The Mindset Mentor - The Guide To Beating Anxiety

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast, the number one mindset podcast in the entire world, thanks to you guys listening out there. I'm your host, Rob Dial. 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 love this podcast, you'll probably love getting some inspirational text messages from me. So if you live in the United States or Canada, send me a text right now, 512-580-9305. Once again, 512-580-9305. And I will add you to the

Starting point is 00:00:37 list to sporadically send you some inspiration throughout the week. Today, I'm going to be giving you the ultimate guide to beating your anxiety. I'm going to give you a lot of evidence-based strategies to overcome your anxiety and your anxious thoughts, and hopefully it'll help you. Try all of this stuff out. It's just like, hey, try it. See if it works for you. Try this and see if it works for you. Ultimately, the good thing about it is to know that you can work with yourself and you can lower your anxiety ultimately by figuring out what works for you. And so I'm going to give you a lot of evidence-based strategies to help overcome your anxiety. And over the past few years, there's been a massive spike in anxiety. The Journal of Anxiety Disorders has found

Starting point is 00:01:20 that anxiety has gone up 300% since pre-pandemic levels, which means three times more people in this world that we live in have anxiety than they did before 2020 happened. The thing that you need to know about anxiety is anxiety is actually natural. Anxiety is not a bad thing. Anxiety is a natural response to stress, uncertainty, and most importantly, perceived threats. Perceived threats. Not necessarily threats, but threats that you perceive to be threats. So it's a good thing that anxiety exists for humans because it allows us to project our brain into the future and telling our body to prepare for possible threats.

Starting point is 00:02:06 It helps keep our species alive. It's a good thing. But when it's a all-day, everyday kind of thing, it's not a good thing. When anxiety becomes chronic and interferes with your daily life, now we need to actually address it. We need to talk about how to overcome it. And so today we're going to go over a few research-backed techniques that are going to help you. But first off, before we dive into that, I always take a step back and I say, what is

Starting point is 00:02:32 this? What is anxiety? And before we can overcome something, you got to know what this thing is, right? The definition of anxiety is a feeling of unease, such as worry or fear, that can range from mild to severe. It is a normal and essential human emotion that serves as an adaptive response to danger or challenges. So the thing about danger or challenges is most of the time it's not like a danger or challenge is right in front of you. It is a perceived danger or challenge. And if you perceive something to

Starting point is 00:03:03 be a danger or challenge, you can change your perception, which is what's challenge. And if you perceive something to be a danger or challenge, you can change your perception, which is what's awesome. And anxiety can pop up in a couple different ways. Number one is emotional symptoms, which would be something like worry and fear and irritability and difficulty concentrating and being really restless. But it can also pop up in physical symptoms, which would be like muscle tension, headaches, trembling, a faster heartbeat, shortness of breath, gastrointestinal issues. And so really it could pop up in a few different ways. And so I just want to give you a few ways to overcome it. And I'm going to teach you a little bit about how you can actually change your environment to help you have less anxiety. So strategy number one is for relaxation techniques and anxiety reduction is deep breathing. And I

Starting point is 00:03:54 don't know how many times I've talked about deep breathing in the podcast, but it needs to be talked about over and over and over and over and over again. Whenever something's not going the way that you want to, whenever you're freaking out, whenever you're too sad, whenever you're too pissed off, whenever you're too angry, whatever it might be, breathe. Take control of your breath because your breath is the very first thing to change. And when your emotions are very high, your logic is low. You are not thinking well when your emotions are very high. It actually turns off parts of the prefrontal cortex of your brain, which is the part that actually makes executive decisions. So when you're really anxious, you tap into fight, flight, or freeze.

Starting point is 00:04:31 Your body is preparing for danger. This is where the animalistic survival part of your brain turns on. This is where you're, and what it does is you're thinking, you're processing, your executive decision making kind of turns off because it doesn't really, you don't really have to make good decisions and start processing things and start to think when your body thinks danger. It's like, let's get away from the danger. So get yourself feeling a little bit better and calming down by trying some of this stuff out. Deep breathing exercises really, really help activate the body's relaxation response and will massively reduce your anxiety levels. And so what you want to do is very simple.

