Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre

Understanding Anxiety, Habits, And Control - Part 2 of Anxiety Talks

• Hilary & Les • Season 3 • Episode 22

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We trace the line from fear to anxiety, show how freeze becomes a belief of incapability, and share simple tools that restore agency in social settings and morning routines. Clear reframes, practical scripts, and a gentle reminder: what one person can do, any person can learn.

• difference between fear and anxiety as clarity of response
• early sensitizing events and the tiger metaphor
• fight, flight and freeze as practiced habits
• how freeze becomes I am incapable
• morning anxiety, responsibility and control
• reframes and self talk that calm the system
• practical networking tools and polite exits
• replacing avoidance with small trained actions
• training the mind during workouts to build resilience

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SPEAKER_00:

It's a little bit foggy.

SPEAKER_05:

It is. It's a foggy morning. Which means it might be a little warmer up there.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, good.

SPEAKER_05:

Maybe like negative three or something. Can we check?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's probably that kind of fog where the air is warmer than the ground because it's been cold. You know, it's one of those things about where we live. Like when I look at the spectrum of weather that we have in this area of the world and compare it to other places. I mean, I don't think one place is better than another. I just think that we get a wide assortment of weather. And it's a really great distraction. Takes your mind off your other stuff.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I don't know if that's good or bad, but I know that it, you know, but yeah, let's do a podcast. Okay, let's talk about the weather.

SPEAKER_05:

It's just natural. We're Canadians. In the chat, our coldest morning yet here. Negative six and be frost, a beautiful front on everything, and frost. Yeah. Frost across the country.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it's wonderful to have people to talk to. And I really want to encourage everyone who listens to this podcast to consider one of two things. Either uh joining us at 7:15 in the morning at the Zoom link that you can get at the school or in Facebook, or send us a quick note and tell us what would be a better time for you. Because we could be flexible about this. We can uh we can accommodate people. And it doesn't have to be the same all the time. It can be different. You know, if next Tuesday at four is what works for you right now, then let's say Tuesday at four and we give it a try.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, so we're delving into the idea of anxiety again. In school, our our idea is to start up an anxiety course that will be available soon. And this is just getting that started, sort of laying out the the grid work for it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it gets us talking about all the things we do to help people with anxiety, but it also I think the real value in talking about it for ourselves as helpers and for others as helpers, and for all of us who from time to time find ourselves subject to this emotional state. I think there's a lot of value in just trying to understand where it comes from. What are the kinds of thought patterns? What are the kinds of interpretations that trigger fear? And then what do we do with it? Because the problem with anxiety is that it just stays with us, right? It's just there.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, I was saying yesterday, before the podcast yesterday morning, how you know I was thinking, well, what's the difference? If anxiety is fear, what's the difference between anxiety and fear? And sort of coming to the conclusion that fear is in sort of short bursts, and then anxiety is this sustained feeling that just feels like like it's not temporary, right?

SPEAKER_00:

And I'm gonna suggest that you know, we talked about grades of fear yesterday, you know, high grade fear and low grade fear, and how high grade fear is so imminent and it's so in your face that you know what to do about it. You you just act, you don't waste a lot of time.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, and maybe that's the magic understanding is that the difference between fear and anxiety is how clear the response would be, how obvious the response would be. Yeah, how natural the response would be, which is why we do some things when we're anxious. You know, one of the complaints we get is that, you know, when I get anxious, I do silly things, I do things I'm embarrassed by, I do things I don't like, right? My reactions are not proportional. Right. And that's kind of like the low-grade fear that stays there with you for a long time, eventually builds up enough that when some external event happening or person, somebody's words, somebody's actions, something going on in the world, it just pushes it over the hump to being a high grade fear. And, you know, this is why so many psychologists say it doesn't matter what you're afraid of, it's always the same. It's the tiger, right? You're face to face with the tiger, and that everything feels life-threatening. And I think that, you know, when we remember as hypnotists that there's a series of events, right? There's an initial event that gave us that emotion for the first time, and then subsequent events that reactivated that emotion and brought it forward again, so that you're in a situation where you feel that fear again, but then it tags into subconscious mind, it tags it into those previous events. And of course, then they all accumulate in the moment that you're in, and that's where the overreaction comes from.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

