A.B.C. STOP This Anxiety

Ever have one of those days when you are feeling great one minute and then all of a sudden a wave of anxiety washes over you? I want to share with you a simple and successful process that I call A.B.C. Stop This Anxiety Technique.

A - AWARENESS. The key to any change is awareness. In this powerful state, all things are possible because it puts you back in the driver's seat and able to make choice changes. In this state you can decide to shift from your sudden negative condition to a more positive one. Once you set the course to move toward a positive direction you are now ready to go to the next step.

B - BREATH. For hundreds of years many religions and cultures have used breathing techniques to feel better. Deep diaphragmatic breathing is one of the breathing techniques that engages our mind-body system and allows us to get more oxygen and a greater sense of clarity, confidence, and calmness.

Here is an interesting fact. There are many small blood vessels at the bottom of our lungs that not only helps oxygenate our whole system but also help slows down our heartbeat and decrease our blood pressure, eventually making us get to a state of calmness.

The best way to practice this type of breathing is by lying down and placing one hand on your abdomen and the other on your chest. Next inhale through your nose and allow that breath to go all the way to your abdomen. Notice how your stomach rises when you do this. Exhale normally to allow your abdomen to go down. Repeat until you feel that you can do this easily. You can also do this breathing technique sitting or standing. To ensure this anxious feeling does not sneak up on you again determine the triggers of this feeling by asking quick and simple questions. Please read on.

C - COMMUNICATION. Our mind loves to answer questions so why not ask yourself simple questions in order get to the root of your anxiety. Getting to the cause of your sudden change in state can help prevent it from happening again. Here are some questions that you might consider asking yourself:

"Whose anxiety did I just take on?"

"What was I just thinking about that could have brought this on?"

"Am I about to do something that I am nervous about?"

Whatever answer comes up is perfect; do not spend time analyzing your answer. This step is just meant to reveal the trigger, acknowledging it, and then release it. The less time you spend thinking about the trigger the better. Just let it go.

I still use this technique and have found it to be extremely beneficial in shifting from an anxious state to a happier one.

Warning... This A.B.C. Stop This Anxiety Technique is meant to release the fleeting anxious emotions. This is not a substitute for medical treatment. Always seek medical assistance for any harmful and debilitating emotional conditions.

Source

How Your Feelings Affect Mental Health

Your emotional health plays a large role in your ability to deal with life problems and stress. You can establish good emotional health by first identifying what it is you are feeling. This may sound like a no-brainer, but many people have difficulty honing in on exactly what they are feeling at a particular moment. 

Other people find themselves able to identify what it is they are feeling, yet are unable to manage their feeling to the extent they don’t feel overcome, or flooded, by their emotions.

Good emotional health requires that you allow yourself to be present at the moment, identify what it is you are feeling, and not get stuck or flooded in the feeling. Thus, while your feelings can appear quite real and strong, it is worth considering whether your feelings are based on reality, or personal beliefs or experiences. 

Put another way, you can examine whether your experience of feeling certain things (sadness, hopelessness, anxiety, fear) is based on fact or your own subjective lens. How you approach this task will, in large part, determine your relationship with feelings.

Learn to control your feelings

To take an example, imagine a person struggling with feeling depressed. This feeling can be so debilitating that sufferers feel as if they are drowning in their feelings. Associated feelings of resignation, helplessness, and hopelessness are not too uncommon. Persons suffering from depression may come to identify themselves through their depression, rather than viewing themselves as multi-faceted human beings who have possessed strengths and abilities while also struggling with depression. 

This is an important distinction which often gets lost. By looking at feelings as representations of thoughts and actions, rather than some external, uncontrollable force from which there is no escape, we are then able to apply a more scientific and objective approach to our relationship with the feelings created and stored inside ourselves.

Many depression sufferers are stuck, or entrenched, in their depression to the extent that they are no longer able to separate feeling depressed from “becoming their depression.” In separating the feeling of depression as just that –one feeling on a continuum of many possible, self-generated feelings (generated through our thoughts and actions) – from “being in the state of depression,” we allow ourselves to feel what we feel without “becoming that which we feel.” 

We can now change our relationship to our feelings (and not allow ourselves to become flooded by certain distressing or debilitating emotions) by changing the way we choose to think about and act in relation to such feelings. This takes the “sting” out of the emotion and places it into a range of choices. 

