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The Connection Between Doubt, Worry, and Anxiety

Now I want to talk about the connection between doubt worry and anxiety for those of you that are that are struggling with anxiety. Can I see a show of hands of people that are struggling with anxiety? OK, terrific. Not terrific. I didn't mean to say that. It's terrific. I'm sorry. Uh huh. Um, for those of you that have a mindset issue where you are thinking a you have a tape that runs in your mind That is negative about you. Okay, this next beat will change your life. Okay? It is liberating when you learn how to push yourself to try. It really is. It is empowering when you start to see yourself taking action and momentum happening, and you know that you're gaining a little ground. I mean, it is just like, amazing. It is magical when you realize there is a really close connection between doubt, worry, anxiety and panic. You now understand the researcher on how confidence gets built. You understand how self doubt gets trapped. You see the four traps of doubt and kind of how the thoughts...

about doubt make you take actions that keep you stuck. I want to show you now how doubt spirals into worry and how that then becomes a situation that spirals into anxiety. And if you're like me, it becomes panic attacks. So self doubt we saw triggers you to to some form of action. And for most of us, the first thing that we do is we start to worry. So you feel insecure where you feel, um, like a fraud, or you feel worried about rejection or you feel overwhelmed. And again, we've learned you can't control those feelings. Life is gonna throw that at you, So stop trying to get rid of that feeling. The real power is in learning what to do when those feelings happen. For most of us, we default to worry. There was a study done by Cornell University. It's called the Legacy Project. If you google it, you can find it all online. It was sort of like StoryCorps they went and they, uh, interviewed almost 2000 men and women and nursing homes. And what they discovered is that, uh, they discovered something kind of crazy. They wanted to know. Okay, what can you and I learn from people near the end of their lives that will help us enjoy our lives more. And when they asked men and women of every single walk of life what it is that they would change if they could change something that go back and do it all over, that would have made him happier. One thing that startled the researchers is every single person had literally the same answer. If I could go back and change one thing, they all said, I wouldn't have wasted so much of my lifetime worry. And I'm telling you right now, you don't have to, because just like self doubt, worrying is a habit. It's something that your mind defaults to when you're not even paying attention. And the thing is, is that if you worry enough and you start building enough evidence upstairs, what happens is your body joins the party. That's anxiety. So anxiety is when your body state starts to get agitated, to match the things that are going on in your head. That's all that it is. It's terrifying when it happens, but it's all that it is now. When that goes unchecked, that state of anxiousness, the armpit sweating the pit of the stomach, the dryness in the throats, the palms, sweaty hands. But, you know, shaking your legs, Whatever it is that you do when you get anxious. If that goes unchecked and you keep noodling, what's going on, you're actually escalating the situation. And so when you have a panic attack, a panic attack is when you worry so much and the anxiety goes unchecked that you your brain starts to be concerned that something bad is actually happening because it has no context. OK, so the way that I like to explain this is, um have you ever been in a situation where you almost get in a car accident, right? It's like, Boom. And you're like, Oh, my gosh. And the car comes through in nearly sideswipes you and and And what happens immediately, what happens to you when you're in the car behind the wheel on somebody else? It too. Yeah, Cry your heart races. You might have one of those things, but then something interesting happens, doesn't it? You actually calm down a little bit? Why? Because the car is gone and you're okay. And so your mind now can look around and be like, OK, I got it. We almost were killed, but we're fine now. Way could calm down. Okay? What happens when you have a panic attack is that that whole body freak out thing happens at random, so you'll be standing in your kitchen and you'll be opening up the refrigerator, and all of a sudden is you're looking at the orange juice. You have a God like it, like as if a car had come by. And here's the problem. As your brain looks around and says, What the heck is going on? It can't see that anything's wrong. And so it gets really worried. So it makes something up, and it's usually I'm about to die. I'm having a heart attack. Something terrible is about to happen. It's those three things. It's your minds defense mechanism to try to get you out of there because it doesn't know what's coming. And so somebody that's having a panic attack typically searched hyperventilate or they pace around, you know, you pace around like a real weirdo, like I got to get out of here. I get out here and you don't even know why. It's your mind literally trying to back you away from where you were physically to remove you from the danger of perceives. Unlike the situation in the car, your brain has context so it doesn't freak out on you When it happens at work. Your brain doesn't know