Tips from The Anxiety Guy - How To Stop Worrying
Nick Elston is a motivational speaker who shares his personal experiences of anxiety issues and how he has learnt to deal successfully with these. Here he shares some tips on how to cope with anxiety and minimise its impact on day-to-day life. He’ll be talking more about this at a WorkLife Central 'Speaker Series' event on 8th May.
“My challenges stem from childhood OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), adulthood GAD (Generalised Anxiety Disorder) and just generally a life full of anxiety!
My recovery started after I experienced an emotional breakdown 4 years ago in a pub car park after a business networking meeting. After the event, I took the rather odd decision to speak publicly about my story. That decision to let things out, rather than let them consume me, sent my life in a direction of self-discovery that I could never have dreamed of.
Fast forward to today and I am a Professional Speaker & Speaking Coach. So the biggest challenge I have ever faced - my anxiety - has turned in to a future that I find positive and exciting. It has taught me that the world can change in an instant – often it’s just a simple case of making a particular decision in a given moment.
I have learned so much over the past 4 years, including lots of different ways to change our lives for the better through daily, incremental changes. I’d love to take this opportunity to share a couple of them for you here.
1. Never Assume
Mark Twain said “Some of the worst things in my life, never actually happened.”
How true is that? It’s a human flaw that we automatically assume the worst in any given situation – when we have just as much chance of a positive outcome. I came up with a way to ‘hack my brain’ to prove this flaw to myself. I kept a ‘Worry Journal’ where I wrote down EVERYTHING that I was worried or anxious about on a daily basis.
Day 1 – 128 entries!
So I made a note to go back to that list 2 weeks later to see how much of those concerns and anxieties actually happened. Take a guess how many?
0.
Zero.
None.
Nil.
It’s crazy right? That means that over a few weeks I was worried about thousands of things that NEVER ACTUALLY HAPPENED!
If you suffer from anxiety, or simply worry a lot about things that haven’t yet happened, why not try doing the same?
2. Breathe
Sounds simple right? It’s kind of essential as a race – breathing – but we rarely do it right. We breathe from our chests and not from deep down in our lungs. In today’s busy world it is essential for your mental & physical health to have some time to yourself just to sit, breathe, reflect & review.
I know if I use the word ‘meditation’ I’d lose a lot of people reading this, especially the blokes! Trust me, if you had told me a few years ago I’d be writing an article on medita… I mean breathing… I’d have laughed. A lot.
So just follow this simple routine for 20/30 minutes a day and you will give yourself the quality time that you need and deserve;
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I found this really difficult to start with as my mind was always racing and fire-fighting. But, with daily practice, you can master this and it will have such a positive effect.
I have so much more experience & tips to share with you so please get in touch, stay tuned for future articles or check out my upcoming WorkLife Central talk taking place on Tuesday 8 May.
Thank you for reading this. I really hope these simple practices help you as they have helped me.”
Nick Elston
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Find out more about Nick Elston and follow here:
email nick@nickelston.com
Twitter @NickElston_
Instagram @nickelston_
Facebook @nickelstonspeaker
Originally Released On 16 April 2018