Starting point is 00:05:12 It's five in, ten out, right? So it's five in, ten out. You want to do diaphragmatic, I guess that's how you say it, diaphragm breathing, which is basically your belly. So imagine if you were laying down. The way that I taught say it, diaphragm breathing, which is basically your belly. So imagine if you were laying down. The way that I taught myself to do diaphragm breathing was actually to lay down and put a book on my belly and try just to breathe in without moving my shoulders, but just try to breathe in by moving the book. Right? And so you want to do five seconds in, you want to do 10 seconds out.

Starting point is 00:05:43 And you do want to do five in through the nose, 10 out through the mouth. And so it's just, okay. When you breathe out longer than you breathe in, it actually slows your heart rate down because usually your heart rate starts to change when you get anxious. So it slows your heart rate down and it releases more carbon dioxide from your blood, which lowers your stress levels. That's the first thing that you want to try to go to when you notice yourself in a heightened state. So that's the first thing. Number two, try this thing out. It's called cognitive restructuring. Number two, try this thing out.

Starting point is 00:06:23 It's called cognitive restructuring. It's a technique that uses, it involves identifying and challenging the negative thought pattern that is creating your anxiety. And so this approach is rooted in what's called cognitive behavioral therapy. And it's been shown to be super effective for treating anxiety disorders. What you do first is you identify the negative thoughts. So the first step is become aware of the negative thoughts that are fueling your anxiety and to notice when you don't feel good. And so the brain and the body are constantly always talking to each other. So when your brain

Starting point is 00:06:57 has a thought, it sends neuropeptides to communicate with your body on what hormones to create, and then your body's going to be talking to your brain and so they're always going back and forth you cannot separate them and so you have to understand that okay i don't i don't really feel really good i feel super anxious i feel really stressed the hell is going on okay what was i just thinking about what am i thinking about am i ruminating on something am i stressed about something that's coming up in the future. Usually you'll notice your anxiety inducing thoughts after you notice your body's reaction to it. And so normally what happens is you notice, I don't feel good. Okay. Why don't I feel good? Okay. I don't feel good because I was just thinking about this presentation I have to give later on today. Okay. Now I've identified

Starting point is 00:07:40 the thought that created the feeling in the body. And so first thing you want to do is you want to identify the thought, if you can. And this takes time to start becoming aware, because so many people are just very unaware of themselves. So you become aware of the thought. The second thing you want to do is you want to try to challenge the thought. So once you identify the thought, evaluate the accuracy of it. Evaluate if it's rational or not. And try some alternative explanations, viewpoints, try to perceive it a little bit different. You know, like the cognitive behavioral therapy, when you notice that you're feeling anxious, the very next step is after you identify it is to challenge the validity of that thought. Is that thought actually valid? You know, so like

Starting point is 00:08:21 maybe somebody says something to you and they just happen to say something but then you notice a few minutes later that you're feeling really anxious it's because you created a whole narrative and story around this person right or maybe you've done this before you've all done this right you send a text message to somebody someone you really want to hear back from maybe it's someone that you're dating someone that's a you know a pretty important person whatever it might be and they don't text you back for a few hours. And then you start noticing yourself getting really anxious, right? It's not because they're not texting you back. It's because you've created a whole story in your head. Maybe I'm not good enough. Maybe I'm not smart enough. Maybe there was somebody else, whatever it might be. And so you want to test the validity of that thought. Is it possible

Starting point is 00:08:59 that their phone died? Okay. Yeah, it is probably possible that the phone died. Is it possible that maybe they're busy right now? Yeah. maybe it's possible that they're at work. They can't be by their phone. So how valid is your thought that's making you feel anxious? A lot of the times, it's complete bullshit. And if you can get yourself to see another perspective, another viewpoint, usually it kind of, it's like a house of cards. It's like flicking the house of cards.