why. So it makes something up that is the essence. So it starts without you start to worry, which is the cycling of the thoughts. Anxiety is when your body state starts to manage, match the thoughts and then panic is when it just escalates. So, first of all, let's talk about the physical symptoms of anxiety. Physically, you're aroused. Your heart beats faster. Cortisol. We mentioned cortisol earlier. That's the stress hormone that releases in your brain that makes the spotlight effect go bigger. Your body is in a state where it's preparing for something to happen. It's just a state. Words getting ready. Here is something you need to understand. Which explains why the techniques I'm about to give you work. These were the physical symptoms of anxiety. They're also oops, that's not the thing I wanted. Typically, I'll show you in a second there also the same physical symptoms as excitement. So this is what you're gonna dio. Instead of trying to calm yourself down. You're gonna change that charged up feeling that you have of anxiety into charged up feelings that are positive. So we're going to trick your body and we're gonna give your mind something to Dio because physiologically anxiety and excitement are the exact same thing. Let me show you. Here's the physical symptoms again of anxiety. State of arousal. Your heart beats faster. You got cortisol running through your thing. Your body gets in a prep mode. Physical symptoms of excitement. So, um, what you do is crazy as it sounds, we're to teach you how did switch gears when you start worrying? So we teach you to stop worrying and to choose what you think about. We're going to teach you how to use this excitement mantra to trick your mind about your nerves so that your brain doesn't find a reason to freak out. This is super powerful stuff for pitching your business. It is really powerful stuff for presenting for speaking, for video, taping yourself for selling because we all get performance anxiety. All right, I'm about to go on stage there. Seven. That wasn't able out there, and it's so exciting because what they don't know. Is there about to learn the five second rule and their lives will never be the same again. Now I gotta tell you, my heart is racing my armpits, air sweating. I have the exact same physiological feeling is what I'm afraid, But I'm not afraid. I'm excited. Excitement and fear is the exact same thing in your body. It's just what your brain calls it. Here's a trick that's proven by science that I use every time I speak. When I start to sweat when I start to have butterflies, when I start to have my heart race, I say, I'm excited. I'm excited to get out there. I'm excited to talk to these people, excited to share the five second rule on what that does is it sends a message to my brain that tells my brain why my bodies are agitated and excited. And that way I don't feel afraid. Remember excitement and fear exact same thing in your body. The only difference is what your brain calls. So what about that? Okay, so what's cool about this? Is that the the technical term? So there was a study done. Harvard Medical School, just a matter of months ago. If you want to read up on this, it's called reframing performance anxiety. When you reframe it as excitement in every single test, the people that use this strategy perform better. And the reason why is because if you let the normal nerves because I'm about to go out there and do something kind of cool and kind of fun. So I'm getting ready and that's the body state. If you let that spiral into worry and the quarters all hits, you're not gonna be able to focus on what you need to do. You've just let all of that hijack you. So you know, let's talk about how you're gonna use this. So the key with worry and anxiety or what we call anchor thoughts. So remember, in the example with the car and your brain had an explanation that anchored the experience in the body and had everything lower. The key to you curbing anxiety is for you to have predetermined anchor thoughts for any situation that trigger your nerves. OK, because again, the feelings that you feel are natural if you don't get control of the body sensations and what your mind is thinking about it will escalate. So we're gonna cut it off at the past. So anchor thoughts. It's gotta because remember, we learned that anxiety is agitated. It's not a calm states, I don't think is Then think of like what excites you. What excites you. It's something that you're excited to do in the very near future. So for pitching your business, think about how you're gonna feel and how you're gonna celebrate when you actually land funding. And when you're about to walk into a meeting, you have a super specific vision of what that is, where you're gonna be doing. What are you gonna be drinking, Whether it's seltzer alcohol, who are you gonna be with? And as you feel that that anxiousness rise up and you go, I'm so excited to get in there and pitch, and then you think about that thing you're excited to, Dio your brain goes, Oh, he's not nervous to go be told. No, He's excited to celebrate when they finally land this. So you have cut off the brain escalating things. So it's basically when you feel your body gear up, catch it. Take control. 54321 because we want to cut off all the habits that are embedded right here. We're gonna wake in your prefrontal cortex. You can take control your in a picture and anchor thought with your mind. Super specific, you're gonna focus on it. I've got to give you some examples and then just quietly tell yourself I'm so excited. I'm so excited to do this thing.