The Fear and Anxiety Solution (37 page)

     
1.
What are the top three things that you appreciated or that pleased you this week?

     
2.
In what situations did you express your new, empowered identity?

     
3.
Which negative assumptions did you successfully counter-balance and avoid buying into? Did these assumptions turn out to be false?

     
4.
How well did you take care of yourself this week?

     
5.
What positive choices did you make to avoid feeling overwhelmed?

     
6.
What happened this week that, in the past, you could have taken personally but in this case you didn’t?

     
7.
How specifically did you choose to express yourself in a more expansive manner?

• • •

As you move through all seven days’ worth of reinforcement exercises, you may find that certain topics are currently more pertinent for your journey of self-empowerment than others. So you may choose to focus on these subjects more frequently. For example, if pleasing others is a major issue for you, you
can replace other reinforcement exercises with the one you need, practicing the suggested steps several days of the week instead of just one day.

The reinforcement part of the forty-day program has one main objective: to form a habit of living from a place of intention and alignment with your authentic self. Every day that you focus on these tools and exercises, you’re further integrating the empowering work you have done so far into the matrix of your life.

It’s a strange phenomenon. Although gratitude and appreciation are natural emotions, expressing them doesn’t come naturally to us at all. As a child, when I was feverishly unwrapping the fabulous toys my aunts and uncles gave me for my birthday or for Christmas, saying thank you wasn’t the first thing on my mind. Actually, it was somewhat of a buzz kill when my mom made me write thank-you cards or call up my relatives to express my thankfulness. But at the same time, I always enjoyed it when they expressed their appreciation for the cookies I baked or the little gifts I made for them.

Appreciation is not just a polite gesture, it’s a reward or gift for what we have done for others. Imagine you work for someone who expects you to be available at all times but takes you for granted. Instead of appreciating you, your boss either criticizes your efforts or completely ignores you. Sounds like drudgery, right? But don’t we often treat ourselves exactly like that?

As you already know, in many ways our subconscious acts as a faithful servant, always ready to follow our conscious guidance, eager to protect and please us. Naturally, the subconscious thrives with appreciative feedback, whereas constant criticism and negative input lead it to feel despondent and to distrust the authority of the conscious mind. Every animal trainer understands that positive reinforcement with a little treat is the best way to teach an animal a new skill.

Unfortunately, for most of us self-appreciation is a highly underdeveloped skill. Early in our lives, well-intended messages such as “Don’t show off,” “Don’t feel too good about yourself,” or “Pride goes before a fall” cause us to believe that praising ourselves only leads to arrogance and complacency and, consequently, rejection and failure. In general, we put more stock in the opinions of others than in our own opinions, so self-appreciation seems like a complete waste of time.

Case in point: I routinely ask my clients to write three reasons why they can feel good about themselves every day. Many of them forget that I gave them
this assignment; others dutifully write down everything they appreciated about their days—except for themselves. Don’t get me wrong—I’m a big believer in the power of routinely acknowledging all the gifts and blessings in our lives. But for the purpose of building confidence, self-trust, and self-love, you need to acknowledge the gifts and blessings that define
who you are.
Which brings me back to the subconscious mind and the enhancement step of CARE.

Every night, write in a special notebook at least three things you appreciated about yourself on that day.
Here are three things to keep in mind as you do this:

     •
Be specific.
Rather than affirming that you’re smart or friendly, write down (at least the Cliffs Notes version) what particular incidents made you realize this today.

     •
Make it mainly about “being” you.
I’ve seen people scribble pages of self-appreciation notes listing all the things they’ve done for their careers, their families, and their communities. Although this is a step in the right direction, if you value only your contributions and accomplishments, self-appreciation can easily turn into conditional approval, which obstructs your goal of unconditional acceptance of who you are. And your “doing” doesn’t necessarily reveal your “being.” Pay attention, for example, to the aspects of yourself that the light of your essence illuminates—the qualities that make you a unique and brilliant human being. Acknowledge your sense of humor, your creativity, or your capacity to love. Recognize when you are compassionate and kind or when you take the time to stop and enjoy the beauty of a moment.

