The Mindset Mentor - How to Stop Anxiety & Destructive Thoughts

Episode Date: June 1, 2018

Episode 436 - The thing about anxiety is that it can happen to anyone. It can strike at any moment and completely stop you in your tracks for days. In this episode, I talk about the ways anxiety happens, how to overcome it, and how to make sure it never happens again. 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 the MWF Motivation Podcast, one of the top-rated motivational podcasts in the world. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I come out with a short, to-the-point, no-BS podcast designed to transform you from who you are today into who you want to be. There's no fluff here, just life-changing content. My name is Rob Dial, and the podcast starts now. Welcome to today's episode. If you have not yet done so, hit the subscribe button so you never miss another episode. And if you have not yet signed up for my free five-day challenge coaching group, go to coachwithrob.com. It will be starting next Monday, which is June 4th. You only have a few

more days to sign up before it closes. I will be doing Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, five different video lesson, Facebook live lessons that are geared towards your mindset, your motivation, your money, and how to get you from where you are to where you want to be so if you want to join in on that go to coach with Rob com it's absolutely free and sign up there so today we're gonna be talking about two strategies to overcome anxiety now this is important because anxiety is not depression depression if you actually are talking about clinical depression, that's something that is a chemical imbalance in your brain.

Anxiety is actually created by the thoughts that you have. And so there's been many studies of how do we overcome this anxiety. If people are, maybe it's their thought pattern that's not correct. Maybe it's something that they're thinking about. Maybe it is a little bit physical. There's something physically happening inside their body that's changing the actual chemicals in their brain. And these can all be changed and that's the best part about it.

So I'm going to give you two strategies to overcome anxiety. The first one, which is from what I've seen is the most popular way to overcome anxiety is what they call HALT. H-A-L-T. So, if you start to feel the feelings of anxiety, if you've ever gone through a panic attack or an anxiety attack, you can start to feel it come up before it actually happens. And there's the actual physical feelings of freaking out, or maybe you start to have an anxiety attack before you go on to stage, whatever it is.

And you start to actually ask yourself these questions. Sometimes, most of the times, people go through an anxiety attack when they sometimes haven't eaten for the entire day and they didn't get enough sleep and something happens to them that sets them off and it sets them down the wrong road. H-A-L-T stands for hungry, angry, lonely, tired. And so as you feel these feelings coming up or you just feel like maybe something's not right, before the actual attack happens, you ask yourself these questions. Am I hungry? Reason why is because if your blood sugar is low, that will change the way that you think about things. If you have not eaten the entire day, or maybe you just had candy in the morning

because you just happened to pick some up, throw it in your mouth, and then you didn't eat for a few hours. You ask yourself, am I hungry? Because if you have candy in the morning, it'll give you a big spike in your blood sugar. It'll drop it. And the first thing you want to find out is, am I hungry? Or have I been eating terrible food? That's another good thing to think about. So H, hungry. Am I hungry right now? Second thing, angry. Am I angry about something? Because what happens is you get this physical feeling when you get angry and you can literally feel it physically inside of your body. Am I angry? Is this anger setting me off down the wrong path? Number three, am I lonely? Have I been alone for the entire day? Maybe, and that's the thing, we're actual

social beings. We want to be around people. So sometimes when we're not around people, our brains, our thoughts will start to dip and we're not as happy as we could be. Maybe we start thinking about the wrong things. Maybe we think, oh, I've been inside of my house since yesterday. I haven't been around anybody in 24 hours. And you start thinking to yourself, what the hell's wrong? Why do I not feel right? Sometimes just being around somebody will give you energy, will make you happier. Being around the right people will make you happier. Also, being around the wrong people can send you down an anxious road. So you got to think about that, who you spend your time with. And there's

many, many studies of who you spend your time with will create the way that you actually feel in this world. And the fourth thing is tired. Am I tired? A lot of times, you know, anxiety attacks happen when one or multiple of these things pop up, right? Maybe you didn't get really good sleep the night before. Maybe you haven't eaten and it's 2 o'clock in the afternoon. And maybe something happens that really pisses you off, right? That would be tired, hungry, and angry. And that angry could set you off and you could then have an anxiety attack, right? So you got to ask yourself those four things. Am I hungry? Am I angry? Am I lonely?

