Anxiety Control Center

I was reading an article on how Olympic athletes learn to achieve success in moving towards their goals.  I was delighted to read that they do just what I was  asking you to do in our online coaching workshop.  Successful people approach their goals in a very specific manner.

Olympic athletes set small daily goals, achievable steps they take, no matter what towards the bigger goal of being a top athlete.  In our coaching I asked all of you to “lower the bar” making the steps so small, that you can only find success. By making the steps so small you almost effortlessly glide towards the bigger goals you set.  First you set the goal, then you break it down into the smallest possible pieces, that will  take you towards your goals.

Remember making the goal so small that you can’t help but succeed, will end up motivating you to setting and keeping the next small step.  When you learn to keep your commitments to yourself, by achieving these small steps you will find your motivation to take the next step grows.

To recap: When fear, or procrastination seems to stop you. Take another look at you goals.  And ask yourself these questions:

1. Are the steps  small enough so that you will take the step, even when you are tired, or not in the mood?

2.  Is the larger goal you’ve set really important to you ? What will you feel like after achieving the goal?

3.  What else is important about achieving the goal, what is underneath the desire?

Typically the reason we get stuck with goals is that they take us out of our comfort zone.  But, if you sit down and create tiny, baby steps towards the goal, and make a decision to take the steps, before you know it you are tapping into your full potential, moving in the direction with comfort, energy, joy and creativity.

Making it a habit to do something towards your goals every day, keeps you on course.  It becomes a habit. I gave one example in yesterdays post.  Here is another example of setting the bar so low you can only succeed.  I’ve asked many of you to read the book I recommended on how to get others to listen when you speak.  If you set a goal of just 2 pages a day, by the end of the week you will have 14 pages read.  By the end of the month 60 pages will be read.   And in two months you will be more than half way through the book.  All because you kept to you commitment to yourself to read 2 pages a day.  And in addition you’ve established the habit, finding the power of moving towards you goals, one tiny step at a time.

To get more information on the online coaching group.  Go to action ends procrastination.

Hope to have you join us in this journey of self discovery.

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Have fun doing this exercise, as you beginning to train your mind to create positive future images.   These images can then be used in later exercises for setting off a “touch anchor” or for another technique call  the “map across.”

So here is your mind-expanding exercise, read all the directions first:

Answer the following Questions:
1. What would a perfect day be like for you?
2. What would you be feeling, seeing or hearing in this perfect day?
3. Put in everything from the smallest stuff to what is happening and whom you are with.

Here is a very important part of how to write this.

1. Write what you are feeling, seeing or hearing as if you are experiencing it right now.

Or
2. You can write it down as if you were looking back, at the end of the day and reporting on what happened.  What you saw, felt, heard.

Present moment example: I am walking in the forest, seeing the sun streaming through the leaves of the trees.  The  smell of the pine needles as they crunch under my feet, is so soothing. And there just a few feet away, there is  a  bird with the most beautiful red color, I can hardly believe I’m lucky enough to be in this place at this time, and my best friend walking next to me.  . . .     (present tense).

Or I spent the most wonderful day, it was so perfect for me because I started out not even knowing that I would see the most beautiful sights, and find joy in a simple walk . . . .   (As if the event has already happened)

As you describe the perfect day step into it, be there, feel the feeling, see what there is to be seen.  Notice what happens in your body as you act “as if” you are in the event.

Please take action and write it down first. In this way you make sure it is set in the present as if you are experiencing it.  Or as if you are “in it” once again as you remember the day from the end of the day.

But, even just “thinking” about and being in the most beautiful day creates a change in your state.  You’ll find that when you actually take the action of doing this exercise your unconscious will hear it as if it is happening and your “state of mind” can shift as if you actually just had a positive day.    Many people notice an immediate shift in their energy level after dong this exercise.  Notice which way has more power for you writing or thinking about it in the present tense or  writing or thinking about it as if it already happened.

To get more information on the online coaching group.  Go to action ends procrastination.

Hope to have you join us in this journey of self discovery.

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We had an amazing group of people at the Coaching call for “Freeing Yourself From the Shackles of Fear, Anxiety, & Feeling Stuck”.

The action plan for next week is to find a memory for calm, security or confidence. We’ll  be using this memory in a technique that will trigger the calm feeling whenever desired.

For my readers I decided to give you a quick overview of what we are doing, so you can follow along with with this action step.  To get coaching on this and many other calming techniques  I hope you will sign up for our next TeleWorkshop, March 11th, 2010. There is still time to get in on this group.

