If you’ve been reading my blogs over the last couple of weeks, you may have noticed a theme. That theme is to rid our lives of anxiety and the devastation it causes. I said last week that anxiety is insidious. It’s destroying health, ruining relationships, damaging careers, obliterating bank accounts and trashing lives that are meant to be on-purpose, abundant and amazing. It has affected my life for too long. What about you? I want to offer you another weapon, for your arsenal, to kill anxiety and enjoy the abundant life you were born for and destined to live.
There was a day during the week just gone by when this powerful weapon became more apparent to me. Here I go, being very transparent about my insecurities, again. I hope this helps you to know and believe that we are all human and everyone experiences fear, doubts and concerns. For the last couple of weeks, the main source of my anxiety has been uncertainty, I created in my own head, about a physical discomfort I was experiencing in a manly area of my body. I don’t know why it is that we seem to always jump to the most devastating conclusion, but I did. The fact that I had lost my mother to cancer, and the current statistics, influenced my thinking.
I started imagining the worst-case scenario, and, I allowed it to flood my thinking. Now, do you think this eased my anxiety or magnified it? A rhetorical question! I immediately started to imagine how it would impact my life, my marriage, my work, my upcoming travel and my mission to create a wave of wellness all around the world. I started wondering how I could possibly be an ambassador for wellbeing if I was ill. I allowed this ‘stinking thinking’ to spiral into a swamp and, no matter what I tried, the anxiety and fear was still there. I tried prayer, I tried affirmation, I tried visualising and I even tried ‘freaking out in the love zone’. See last week’s blog, if you don’t know what I’m talking about. Nothing seemed to help for more than a few moments.
It seemed the more I sat and thought about it, the worse it got. The more I tried to formulate strategies, the more intense the anxiety became. The longer I camped out in my own head, the bigger the mental monster grew. Then something magical happened that made the anxiety disappear almost instantaneously… I took positive action! I picked up the phone and I made an appointment to see my ‘man’ doctor. That relieved the anxiety, because I knew I was taking control and positive action. Then there was a week or so to wait for the appointment, and, it was amazing how quickly the anxiety returned. Then on the day I was driving to the appointment, again magically, the anxiety was gone. Just when you think it would escalate because of the fear of what may be found, it disappeared.
Keep moving forward every day!
I don’t understand the neuroscience around this one and I don’t have a logical explanation, all I know is that positive action destroys anxiety. As I drove to the doctor, I was pretty calm. Whilst sitting in the waiting room, I was surprisingly relaxed. When walking to the doctor’s room, I seemed in control. In the moment I was lying on the bed, in my birthday suit, and the doctor was examining my private parts, I was, incredibly, free from any anxiety. It was quite weird. In my mind, I knew I was taking positive action, and I knew that no matter the outcome, at least I would know the situation and be able to decide on and take the best course of action.
Well, the examination went well, and the doctor had no concerns of anything sinister, so I got dressed and headed back out into the world and into my life, feeling fabulous. I had just spent the last two weeks of my life worried and anxious about something that I had manufactured in my mind. This, sadly, is the reality for many people. The acronym for fear is; False Evidence Appearing Real. In other words. We far too often create the problem in our own head, because we are spending too much time thinking and not enough time acting positively.
Have you ever heard the saying; ‘a dog in the fight doesn’t notice its fleas.’ That same dog, when lying around, will spend much of its time annoyed by fleas and scratching itself, but when in a fight, chasing a ball or sniffing the flowers will have no consciousness of being itchy. Positive action removes fear and anxiety, and honestly, the hardest part of any aspect of life is thinking about it. Our thoughts are often our worst enemy, and so, the more time we are in action, the less time we are creating mental monsters.
So, what does this mean practically? Well from a health and wellbeing point of view, it means; stop worrying about your health and go and get it checked. It means, stop thinking about how hard or uncomfortable exercise is and get off the couch and go for a walk. It means stop worrying about being overweight, and, start to eat the food you know you should be eating. From a relationship perspective, it means; stop wondering what your partner is thinking, or is angry about, and ask them, then, take action to fix the problem. It means stop worrying that they may leave you or get angry with you and just take action to do the little things, every day, to strengthen the relationship.
Financially, it means; stop thinking about your bills, and whether you’ll be able to pay them, and, take action to save more and earn more. If you are writing a book, stop wondering, worrying or being so self-critical about your writing, and, just write a little each day knowing you can polish it later. If you are training for a marathon or other fitness event, cease the anxiety of whether you’ll finish it and take action to do the training that will ensure you will. What are you trying to learn at the moment and anxious that you won’t know? Stop worrying and spend time every single day taking positive action to make sure you know and understand it.
Are you getting my drift here? We are all victims of our thinking at times, some of us more than others. The biggest challenge we face is that we can’t escape our thinking, as it goes with us wherever we go. We can however control it, and, even more powerfully we can direct it, the second we take positive action. When we are not in action, there is some reason why we seem to start thinking the worst and that’s when the anxiety starts to take hold. The moment, however, we take a step in a positive direction, all of a sudden, we have a new and exciting focus. The result; anxiety is gone!
As you face any and all anxiety this week, I want to encourage you to; tell yourself that ‘you are enough’ and try ‘freaking out in the love zone.’ If that is too challenging, then just take positive action. Any and every step you take in the direction of what you want, will almost immediately and totally wipe out anxiety. Then just focus each day on taking positive action and kill anxiety forever.