Or am I tired? And then what you can do is you can start to solve problems from there. Oh, damn, I am hungry. I haven't eaten today. Because sometimes we get so busy, we forget to even eat in the first place. Or maybe something happens to you, you realize, oh my gosh, yeah, I didn't get much sleep, or I didn't get great sleep last night. Maybe I need a nap. Maybe that would help me, right? So that's the first strategy is halt. The second strategy deals a lot with halt. Halt deals mostly with the physical feeling in your body, your thoughts, all of these things. When something changes, when you get excited, when you get mad, when you get angry, when you get pissed off, when you have something happen outside in the physical world,

the very first thing that tends to happen inside of a human body is your breath starts to change. When you get excited, you start to breathe a little bit more quicker, right? Whenever you get anxious, you start to breathe a little bit quicker and something starts to happen like that. So what you need to do is the first thing you need to do is take control of your breath, right? You need to take control of your breath and this technique is called the four, seven, eight, right? Four, seven, eight.

Breathe in for 4 seconds. 7 is you will then hold it for 7 seconds. So you hold on to that breath for 7 seconds, and then you slowly exhale for 8 seconds. So you breathe in for 4 seconds, you hold it for 7 seconds, you breathe out for 8 seconds. What you're doing is you want to do this at least 6 times, no less than six times. And this doesn't have to just, the great thing about this is this technique doesn't have to happen just, it's not useful just for having anxiety attack or being anxious. It could happen

if you're, it'll help really well if you're angry or if something's going wrong or if you're about to give a speech or you're getting really nervous. This will take control because the very first thing to change physically in our body is our breath. And you want to take control of your breath because if you're not getting enough oxygen in your bloodstream, then it's not going to your brain and you're not processing your thoughts the way that you should be. So it's the four, seven, eight. Breathe in for four seconds, hold for seven seconds, breathe out for eight seconds. And I'm going to give you one quick strategy. This is another one that wasn't part of the plan, but I want to actually talk

to you about this is because when I said your breath changes whenever you get anxious and your breath changes whenever you get excited, what they've actually found is that your brainwaves, your actual breathing, and your heart all link up. And when you look at somebody, someone's brain waves, someone's breathing, and someone's heart, and you look at them on a piece of paper, anxiety and excitement, someone's brain, someone's breathing, and someone's heart are exactly the same. They are equivalent. So one thing that they've actually found is when you start to feel anxious about something, and this isn't like anxious in the fact of the physical feeling of you're alone, you're tired, you're hungry, but maybe you're getting anxious because you're about to give a big speech. One thing that they've realized

is that if these are so equal, you can actually trick your brain into thinking it's doing something else that it's not. So what they say is anxiety will pop up, right? You're getting these feelings, the thoughts, the breathing, the heart palpitations that are the exact same in excitement as they are in anxiety. So when you feel this anxiety before you go give a big speech or before you give a phone call to a very big client that you're about to call is instead of saying, I'm anxious, I'm anxious, I'm anxious, is you actually, this is proven by psychology today. What you actually do is you tell yourself, I'm excited, I'm excited, I'm excited, I'm excited, I'm anxious," is you actually, this is proven by psychology today, what you actually do is you tell yourself, I'm excited, I'm excited, I'm excited, I'm excited, I'm excited.

After a while, your brain goes, oh, that's right. These are the feelings of excitement. Oh, these aren't the feelings of anxiety. It's actually a way to trick your brain, believe it or not, into thinking that you're excited about something and not anxious about it. Those are the strategies to overcome anxiety. First one is HALT, H-A-L-T, my hungry, angry, lonely, retired. The second one is the 4-7-8, breathe in for four seconds, hold for seven seconds, breathe out for eight seconds.

And then the last one is when you're anxious, tell yourself that you are excited. So that's what I got for today's episode. If you liked this episode, please share it with someone that you know and love. And I'm going to leave you 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. Well, that's it for today's podcast. If you want the show notes for this episode, they can be found at MWFmotivation.com. Also, if you liked this episode, please spread the love and share it with a friend because it's our mission to help as many people as we can. And to keep in touch, you can follow us on Instagram and Facebook.

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