Starting point is 00:09:23 The whole thing that builds this anxiety, the thought pattern, the story that you've created that doesn't, isn't really based in reality kind of crumbles. And you've heard me say it hundreds of times on this podcast, but you know, literally it's been proven in studies by psychologists that 85% of what you worry about will never happen. And out of the remaining 15%, only 3% of that happens the way that you think that it will. The other 12% happens better than you thought that it would, which means that 97% of what we worry about doesn't turn out as bad as we thought it was going to happen or it doesn't happen at all. Which means that maybe if we're noticing ourself get anxious because we're so worried about something and we have some narrative or some story around something, maybe we should get better at challenging our thoughts

Starting point is 00:10:08 and seeing it from a different viewpoint versus the viewpoint that we see it at. Okay. And then what you want to do next, that's number two, what you want to do next is you want to replace your negative thoughts. So after you challenge your negative thoughts, what you want to do is you replace them with more balanced and holistic and realistic thoughts that will help you reduce your anxiety level. So once again, you send this text message, you don't hear back from someone for a couple hours. You notice yourself feeling anxious. Well, you're anxious because you're thinking, oh my God, what if there was someone else? What if they don't like me anymore? What if I'm not important? All of that. We've all done this before, right? And you notice it and you say, all right, are there other viewpoints? Like the ones I just gave as an example?

Starting point is 00:10:48 Yeah. What if their phone is dead? What if they're at work? What if they just haven't checked yet? What if they're planning on getting back to me later? What if they're just leaving the unread bubble there and they're going to get back to me later? Okay, cool. I'm seeing it from a different viewpoint. It kind of reduces my anxiety levels versus seeing it as, oh my God, this is the only thing. This is the truth, right? So that's the second thing, which is second strategy, which is cognitive restructuring. The next one is something called exposure therapy. So there's a proven technique of gradually and systematically confronting whatever it is that you fear so that your anxiety will subside a little bit. So really what it is, is you want to identify what

Starting point is 00:11:32 is it's causing your anxiety. This alone usually helps a lot of people feel less anxious. A lot of people feel anxious because they don't, they feel anxious and they're like, I don't, I don't, I don't know why I feel so anxious. I just feel really anxious because you've been very unaware of yourself for a long time. But then you don't take a step back and try to find where that anxiety is coming from. So what you want to do is take a step back and try to identify your anxiety inducing thoughts to help you feel a little bit less anxious. So if you're sitting there and you're like, oh my God, I felt anxious all week. Like, I don't, I don't know what the hell's going on. Like, I don't feel good. I feel stressed. I feel anxious. And you don't know why. Okay. Take a step back. Breathe a little bit. Do your five seconds in, 10 seconds out. You breathe and you realize,

Starting point is 00:12:15 okay, why do I feel anxious? Well, you know what? I think I started feeling anxious a few days ago when I learned that I have to give a presentation for work in two weeks. And I'm terrified of public speaking. And I'm even more terrified to do it in front of my boss. Right? So, okay, cool. I've identified the possible culprit of what's making me anxious. And then what you want to do is do gradual exposure. So finish your presentation as fast as you can so you can make sure that you have it, you know, that's done. So you're not anxious about finishing it. And then also anxious about presenting it, finish it, get the first thing done. And then what I want you to do is at home, practice that presentation 10 times.

Starting point is 00:12:53 You get gradual exposure to it, right? Then I want you to go and I want you to go and, you know, that's just standing up at your desk at home. Then what I want you to do is I want you to take the PowerPoint and I want you to put it on your TV at home by yourself when no one else is there. And you practice it and go through all of the slides another 10 times. So now you've done it 20 times and you're still at home. And then what I want you to do is stay late at work one night, the night before, whatever it is. And I want you to practice it five to 10 times in the room that

Starting point is 00:13:23 you're going to be presenting it on the room that you're going to be presenting it, on the TV that you're going to be presenting it, and you go through the slides and everything. So by the time that you show up, and you could come in early the day of and practice it before anybody gets there, but by the time you show up to actually do the presentation, you've done it 20, 30, 40 times, right? That is the gradual exposure to it. So you're not as, number one, you feel more prepared, but you don't feel as anxious because you've done it so much. It's the same way when like someone has a really big fear around snakes and they kind of like let them in a room with a snake, but it's at a distance and they're there for a little while and then they bring it a little bit closer. It's still at a distance, but it's still a bit closer

Starting point is 00:14:03 and it's gradual. It gets a little bit closer and eventually they can touch it. And then if you do this enough with this gradual therapy, somebody can, within hours, be holding onto a snake and that used to be crippling to them. And so you want to just try to practice, after you identify what's causing your anxiety, some gradual exposure to it. And then what you want to do, it's part of it as well to help you is practice the relaxation techniques, the deep breathing, the, uh, there's a thing called progressive muscle relaxation that you can read about, um, that, that are happening while you're being exposed to it so that you can start to calm yourself a little bit more. So those are three proven strategies help you lower your anxiety.

