Ex- soldier will help your battle for peace - of mind
In the first of his regular columns, Kevin Mullen shares advice on how to deal with anxiety in everyday life. He writes... One word goes hand in hand with the other, anxiety and fear.
One often follows the other and is never far behind.
It could be a million and one things that brought anxiety to our door.
Past present or even future thoughts actions and concerns, but the one thing for sure is fear will always be attached to it.
We at Serenity NLP work very hard to help eradicate anxiety for our clients and anyone we deal with and over the past few months we have seen that it isn’t just the anxiety that is hurting people it is also the fear that goes with it and often we could have dealt with the anxiety if it were just that alone, but when we put as a pair then it becomes a real battle, a battle that at times can seem hopeless and overwhelming.
I promise you that’s just your thoughts messing with you and during this article we will always rely on facts over thoughts and show you how to Face Everything And Rise.
I will show you some ways of dealing with the initial thoughts and easing the worry and anxiety that is so destructive to your way of life.
Always play the FACT V THOUGHT game.
Now here is the initial thought or worry and it starts to creep up on us, we can feel it, we can see it coming and until now we couldn’t really do much about it.
So as the thought of feeling starts to creep up on us in your loudest voice in your own mind scream STOP.
That will stop all thoughts and feelings dead for a few seconds and allow you the clarity to self analyse.
What we do is we look at what we are about to worry about or become scared of and we place it out in front of us and we pin it to a wall. Next to it we look at the facts and place them next to them. So for example. Thought: I Just said good morning to my boss and they totally ignored me = they hate me, they don’t like me, my job isn’t secure, I can’t even get good morning right. Now this sets in motion a lot of negativity and feelings of anxiety and fear - the unknown is always scary and that will lead to even more anxiety in your life.
So now here comes the FACT part.
They are the boss and in fact a great deal of responsibilty is on them so perhaps they were pre- occupied, perhaps they didn’t hear you say it, perhaps they are having an off day and are focused on a million other things. You see the mind, if you let it, will always take you to the least positive suggestion first and that is where we pit it against the facts. And once we have done that you will be able to say ‘ okay, later when I see them I will say, is everything okay as I said morning today to you and you ignored me?’ You have stopped going straight to the negative and that is one small obstacle overcome where we reduced worry or anxiety before it even took place. I receive so many calls and messages from clients that have so much positivity and value to offer if they only could remain strong and focused.
We become what we think. If we wake and the first thing we do is give a blast of negative self talk to ourself then that’s the mood for the rest of the day. Trust me when I say anxiety is not hard wired into your brain forever.
It is a thought process and a way of thinking and it was developed by you at some stage and with any pattern or habit it can and it will be broken. Just because we are struggling now doesn’t mean to say it will be this way forever - trust me it won’t. It can and it will be changed, but for that to happen we need to want to change it and wake up and fight, drive toward and focus on beating this every single day.
The more positive and focused on beating the anxiety we are the easier it is to beat it in the long run.
What really is fear? It is a thought, an emotion, a perception, a self destructive pattern of thinking. It is also what keeps us on our toes and gives us at times a razor sharp focus. Fear is not just a negative emotion, it is also a positive and we just need to learn how to use it to our advantage instead of against us. Okay, so you ask ‘ how do we do that?’ Well, in simple terms we use it to drive us and we use it to remind ourselves that we are normal healthy walking, taking human beings and we have to have all these emotions in life to keep us focused and driven when needs be. Fear really isn’t something that always has to be a negative in life. In fact we can use it to enhance our performance and our perceptions of how and why we do things. Instead of using fear as a negative use it as a motivator. Use it to go as hard as you can at every task that scares you and everything you are afraid of, use fear as a positive and it will push you harder than normal intrinsic motivation ever could. Let’s just look at people with extremely high risk jobs - oil rig workers, pilots, armed forces, law enforcement - all these jobs have an extremely high risk factor to them. If the people who carried them out hid from the reality and the fear that comes with them, well we wouldn’t have any one in that field. In fact they use the fear of failure to keep them focused, driven and giving it everything they have.