When we are children, when we are infants, when we are babies, everything we fear is a tiger because we everything that causes us to fear anything at all, it appears and feels like a threat to our very existence, our threat to our life. So for most of us, that first initial sensitizing event is over the top. It's like, whoa, I'm really, really scared. I'm afraid I'm going to die. And then that is the fear, that's the experience that gets triggered by subsequent experiences. And that's why we might look at ourselves and say we're overreacting, or somebody might say you're acting very childish. It's just that the series of fears backwards that get activated by the fear now are very extreme. They're tigers, right? It's always this tiger. And so it's not, I don't think it's disrespectful. I don't think that it's exaggerating to say to people who experience these kinds of uh low-grade fears that become paralyzing that it isn't something that's activated a fear of the tiger. Does that make sense? Did I make sense, sir?

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's all it's always, if you boil it down, it's it's, I think, always linked to what does this mean about my safety? You know, am I going to expire in this moment? But we don't live in that world really anymore anymore that tigers are after us. It's bill payments and uh, you know, spiders.

SPEAKER_00:

So just thinking out loud, something happens that triggers a fear response in us, and that activates the sympathetic nervous system. And the sympathetic nervous system has a very limited number of choices, right? The body wants to fight, attack, fight back, the body wants to flight, to run, to get the heck out of here, to avoid. And a lot of the people who study this now are saying that there are other aspects of this sympathetic nervous system, one of which is freed. And I think that's the one to think about. When we experience a fear and we don't know what to do, we freeze. And although the thing that we fear goes away, the fear itself doesn't. The amygdala's been activated. It's in there, it's in that that heightened part of your brain, it's in that motivational part of your brain. It's not been resolved, it's not gone away, the energy of it still exists, and that becomes your experience.

SPEAKER_05:

The freeze part?

SPEAKER_00:

The freeze part. My experience is this happens, I don't know what to do. And that meaning is what creates the emotion of fear, and that becomes the experience. So not only is the emotion never resolved, but the experience gets locked in anyway. And that's why we do it over and over and over. Because the subconscious mind learns that freeze wasn't a bad option. If we just freeze and we wait, eventually something else will come along to take this particular event's place.

SPEAKER_05:

Would freeze not be so literal? Like we're not frozen in time. Not not everybody. I know some people go through that, but would freeze also trickle into like maybe avoiding doing something, uh, not doing something, waiting, waiting to be distracted.

SPEAKER_00:

That's exactly what I think it is. Uh you know, we use the word freeze because that's what's out there in the science fight, flight, or freeze. And the science is advancing. Yep, you know, there are scientists who are suggesting there are other conditions in this. What matters to me is that what we learn as a person is a meaning about ourselves. And the first meaning about ourselves is I don't know what to do, which starts to really mean, just like I am guilty, I've done something bad, becomes shame. I am bad, I don't know what to do, becomes I'm incapable.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_00:

And so it goes from this opportunity really to try to address to becoming an a belief about yourself that I don't know what to do. I am incapable. And so when we think about things like social anxiety disorder, where you're put in a social situation, and maybe you're just, you know, not good at meeting people, and maybe you're just not good at rolling with people's bad jokes and people's teasing and things that people do to get over their own nervousness, their own discomfort in those social situations. You go into that situation, it triggers a fear. That fear creates this, I don't know what to do. So you do nothing. That then becomes your experience of social situations, and that becomes a belief that you say, I don't, I don't, I don't go to parties, I can't go to parties, I don't know what to do at parties, I'm no good at parties. And that becomes a belief about yourself so that when you find yourself moving forward in your life, and these kinds of situations are feeling like they're necessary for your life. I have to go to these events, I have to go to these parties, that I don't know what to do, I'm not capable, becomes again, triggers the fear, and that the fear happens, and the response is freeze, don't go.

