In this session, JP walks you through a step-by-step approach to interrupting the loop of anxiety that we can all get stuck in. Through this, you will develop a wiser relationship with your physical sensations, emotions and thoughts.
If you want to get more resources and hear JP live, please sign up for our Facebook Group, Last 8% Project, at https://www.facebook.com/last8morning.
Are you finding yourself more irritable than you want to be? Do you sometimes get tired of not being able to relax and enjoy more of your moments?
This is Anxiety Week, and today we are going to build tools to manage anxiety so that you can enjoy more of your moments, and so you manage your anxiety every day and in your more difficult Last 8% Moments.
In order to conquer anxiety, we need to learn how our mind works. We need to become students of human behavior, starting with ourselves!
We need to bring a curiosity to our experience, about how our brain works so that we can see more intimately what goes on in us in order to take steps the necessary to change them. Here is one the most important things I have learned over the years:
We push things away we do not like we attracted to things we do like
Big insight, right? But it is true. We are taught from an early age to change our situation if we are not comfortable.
The problem comes when it becomes our habit: that we have to change whenever we are uncomfortable.
Why? Because we end up in a constant to-ing and fro-ing trying to get things, just right. But the problem is that things are infrequently, just right.
Sometimes they are not very comfortable at all — and sometimes they are just neutral.
And, what do we do? We try to make it more comfortable or we try to change it so it is more interesting. I get a kick out of seeing people who are stopped at traffic light who can’t just sit there, no, they need to look down at their phone because having things be neutral is insufferable. If you are one of these people, just know you have lots of company, including me.
Why do I make this point?
Because when it comes the strong physical sensations, emotions or thoughts we experience with anxiety, we can habitually react to them. We don’t want to feel them, and we try to push them away.
When this happens internally — we can end up in the loop I talked about in the first podcast of Anxiety Week.
We need to find a way to interrupt the loop. We need to learn to be in wiser relationship with things that don’t feel good. How do we do that? Where do we start?
We need to understand our triggers, and these can come from both inside and outside:
Think about it for yourself — what are your triggers? Now that you know your triggers — take a moment and see where you feel anxiety in your body most strongly.
Where do you feel it most in your body?
How do these sensations feel like? Just bring a curiosity to them. Without trying to change them.Think about in terms of two barometers of pleasant, unpleasant or calm, not calm.
Even right now, you might be feeling some of the strong sensations just from thinking about them — now take a breath right into this part of that body, right where you feel these sensations most acutely.
Be curious about how it feels to breathe into this area.
Remember we are not trying to change anything. Just try watching it, bringing non-reactive, non-judgment to these sensations.
Music by @nop on CC Mixter, http://beta.ccmixter.org/people/Lancefield.