Creating a feeling of security, confidence, and calm

A. First step for this is to have a vision or memory of the feelings you want.

There are two ways to do this: Find a memory from the past or to create a new memory or  “visualization” of a future event.

1.Find a memory from the past.
a.  Remember a time when you had the feelings of confidence, calm or comfort.
b. To do this just close your eyes and drift back to a time in your life, even a brief memory when you felt confidence, calm or comfort.

2. Create a “new memory”.
a. To create a “new memory” we need to create a vision of what a confident, calm or comfortable day
b. The vision we create uses not just a picture, but also sound, and feelings.
c. To do that you use your imagination.

I’ll use an example from my online coaching group to demonstrate.

Example: The group member who is directing and producing a movie, could “see herself at an award ceremony”.   The famous actress she has in her film, walking to the stage to accept the award.  People congratulating her on her amazing movie, on a job well done.  She would step into that “future self” and feel the feelings as if she were there.

Group members working on relationship issues would create a different image.  One might see herself in the future, with her son hugging her in total joy, as he graduates from college.   She would step into that image and feel all the success as a parent, having brought up such a wonderful loving son.

Another person would in an airplane, off on an adventure, pleased that he now feels calm and relaxed. As he steps into himself he can feel the amazement that this is now so easy to do. Perhaps it would be a future image after having traveled successfully, many, many times.

Do step one.  Start by having some fun with this exercise.  We are using this to expand your mind to the positive side of your creativity. These images can then be used in later exercises for setting off a “touch anchor” or for another technique call  the “map across.”

To get more information on the online coaching group.  Go to action ends procrastination.

Hope to have you join us in this journey of self discovery.

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Today we will continue discussing ideas that we use at the Anxiety Control Center.  Then tomorrow we will post more tips from Jacob Krueger. So you find two different approaches in the next few days.  Please let me know what you think of adding information in this way.   Is it helpful or confusing by sending me an email, just click on the word here to go to Audrey’s email.

Another favorite technique we use at the Anxiety Control Center,  is a quick change technique used with Neuro-linguistic Programming.  It is  called a “map across”. Where we borrow the positive feelings we want from one memory and put it into the way we’d like to feel “new memory”.

In this technique we use a light trance state to actually shift the positive “I CAN do it” feelings onto the task we were feeling “I can’t.” The “I can’t” feelings are one of the underlying problems that cause procrastination.

Using this technique feels like you are changing the scenery of  your mind  from  unfriendly, cold,  blustery, uncomfortable, scary, and barren, to a place that feels cozy, exciting, fresh and comfortable. And using this skill of the mind, all of a sudden you feel, and see and even hear the words that cause you to want to move forward.  It sometimes seems like you can hardly wait to do what you had been procrastinating about.  It becomes something we really want to move towards.

Now of course, as you might be thinking this can’t work this quickly.  Well in a way you are correct, it is necessary to clear out old negative beliefs, in order for this technique to “stick” and last.  But it is great to get a glimpse of what is possible. And to know that it is possible to get this type of change quickly.  We’ll discuss this more in the teleseminar coming in January 2010.

The mapping across skill is actually easy to learn and will be discussed in the Teleseminar in January, and taught in the home study course that is coming up in the  February.

The interesting thing about procrastination is that at some point you will do task at hand.   What we are doing in the “re-programing the mind to stop procrastination” workshop is speeding up the process.  We want to get your strategy for not doing something, your strategy for “doing” something and then use the “doing it” strategy as one of the techniques to shorten the process from idea to action.

GIFT: Everyone who has sent questions will receive an invitation to our upcoming seminar  “Re-programing the Mind to Stop Procrastination“. For those of you new to teleseminars, this is an online event that you can listen to by phone or on your computer.  It will be given January 2010.  Details will be emailed to you shortly.

Attendees will have the opportunity to interact “live” with Dr Audrey Sussman.

There are two ways to be invited:
1. Sign up by going to the upper right side of this page, put you name and email and click on the “sign in here” tab.  You’ll also receive a powerful yet easy to learn exercise for calming your mind.

2. Send a question to Audrey, the link blue link, takes you to her email address. Just write down your question and your name and email, and send it off.   We’ll look forward to interacting with you “in person”.

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Before we get into the next post we want to thank you all for your questions. Please keep sending them. They really help us to develop programs that are meaningful.

GIFT: Everyone who has sent questions will receive an invitation our upcoming seminar  “Re-programing the Mind to Stop Procrastination“. For those of you new to teleseminars, this is an online event that you can listen to by phone or on your computer.  It will be given January 2010.  Details will be emailed to you shortly.