SPEAKER_05:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

Don't go or hide in the corner.

SPEAKER_05:

Right. When you get there.

SPEAKER_00:

So these kinds of things become beliefs. And I think that this is this is good to see how the choices we make in moments of fear create beliefs about ourselves. So think about those people who find themselves in moments of fear and they act anyway, right? And when they act anyway, sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't, but they act. Yeah. And so they then lock in that action, you know. So what happens to a lot of men, I think, is they get in positions of fear, and men are heavily programmed with the idea that they should act anyway. They're heavily programmed with violent acting out. I mean, it's on TV, it's in every movie, it's in every piece of media they consume. They they, you know, that they're entertained by boxing and MMA. You know, these are the things that men consume and create their view of what a man is. So then what happens is in the same way, they have fear and they lash out, and that becomes their experience. They see a situation, they feel fear, they interpret it, I'm under attack, I need to attack back. They lock in those actions and that emotion of aggression, and then that becomes their experience, and then that's what they turn back to, and that becomes a cycle, which is why you see some people, men especially, when they get afraid, they act, you might say it's anger, but it is that fight response that gets triggered, and they got good at that. So that's what they do every time. It's the repeated thing, and that's why you'll see men who are afraid lash out. And I think women do it too. I'm not saying it's just men, but I think it's a problem that we recognize easily in our society when we consider men's, you know, anger physical response. What I'm pointing at is how the event with the meaning, I'm under attack, versus I don't know what to do, creates an emotion and that gets locked into a cycle.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So standing and freezing is an overreaction to a fearful event, and you don't might not like that about yourself. Lashing out becomes a reaction to a fearful event, and you might not like that about yourself. But to understand how you come about it honestly, you know, the event triggers a meaning. I don't know what to do. It triggers a meaning, I'm under attack. And that triggers the emotion that causes the response that is not helpful in the circumstance, only because thoughts become habits. Beliefs are habitual thoughts that trigger the same interpretations of events over and over. Am I babbling here?

SPEAKER_05:

No, not at all. Yeah, and I think for women, maybe maybe I'm painting with a wide brush here, but I think for women it's more flight, freeze and flight.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And in the same way, it becomes a habit. It becomes a habit because it's a well-practiced interpretation, right? Something comes up, it's fear. It's interpreted as get the heck out of here.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Avoid this, get around this. That creates that emotional response. And let's say, you know, it can be, it doesn't have to be physical, right? It can be conversational. You know, somebody confronts you, somebody insults you, somebody says something that puts you on the spot. And you might actually develop eloquence as a result. You become somebody who can dodge any question. You become somebody who can just make up things. I mean, this is the training we give politicians. When they ask you a hard question, twist the question so that you can talk about what you want to talk about. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's why we all get ticked off at politicians because you ask the questions and you never get an answer. You just get you just get the same stuff over and over, right? This is a patterned response. They get good at it. Right? There's the event, there's the emotion, I'm on the spot, right? Then there's the the the trained response, and it just starts to become a pattern.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah. Yeah. My brain this morning is hardly working.

SPEAKER_00:

I feel like it's a freeze response.

SPEAKER_03:

Maybe, maybe.

SPEAKER_00:

No, this is just thinking out loud in terms of using the tools that we have.

SPEAKER_03:

More coffee, yes.

SPEAKER_00:

That experience is the sum total of events plus our interpretation, plus the emotion. And that, like everything, this becomes a habit. You know, whether it works well or it works badly, it's still what the subconscious mind does. It interprets things.

SPEAKER_05:

What would you uh this might be a whole other podcast, but I have a lot of clients, and I've experienced it too, is this anxiety in the morning. It dissipates after a little bit, but it's that anxiety that you have as soon as you wake up. Like it's right there in your guts. What would you say that is? Is it the subconscious mind rolling all night? And you know?