Thus, we can identify the feeling, acknowledge it, and let it pass on through rather than allowing ourselves to be immersed in or controlled by that feeling.

Source

Who is in charge of your emotions?

Everyone wants to enhance their quality of life. Everyone wants to be more fulfilled. But almost all of us get stuck at times in our limiting beliefs and emotional patterns. We make habits out of feeling frustrated, worried, sad or overwhelmed. But it is these disempowering habits that prevent us from doing what we are really capable of – even if that something is just being happy. 


While we cannot control the events that happen in our lives, we can master how we experience these events. People are always going to encounter stressful times. It could be losing a job, losing your health or even losing a loved one. Something happens that is outside our control, and it knocks us down. But stress, anger, sadness – these feelings don’t come from the facts, they come from the meaning that we give the facts. Of course, the terrible things that happen are real. But the question is, how are you going to allow that to shape your life? Are you going to let it tear you down, or are you going to use it to empower and enlighten the way you go through life?

It’s all about the meaning that you give the events and experiences of your life. Because when you come up with a new meaning, you can get a new perspective, and, ultimately, a new life.

THE STORIES WE TELL OURSELVES

We unconsciously decide what events and experiences in our life mean; we do it all the time, but may not be aware of it.

Take a downturn in the economy, for example. One person could interpret that as, “I’m going to be broke.” Another person, though, might say, “This means I’m going to work harder and I’m going to be more creative about saving.”

What do you think the outcome of this thought pattern will be for each of these individuals? Pretty different, right? Is it apparent why each will have very different approaches to life, and why each will experience very different emotions? That all comes from the meaning each person assigned to the event.

Now, let’s move to something a little more personal. Consider a woman who had been adopted as a baby. One path she could take is to devalue herself, to believe that because she was adopted, that she wasn’t good enough to be loved. She could also take the opposite approach, and consider the fact that someone chose her and chose to love her. What’s the significance of her decisions over what story to choose? How will this impact her decisions in her daily life? How will it affect her bigger decisions?

The former story creates a sense of loss, while the latter celebrates her life and her worth. And the story she chooses will impact her whole life – because the decisions that control us are the decisions about meaning, and meaning equals emotion.

TRADE YOUR EXPECTATIONS FOR APPRECIATION

If choosing the disempowering story sounds familiar, you aren’t alone. We all tell ourselves stories that make us miserable when we could be feeling joy. We make ourselves feel sad, worried, anxious, shameful, guilty, fearful and enraged on a consistent basis. Why? Because we are wired that way.

The human mind is always looking for what you could lose, what you could have less of or what you could never have. It might seem counterintuitive, but it’s a matter of survival and of protection. You are biologically wired to prepare yourself for the worst at all times. That is why it is up to you to take conscious control over the stories you tell yourself and the resulting emotions you experience.

The secret to doing this is to trade your expectations for appreciation. If you do this, your whole life will change in that moment. And if you keep doing it, your life will change forever.

Go back to the woman who was adopted. She had an expectation that her biological mother and father should have kept her. And that expectation could have tainted her entire life. But if she shifted her expectations to appreciation that somebody picked her consciously and loved her, without the obligation or the biological imperative to do so, her entire life would change. This is the power of trading expectations for appreciation.

TAKING BACK CONTROL

The choice is yours. What are you going to focus on? What story are you going to let guide your life? You get to choose what meaning to assign. This is the one power that you have right now in this moment that can change everything.

The only thing keeping you from getting what you want is yourself. The only thing keeping you from the joy you deserve is the disempowering story you keep telling yourself. But what if you decided right now to offer yourself a new core of belief? What if everything in your life, including the most painful and traumatic events, was happening for you, not to you? What if everything was designed for you to actually have a greater life and have more to give and more to enjoy?

If you want real freedom in your life, you must make a decision to stop allowing external events to shape your happiness. And that is only done by becoming the master of meaning and finding the empowering meaning in anything and everything that comes your way.

Source

Tony Robbins: Stop Your Negative Thinking (Tony Robbins Depression)

TEDxOrangeCoast - Daniel Amen - Change Your Brain, Change Your Life

Really really! This is so worth listening to. What you put in your mouth,

effects your brain! It's not too late to change your brain!

It dictates the quality of your LIFE!  A must listen too. Amazing!!!!

How to get stuff done when you are depressed