Anxiety feels like we actually get wound up. It feels tight (for many, like tightness in chest). It is a contracted closed down feeling.
- How can we unwind?
- “The only way out is through.”
Use awareness for learning to translate an intellectual idea to a body experience.
- Concepts in the service of embodied wisdom.
- We can understand something intellectually but it doesn’t affect behavior unless we have this embodied wisdom.
- when we know it in our bones
Map out the habit loops around anxiety (you can do this is with any habit)
- If we are not aware of these habits loops that trigger the behavior and the reward, we are just going to keep acting them out unconsciously.
- The first step is to just become aware.
Reward base learning system – Hacking into our brains
- We have different reward values
- How rewarding is this right now?
- Not intellectually but in an embodied feeling?
- We have to actually feel into it.
- Helps us to see the natural consequences.
- Drop into your direct experience and ask what are you getting from this?
In your own experience right now, what does fear feel like compared to joy? How about fear to calm and/or connection?
- Does it feel more closed or open? Which one feels better? Does one feel more expanded?
- Remind ourselves of this and really feel into what calm and connection feel like.
- Start small with just today, the next hour, minute, moment. This will help us stay grounded. Don’t worry about tomorrow. Plan for tomorrow when it comes.
Re-source: Recondition
Many of us are living lives that we should not be living.
- This is a frame of reference problem.
- It is all encompassing – you have a frame of reference for everything.
- We are seeing the world from different vantage points.
- Do many things seems dangerous or as a threat?
When we feel something as an attack, we close down, just like many of us close down with fear and anxiety as a survival mechanism.
- But when we close down we are not open to learning.
- We have to be in growth mindset to learn.
- Being closed to criticism both feels painful and at the same time, it doesn’t open us to learning.
When we can start to see that this is not a threat (awareness), we can learn from this experience and bow down to it as a teacher.
- This opens us up to growth mindset by taking things less personally.
craving and resource from “Impact Theory” with Tom Bilyeu and Judson Brewer