SPEAKER_00:

My first thought on that is that what happens in the night can create emotions in the morning. We have dreams, and there's a whole world of possible interpretations about our dream life, and there's a whole world of people who uh have spent time thinking about and learning about and experimenting with sleep life, what goes on in our sleep, what goes on with our mind. So I do believe that what goes on in the night can be brought forward into the day. I had that experience today. But I also think that sometimes sleep is a complete break from the rest of your life. And when you awake, there's this automatic brain response, thought, I shouldn't say brain, mind response to immediately ask the question, what should I be doing? Immediately ask the question, what have what have I got to do?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

There's a real human thing to be asking, what what should I be doing? What am I supposed to do? What am I doing right now? What needs to be done right now? And I think that that lack of clarity about what you're going to do, that list that you create in your mind of things to do, the importance that you put on that list of things to do. You know, like I have a lot of sympathy for mothers who, when they wake up, they have the things they need to do, but they have all the things they need to make sure their kids do. And they take that on. That's part of their identity, that's part of who they are. They believe, for whatever their experiential reasons are, that they're responsible for their kids and the way their kids present themselves to the world. And so, you know, imagine a single person getting up in the morning and addressing all the things that they have to address. Well, they're going to work, which means they've got to get up and they've got to groom and they've got to dress and they've got to present themselves in a way that's positive and appropriate for this, this, the circumstance they're moving themselves into, and then add to that the obligation for two other people the same way of how they're going to move into their day and being prepared for their day and being dressed properly for their day and presenting themselves properly to the world when they start their day, when they leave the home. And that's a lot of obligation. And because, yeah, you can't control how other people react to you. You can't control how other people react to your kids. There's an element of fear there.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And there's there's no group, you know, that that fear, some fears can't be resolved, right?

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah. And I think that's what ties to morning anxiety is when it's really, it's sort of in the mind, this this fear that is not being resolved. And I think, you know, what should I be doing right now when I think back across clients? That's that seems to be the the thing that catches them in the morning, whether they're mothers or single people or retired people. Yeah, it seems to cross all those borders. The common denominator.

SPEAKER_00:

So I think, you know, as we all have anxieties, I think part of the answer is always going to be understanding what you're afraid of. Sometimes we have a fear of something that is beyond our control, right? You know, I have to, today I'm going to work and I have to tell Bill that he's going to get let go. Well, what I'm afraid of is how Bill is going to react. And that's totally out of my control. And it's a big spectrum of possibilities. And so I might have anxiety about having to tell this to Bill, and I might not know what I can do to keep from keep allowing this to go crazy, from this being a really horrible experience, right? But I think that comes from the idea that we feel responsible for it anyway. And that's where I think there's a flaw in our thinking. That's where I think we need to reframe. So as the mother gets up and has to groom, dress, feed, prepare their children to go out the door and get on the school bus or walk to school or take the transit to school, there's things that she can't be responsible for. She can't be responsible for the behavior of other kids. She can't be responsible for the behavior of teachers. I mean, they're they've got their own life going on, right? They're, they've got all their own reasons to be happy or sad or difficult or friendly. They've got all their own stuff going on. This is all beyond that mother's control. And more importantly, she can't really control her kids. She can't, you know, my poor mother, she had that problem with me. She can't really control how the kids are going to behave. So to take on that responsibility is going to heighten the anxiety, and there's nothing you can do about it. So I think step one is understand what you're really afraid of and accept that there are things beyond your control, that there are things that you can't anticipate, that there are potential outcomes that you haven't thought of and can't think of. And more importantly, have no responsibility over. I think part of anxiety is to remember that it's a message and to try to be clear about the message. What am I afraid of? What could go wrong? What is the bad thing I'm trying to avoid? What is the worst possible outcome?

SPEAKER_05:

And I think too, these are also tied to limiting beliefs about ourselves. I have a lot of clients that say with work, they wake up in the morning or they wake up in the middle of the night thinking I'm not doing enough, I'm not good enough for this, I'm I'm bad. Uh, you know, what is what are people thinking about me at work? But then it it cut when it comes down to it, when we talk about it, they're doing great. They're doing great, but they're just so hard on themselves.

