ONE FINGER, ONE THUMB WORRY BUSTER

WHEN you’re comfortable with the anchor exercise, you can re-programme yourself to be more relaxed — to trigger your natural relaxation response at will and feel a greater sense of ease and wellbeing.

Remember, your nervous system cannot tell the difference between a real and vividly imagined experience. So, each time you imagined a stressful situation, you experienced that stress almost as much as if it were happening now.

By imagining those situations but this time responding with calm instead of stress, you are re-programming yourself to feel calmer and more able to handle those situations.

Before you do this technique, read through each step.

WRITE down the five most significant stresses in your life. Now, we are going to systematically lower the stress level of each one. This will cut stress levels in your unconscious.

CHOOSE one of the five situations. Using the calm anchor you created in the previous exercise, think about this situation you normally find stressful and squeeze the thumb and middle finger of your right hand together.

Feel that calm feeling spreading through your body and imagine taking it with you into that stressful situation. Imagine everything going well. See what you’ll see, hear what you’ll hear and how good it feels.

NOW, still squeezing your thumb and finger together, again imagine being in that stressful situation. This time, imagine a few challenges and notice yourself handling all the challenges perfectly thanks to now feeling calm. See what you’ll see, hear what you’ll hear and feel how good it feels to be so much calmer and in control.

STOP and think about that situation now. Notice the difference from only a few minutes ago. Do you feel less stressed? If not, just repeat until you do.

REPEAT this process with each one of the five situations until you feel much more relaxed and in control.

The more you do this exercise the easier it will get.