breathing, through asking yourself, am I safe? Telling yourself, I'm safe. I'm safe. Breathe through it. And it's also the part that usually reacts to people who have PTSD in some sort of way. And so you look at the two different parts of it. You can see the part

where one of them is the thinking side of it, and one of the other sides is the reacting side of it. And so when you see your anxiety start to pop up, you have to ask yourself, am I thinking about something or am I reacting to something? Think about that for a second. Am I thinking about something or am I reacting to something? Think about that for a second. Am I thinking about something that could happen in the future? Once again, 85% of stuff that we worry about never even actually happens. So am I projecting a false future in front of me that probably won't even happen in the first place? And I'm ruining my current, beautiful, present moment where I'm safe by thinking about something that could happen in the future, but 85% of the time doesn't actually even happen? Am I ruining this current present moment

by thinking about something? Or am I reacting in a primal way and I'm just reacting first and then asking questions later? So you can work through it that way. And then you start to ask yourself, how do we help to get rid of it? Well, you got to bypass the thinking mind and you've got to directly affect the nervous system, okay? So you've got to go past the thinking mind and you've got to directly go into the nervous system. One of the best things you can do, you've heard me say this so many times on this podcast,

is deep breathing. Six really deep breaths. And if six isn't enough, do more. But don't do less than six because there was a study that was done that found that six deep breaths can completely change your state. And if six isn't enough, do more. But don't do less than six because there was a study that was done that found that six deep breaths can completely change your state. And it's very simple. You just breathe in through your nose and you breathe out through your mouth as long as you can out through your mouth as if you're just breathing out through a straw.

And so you would do six deep them. And that will start to slow your heart rate down because when you go into a fight or flight state, the first thing that changes your breathing, the second thing to change is usually your heart rate. So let's start back at the very first thing that changes. Let's change our breathing, which will usually start to change our heart rate. So you can go to that and you can bypass the thinking mind by affecting the nervous system that way. That can work for you. Some people, I mean, it works for, I've never really heard somebody it doesn't work for, but maybe it doesn't work for you. So there's a couple of things that can happen as you feel anxiety. What you're trying to do more than anything else is you're trying to change your

current state to another state. So another thing that really works well, I know a lot of you have used this before. I've used this before when I start to feel a lot of fear and anxiety is I'll go and work out. Luckily at this point, I just walk out to my gym that's inside of my garage and I just crank out some really heavy, like 15, 20 minutes of nonstop, just heavy lifting to just get my body into a different state. And sometimes the anxiety and the fear actually make the workout better. And then my body goes from an anxious, fearful state of, oh my God, I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die to, oh, this is actually just me working out. That's why my heart rate is raised.

Another thing that works really well, and this is just something I'm not recommending because I don't want anyone to do it and then have something that happens to them, but this is something that I've done. I've heard it recommended to me. And a guy named Wim Hof, most of you guys have heard of Wim Hof at this point, the Iceman, is to do 30 really deep breaths. So it's just like that type of breathing. And then what you do is you do one really deep breath and then do as many pushups as you possibly can before breathing again. That's just what I do. Not a recommendation. It's just something that you can do. And the reason why is because it tends to reset the nervous system where instead of this thing that I'm

projecting in the future that isn't even real, my body's going, oh my God, we got to breathe. We got to breathe. We got to breathe. We got to breathe. And it's resetting all of my system, my nervous system. And by the time that I'm done, the anxious feeling is usually gone. And the reason why is because our brain goes off the anxious feeling to this immediate thing that's happening to me right now. Here's the beautiful thing about it. And what's kind of crazy about it too, when you do 30 deep breaths, you're over-oxygenating. And so whenever I do 30 deep breaths and then I do push-ups, I always do more push-ups without breathing before I breathe again than when I do it, I'm actually breathing. Like I can do like 40 push-ups when I'm breathing all normal. And then

when I over-oxygenate and hold my breath, I can get 50, 55, 60. Most I've ever done is 70 in a row. I've literally, I'm like, where did this come from? It's because there's so much oxygen inside of my blood, inside of my muscles. So once again, not recommending it. It's just something that I do. So deep breathing helps. Working out helps. And 30 deep breaths with as many pushups as possible helps. So it's really about figuring out which part of your brain does it come down to. I'm feeling anxiety. Okay. Once I'm feeling anxiety, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm not going to identify with a feeling ever. A feeling is just like a passing cloud. A passing cloud is not there forever. So I'm never going to identify with it.

I'm going to say, okay, I'm feeling anxious right now. Okay. Why am I feeling anxious? The first thing is become very self-aware. Is it the neocortex? Am I thinking about something? Am I projecting something into my future? Okay, if that's the case, can I show my brain? Sometimes I'm going through literally my brain of the thinking into the future, which my neocortex, my thinking part of my brain, can I use the thinking part of my brain to show my brain how ridiculous it is that I'm focusing on this thing and I'm thinking that this thing is going to happen in the future when in reality it's probably not going to, right? Or is it my amygdala, the part of me that just freaks out and I just need to bring my body back down, show my body that I'm not going to die? At that point in time, what I'm going to do is I'm going to bypass my

thinking mind and I'm going to directly go into my nervous system. The way I'm going to do it is I'm going to do some deep breathing. If I feel like the deep breathing isn't working, I can go and do a workout. I can do 30 deep breaths and do as many push-ups as possible. The beautiful thing about this is to realize that, and I hope that this gives you some hope, to realize that anxiety is not something that you're just born with or something that you just have. Anxiety is something that you can work through. Anxiety is something that you can figure out. And once again, I'm not telling anybody to get off any medication. I'm not a doctor. I don't have any degree telling you what medication to take or not to take or any of that stuff. But what I've seen, and I've seen a lot of people have this

happen to them. I've gotten tons of messages from people who have listened to the podcast and said, hey, since I've been working on my thoughts, since I've been working on my feelings, since I'm becoming more self-aware and taking control of the way that I feel and act and think at every single moment, I've gotten off of my medication. And a lot of times it comes specifically from the thinking part of the mind. And if we can control and understand that anxiety is not something that holds you down, it's not something that you are a victim of. It is something that you can overcome. It starts to make you feel like there's a light at the end of can overcome. It starts to make you feel like there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and it starts to make you feel like there's something

that you can work through. We're all human. We're all going to have anxious thoughts, anxious feelings, stress, worry, anxiety, all of that stuff. But the beautiful thing about being a human is to realize that we can control the majority of that stuff. And that's the beautiful thing about it, is we can take control of it. We can regain our own power. And when we do that and step into our own power, we can start to take the actions that we want to to create the future that we want. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, I'm sure you've got some friends that have anxious thoughts. Go ahead and share this on your Instagram stories and tag me in it, please. Rob Dial Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. Once again, I'm traveling in Italy. So if you guys want to vicariously live

through some of my photos of me traveling through Italy, I'll be here for the next five weeks. Come on and join me. Follow me on Instagram, RobDowellJr, R-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode, making sure mission makes someone else's day better. I appreciate you all. I love you all. I hope you have an amazing day and talk to you later.