SPEAKER_00:

It's uh it's a habit to challenge themselves constantly. It's a habit to ask themselves, what else should I be doing? It's a habit to think of themselves in comparison to others and to be quote unquote striving for the best, to be the best. That comparison's a dangerous thing, but we can talk about that another day. I think being clear about what you're afraid of, and then being clear about what you can and can't control in that circumstance helps. I think there's a lot of value in self-talk, and I don't think there's anything wrong with telling yourself in those circumstances, I've done everything I can do. I think that's a really useful self-statement. I've done my best, I've done everything I can. This part is out of my control. I think that that's a good response to fear and anxiety. I'm doing everything I can. Some of this is just out of my control. Um, and for those who, you know, who want more, you know, I think that's the magic moment when you use that idea of I've done everything I can do. Now I give it to God, whatever that word means, whatever, whatever way you want to conduct that. I give this to the universe. I've done my best. I've contributed my best to the universe. I'm I'm releasing it, is what's key. I'm letting go of it. I'm not gonna think about it anymore. I'm not gonna engage it anymore. And, you know, I've had I've had clients who have had a lot of success with that idea of just, all right, I'm releasing this and giving it over to the universe.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

To God, whatever word you want to use. There's things you just can't control. And the unfortunate thing is, experience becomes your measuring stick. And all you need is one bad experience to change your measuring stick.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

One situation where you didn't know what to do, you froze, people laughed, people mocked, people hurt you, and that locks in that experience and that interpretation that says, I'm I'm no good. I I'm not capable.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah. And it doesn't even have to be, I'm thinking myself here, it doesn't even have to be people mocking or laughing. It can be like an internal embarrassment, right? I I've been to a couple shows recently where when I'm speaking to people, when I'm meeting people, it's almost like I start to, I don't know what's happening, but I'm starting to speak really fast or say say silly things, or like anxiety comes out way up more than it's ever in my life. And I walk away going, oh my God, did I just say that? Like, you know, what am I doing? And then I leave the little convention or whatever I was at, and and I think, oh my God, am I cut out for this? You know, all those, all those thoughts. I can't network anymore. What's going on? All those, you know, diminishing thoughts that yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So I used to, you know, back in my business training days, I used to teach people networking. And I never told them, I sometimes would hint at it, but I never told them that I suffered from all the same anxieties about it. When I could avoid it, I did. When I could make excuses, oh, I can't, I would. But I understood a few things about it. The first thing about it is that sense that I don't know what to do. And so while other people would teach networking and talk about the importance of, you know, taking your business card and stuff, I would teach them how to shake hands and practice saying their name. And they thought that was silly. And practice having what I used to call the seven-second shtick, which is just here's my memorized seven-second introduction to who I am. That way I have it. I've practiced it. When I shake somebody's hand, I know how to shake their hand. When I'm saying who I am, I've practiced it so many times that it just comes off my tongue really easily. I don't fumble over it. I teach them how to look the other person in the eyes and listen to their name. When they say their name, yeah, this is hard because people don't like looking in eyes, but it's it's just a simple place to put your eyes. Now you put your eyes at their eyes and you listen to them say their name, and then you immediately repeat it back to them, right? So I shake your hand and I say, Hi, I'm Les. And you say, I'm Hillary. So I say, Hillary, it's nice to meet you, Hillary. Tell me about what you do, Hillary. And I say that three times, and it's amazing how I will remember your name the next time I look in your eyes. It's an old Greek memory technique. The Greeks used to sit in rooms and they try to memorize long lists, and everything in the room had something attached to it. So if they had a list of a hundred things, there'd be a hundred spots in the room where they have attached each thing on the list so that they could look around the room and be stimulated by what's in the room to remember. And it's just an old, old memory technique, and you can do that using somebody else's eyes, right? So you say their name back to them to make sure you pronounce it right. And it and in our world, so we're so multicultural, right? There are so many names that we are look hearing for the first time, right? Really, you know, the beauty of human speaking and names, some names we've just never heard before. And so it's a really great thing to just try to. Repeat the name back while looking them in the eye. Right. And then that to me it was always the easiest way. Hillary, it's nice to meet you, Hillary. Tell me about what you do, Hillary. And that three times of saying it helped me to remember later what their name was. And in fact, it helped me so much that a lot of people were impressed by it. Right. Because we all forget names. It's what we do. Yeah. So for you to actually put in the effort to try to remember is actually a really powerful thing when it comes to meeting people.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So, and then I taught them that the hardest part in any of these events is talking, knowing what to talk about.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah. And how do you get away from them? Like how do you end a conversation? I think that's the worst thing for me.