Attendees will have the opportunity to interact “live” with Dr Audrey Sussman.

There are two ways to be invited:
1. Sign up by going to the upper right side of this page, put you name and email and click on the “sign in here” tab.  You’ll also receive a powerful yet easy to learn exercise for calming your mind.

2. Send a question to Audrey, the link blue link, takes you to her email address. Just write down your question and your name and email, and send it off.   We’ll look forward to interacting with you “in person”.

Recap of the actions steps:
In the 1st action step you began to look at the thoughts moving through your mind.
In the 2nd action step you began to look “underneath” for patterns.  Many times these patterns were programmed in childhood as coping skills: They are the programs you continue to use in the desire to get relief when turmoil rages within you.
In the 3rd Action Step we began to look at the reasons we avoid, and wrote down the reasons you came up with.

If you look at the things you do, instead of the task at hand, I believe you will notice that some of the things you procrastinate with feel safe.  Others give us a more comfortable feeling, as we moving away from the task.  And some are used to make us feel more in control.

When we choose to do the things we are good at, even though it doesn’t move us forward on the task we are procrastinating about it does put us back into our area of comfort.   And when we are in our area of comfort, we succeed and feel good, which adds to our feelings of security and accomplishment.

One of the skills of moving past procrastination is to harness these “good feelings” so we can access them when needed.  And then we can “borrow” them to use in an area we are less comfortable about. There are a number of ways to do this, one is called anchoring, where we set in a trigger in the unconscious mind that automatically pulls us the positive feelings.  And another favorite technique I like to use I’ll continue talking about tomorrow.

We are still accepting questions for our upcoming teleseminar
on Re-programing the Mind to Stop Procrastination
We will continue posting some ideas in the upcoming weeks.
To send your question just click on the word question it will
take you to Dr. Audrey’s email.
Or just send your name and question to askdraudrey@gmail.com

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I have been getting a number of questions and I thank all of you who have sent them in.  In the next few posts I’ll give some tips or exercises as I answer the questions I’ve received.  Please keep the questions coming, see the end of this post for directions:

Question:  “It seems that you believe you only can reduce stress by going to the unconscious part of the mind. Is there anyway I can reduce stress without doing self-hypnosis or trance?

Answer Part 1: Yes,  I do believe that using a trance state to reprogram unconscious patterns is the most effective and lasting way to change unwanted habits and limits.  Yet, you are correct that is important to use all the parts of the mind.  Many times I incorporate cognitive and behavioral skills usually used on the conscious level into hypnotic exercises.

To answer your question yes there are many exercises I teach that help to bring down stress. These can be done without going into a trance state.  Let’s start by talking about the stress reaction itself and then tomorrow I’ll post an exercise you can practice.

1. Stress reactions do not come out of the blue, even when it feels like they do. For many people it is the feeling of being out of control that increases the stress.

2. So the first step is to remind yourself, that whenever you feel stressed,  there is a trigger.  It might be so tiny it just flits through your mind, but it is there.

3. As you begin to take a moment to recognize that the stress reaction is always in response to a stimulus, you might find can be helpful to change your reaction from “why is this happening” to the question “what is this about.

4. By changing the question from “why” to “what” makes a big difference.  The why question usually leads to self blame.  The “what is this about” question leads to curiosity.  Being curious put you back into a healthy state of mind for new learnings.

If you look at the right side of this screen you’ll see a page called worry busters, these are also skills that can be used in the “conscious” state of mind, no trance necessary.

Would you like to claim your copy of
2 powerful mind calming exercises.

Go to the top right of this page
and put in your name and email
Click on the sign in tab to get them now.

We are asking for your help
If you have anxiety, panic, feel stuck or procrastinate, please send us
the single most important question you would like answered.

Every one benefits from the questions you send a question

* By sending in your question you are taking a physical action.

* Taking action is the first step to making a change.

* Your questions  help us to develop programs that are targeted to your needs.

* Questions help others who may not have the courage to ask, or think they are all alone.

To get you started with your question think about this:  If you had access to an expert on reprogramming the mind to get relief from panic, fear or feeling stuck -  what question would you want answered?

Take action and send in your question now.  Just go the contact Audrey tab at the right side of this page, it will take you to Audrey’s personal email address.  Once at the email, you just write in your question and your name and email, and hit send.  To show our appreciation for your questions you will be invited as our guest to the next tele-seminar given my one of the staff of the Anxiety Control Center.

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