Starting point is 00:14:44 Now let's talk about how you can change your lifestyle to help you with your anxiety. The first thing is exercise as regularly as possible. It's been shown that physical activity has been shown to reduce anxiety because it increases your endorphins, it promotes relaxation, it improves your overall mood. And so engaging in long-term exercise, like knowing you're going to exercise and doing it as much as you possibly can, at least 30 minutes per day, actually has a lot of long-term benefits on anxiety reduction. So that's the first thing. Exercise more. The more strain and stress you can put your body under, the more you get used to the strain and the stress, which is what anxiety does to your body.

Starting point is 00:15:20 The second thing is pay attention to your nutrition. Eat more whole foods. Stop having so much caffeine. Stop having so much sugar. Excessive caffeine and sugar intake really make anxiety worse. So if you have a lot of anxiety, maybe cut back on the caffeine a little bit. Try to get some decaffeinated. If you normally have three cups of coffee, maybe have one cup of coffee and then go for some decaf coffee just so you're used to it. Don't drink so much soda. Don't have so much candy.

Starting point is 00:15:50 Caffeine and sugar make your anxiety worse. Another thing that's really simple is stay hydrated. Dehydration actually contributes to increased anxiety levels. I drink so much water. It's just something that I've just done for a really long time my whole life. I've always drank water. I've never really been to anything else. People are always like, oh my God, you drink so much water. It's just something that I've just done for a really long time. My whole life, I just, I've always drank water. I've never really been to anything else. And people are like, oh my God, you drink so much water. And, um, I noticed that so many people like don't drink any water. It's wild. Like I'll go to dinner with people and I'll drink like five glasses of water

Starting point is 00:16:16 during dinner and they'll have like none. And they're like, yeah, I'm not really into water. Right. So, uh, dehydration actually contributes to increased anxiety levels. So just try to be more hydrated. And another thing is have less alcohol. Alcohol actually contributes to anxiety levels as well. It might make you feel better in the moment. Like you feel anxious and you get a glass of wine. You feel better after.

Starting point is 00:16:38 Well, long-term, it actually makes it worse. Sorry, guys. Okay, next thing after that, after nutrition, is to start paying attention to your sleep. Try to get the amount of sleep that you need. Everybody needs different amounts of sleep. I always try to get at least eight hours of sleep every single night. My best friend though, he needs no more than six. So, and that's what he's found. If he has more than six, he's actually tired throughout the day. So figure out what it is that you need and then make sure you get,

Starting point is 00:17:04 you really prioritize your sleep and it's not something that you just kind of throw off. Like if I don't have enough sleep, I don't feel good throughout the day. I feel more anxious. I feel more stressed. And so that's the third one. And then the fourth one, don't be on your phone so much. There is study after study after study showing that stress and anxiety levels are way higher

Starting point is 00:17:25 with people who are on their phones more often. So just limit your screen time. Stop being on your phone so much. Try to just throw it into a drawer somewhere. Try to spend more time in nature. Try to spend more time with people. Don't look at so many screens. And then try to actually live your life.

Starting point is 00:17:40 And I promise you, if you do all of these, your life will be way more anxious. I'm sorry. Hopefully it's not more anxious. It'll be way more chill and a whole lot less anxious. So try them out. Let me know if it works for you. Send me a message on Instagram. Let me know how it's working for you. And we'd love to hear that these strategies help change your life in some way. So if you liked this episode, please do me a favor, share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in it, Rob Dial Jr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. The only way this podcast grows is actually from grassroots and you guys sharing it. So I greatly, greatly appreciate every time I put up an episode and I see hundreds of you guys sharing this podcast on your Instagram and your social media. Because ultimately,

Starting point is 00:18:22 there's probably someone out there that has anxiety that follows you on Instagram and TikTok. And maybe if you share it, it'll help them. Maybe they'll be able to find it. Maybe this will change their life as well. So it really helps when you guys help us share the message as well. And with that, I'm gonna leave you the same way I leave you every single episode.

Starting point is 00:18:38 Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you. And I hope that you have an amazing day.

The Mindset Mentor - The Guide To Beating Anxiety

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