SPEAKER_00:

I would also teach that. But the thing that I would teach first is how to ask questions. You can make somebody like you quickly by simply asking them about themselves. Get somebody talking about themselves, and they will like you. So arm yourself before you even walk in the door with questions you're going to ask them, right? Get them talking about themselves. And for me, that was what was always easiest was to get them talking about their family. Right. Now, how do you get out of the conversation? It's really simple. You look somebody in the eye and you say, I'm sorry, but there's somebody over there I have to go meet. Will you excuse me? That's all you have to say. I promise to meet this person. They've come in the door. Could you excuse me for a second? And then just go straight to the bar. But the point is, is that's a great way to end. It's very polite. It's very allowed. It's very encouraged, especially at a networking event. So this is the stuff that I would arm them with. And now that thought that I don't know what to do, I don't know how to do it, it starts to fade. In fact, they start to think, well, I'm pretty good at this. So I can tell them honestly today, I still don't particularly like doing it, but I have the tools that I need to be able to survive those events.

SPEAKER_05:

Right. Yeah, that's pretty good. I'll try those at the next fair, psychic fair.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, the biggest one to always remember is question. Have questions. Have a short list of questions you ask people, and that will always keep the conversation going. And you'll find easy segues into that.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah. I get so nervous sometimes. I've noticed I've oh man, I've noticed I've been doing this. This is random, I know, but someone will ask me, How are you doing? Right. And I'll I'll answer and I won't ask them back. Oh my God. And then I walk away and then I think about it all night. And I get so nervous that my brain shuts off.

SPEAKER_00:

I think that there's lots of little things in life that, you know, nobody taught us and it needs to be taught, you know, like handshakes.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Right? Like there are people I avoid because they think it's uh arm wrestle. Right?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm even to the point now when I see those people, I do a fist bump.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. Because they think that squeezing your hand really hard is the appropriate thing to do, right? And it it's not, right? If you catch somebody's hand wrong, it hurts. And what's gonna happen, quite literally, is they're gonna dislike you. That's what you do to yourself when you put when you go around with a handshake that's a killer kung fu grip, right? Yeah, you make people dislike you.

SPEAKER_05:

Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Right? Like you don't want that. That's not your purpose. You want people to respect you and like you. You don't want people to say, oh, what a goof. He squeezes my hand till the blood comes out my fingertips, right? Like it's just awful what some people do, and they think that it's the appropriate thing to do.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Which is why I used to teach it.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, someone taught me to match their handshake.

SPEAKER_00:

That was me.

SPEAKER_05:

I can't remember.

SPEAKER_00:

Squeeze exactly as hard as they do.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

If they give you the kung fu grip, you gotta do your best to give it back. And if they uh give you the dead fish, then you do your best to give them the dead fish back.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Some people, that's their response to the people with the kung fu grip, is they make their hands so limp that the person with the kung fu grip is is afraid to give them the kung fu grip. Anyway, these are just silly examples.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

That when we are are anxious about certain circumstances, we take the time to understand why we're afraid of it. We consider if our answer to ourselves is, I don't know how to do it, I'm not sure how to deal with that, I don't know how to go to a party and be comfortable, right? The fear wants resolution. The fear wants satisfaction. And sometimes you have to say to yourself, what am I afraid of? And then go out of your way to learn how to satisfy the fear.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, because not going to the party is also satisfying the fear.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it becomes the habit, doesn't it? Whereas if you took the time to say, Well, when I go to parties, what happens? What is it that I'm afraid of? What is it that that I am freezing over? And the the the emotion requires response. The emotion requires release, the emotion requires satisfaction. Now, I don't know if this is like, you know, a world-shattering discussion of anxiety or just some trivial examples of things that that people can uh use in the future.

SPEAKER_05:

Well, I think people like to hear examples because it makes them feel like, oh, I'm not alone in this. Because it is easy to think that you're the only one. You know, like at a networking event, you look around and you think everyone's really good at this except you, you know. I think it's important for people to know that we're all suffering in our own little way.

SPEAKER_00:

Anxiety is real, it's real for everybody. It comes in degrees and it gets exacerbated, it grows because it becomes habitual in our in our response, which is often to do nothing, which then gets reinterpreted as I'm not capable.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, yeah. You are capable. I'm capable.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, maybe this will be the reframe for the day. I think I watched a movie once, and I've forgotten the name, it'll come to me. I watched a movie once where the theme in the movie was what one man can do, any man could do. Now, just change that so it's not sexist and crazy. What one person can do, any person can do. We have natural abilities and talents, and we have abilities and talents that we acquire out of practice, out of intention. But the truth is that what one human can do, any human can do. And that's the truth. And the difference is the belief in themselves and the effort they've put in to being able to do it. So absolutely, you could be a concert pianist, but you probably don't want to. It doesn't appeal to you. It's not exciting, or it's just not, it does just doesn't fit you.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

That doesn't mean you couldn't do it. What it means is there's nothing inside you motivating you to try. And that's your authenticity. That's why we don't try to do what everybody else does. We try to find that thing in ourselves, that calling, that vocation, that that interest yearning. We try to find that, that curiosity in ourselves. But what it means is when it comes to general social environments or general situations in life, it's important to remember that what one person can do, any person can do. And the person who's doing it well, that I admire, took the time to learn it. And the person who feels like they can't has not yet taken the time to learn it. And so it's not about, it's not about that there's something wrong with me. It's about I haven't tried yet. I haven't practiced yet. I haven't learned that yet. So what one person can do, any person can do. And remember, I am always learning. I am always learning. There's things I don't want to learn. I don't want to learn the knit. Some people love it, but I just don't want to learn to knit. It just doesn't appeal to me. It doesn't intrigue me. It doesn't get me excited. Some people love it. God bless them. Doesn't mean I can't knit or that I'm incapable of knitting, or that I'm not smart enough to knit. Just means I don't want to learn that.

SPEAKER_04:

You need to, in the comments, you need to zen the knit.

SPEAKER_00:

There you go. And that's what the great knitters do. That's what the great knitters do. And for me, I, you know, I don't knit. I pick up a guitar and I noodle away and I zen my noodling. I sit down with the guitar. Nine times out of ten, the dog comes and sits at my feet, and I just play around on the guitar.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, in the comments or zen the workout, which you've got down.

SPEAKER_00:

I've started to get pretty zenny in my workouts. Yeah. The great thing about working, your body is your mind is looking for something to do. What it tends to do is I hate this, I hate this, oh God, this is awful. And when you can get a grip on that, and you and you say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is making me stronger. I'm getting stronger with every repetition.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

What do you mean, 10 burpees? I only want to do eight. These extra two burpees are making me strong.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

It's what you do with your mind while you're doing other things.

SPEAKER_05:

Speaking of working out, it's time. It's time. We gotta go. Thanks for joining us. And yeah, if you're listening on YouTube or Apple Podcasts or Spotify or any of your listening streaming services, just check the description and you'll find our links to our website, also the link to our school. Have a beautiful day too. And yeah, send us questions, join us live. There's so many ways of getting involved. Have a good day.

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Hilary Leehane

Host
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Les Smith

Host