     •
Be open.
Reflect on your day with an open mind and appreciate both those qualities of yourself that you usually take for granted and those you weren’t really aware of until you paid attention to them. Open your heart to truly feel and savor the gratitude for yourself because appreciation without feelings is like a gift that’s never been unwrapped.

• • •

Every day you take CARE of yourself, you add another layer to your growing foundation of self-reliance and empowerment. By the way, feel free to commit to these steps beyond the forty days. Some of my clients have been continuously using this program as their mental and emotional framework for a life of excellence and inner peace. According to Yogi Bhajan, “It takes forty days to establish a habit, ninety days to confirm it, and 120 days to master it—and everybody will know it.” Isn’t the
habit
of being your authentic self and thus inspiring others to discover, embrace, and express their own truth something you want to be known for?

Figure 5
forty days to a new habit

Center
yourself for ten minutes through either long, deep breathing or the one-minute breathing exercise.

Align
your mind, heart, and body with your new, self-empowered identity using the six-step empowerment accelerator.

Reinforce
the insights, tools, and growth you have created through a daily changing-empowerment focus.

     • Monday: Counterbalancing negative assumptions

     • Tuesday: Pleasing yourself instead of others

     • Wednesday: Becoming the master of your circumstances

     • Thursday: Freeing yourself from taking things personally

     • Friday: Expressing yourself and living up to your size

     • Saturday: Clearing your energy

     • Sunday: Reinforcing the growth and learning from your week

Enhance
your sense of confidence and self-reliance by writing down every night three specific aspects of yourself you appreciated that day.

At the end of each day, track your progress by checking off the box for that day in
Figure 5
.

I
N THE MIDST
of the United States’ Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his inaugural address, during which he said the famous words, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, and unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” He expressed a sentiment most people would agree with. Because of the disempowering qualities of fear and anxiety, these emotions feel as though they’re our true enemies that must be fought and conquered.

I imagine that when you picked up this book you shared this perspective, hoping that you would eventually be able to rid yourself of fear and anxiety for good. Now that you’ve arrived at the end of the program, I’m sure you realize that you haven’t lost your ability to create fear and anxiety—and as you now know, that’s a good thing. However, what you
have
lost are the self-limiting ways in which you perceived and responded to these emotions.

Like a rock climber holding on to a blade of grass for dear life, you may still cling to old worries about the resurgence of overwhelming fear and anxiety and its potentially debilitating consequences. But at this point, it’s safe for you to let go because, if you look down, you’ll see that you’re no more than two inches off the ground. You have all the necessary insights, resources, strategies, and tools at hand to address fear and anxiety in positive and empowering ways.

We fear what we don’t understand, and we avoid what we’re afraid of—a combination that isn’t conducive to change. It takes courage to face our emotions, patience to listen to their messages, and wisdom to embrace their deeper
meanings. All of these virtues have helped you break through the fear of fear itself and develop a new and deeper understanding of its true purpose. Fear and anxiety no longer hold the same meaning for you. Whereas in the past their intensity fueled your desire to control and suppress these feelings, you’ve since learned to appreciate that your subconscious has your best interest in mind. It makes these feelings so intense and undeniable because they fulfill important functions—functions that I like to refer to as “the healing powers of fear and anxiety.”

As you’ve moved through the processes in this book, you’ve experienced firsthand that these emotions were the catalysts for the healing of your past. They prodded you to go inside, take an inventory, and address and resolve the deeper root causes of your self-limiting beliefs. By delving more deeply into your fear and anxiety, you’ve discovered and reintegrated the fragmented parts of your subconscious; released old thoughts, feelings, self-limiting patterns; and reinstated your wholeness. Fear and anxiety were the bridge that led you to your heart so that you could recognize and embrace the light of your true essence. And these emotions were ultimately the impetus for the creation of your new, self-empowered identity, one that allows you to harness your true potential.

You may wonder: what could be the use of fear and anxiety in the future? The other day, a friend of mine told me about her meditation teacher, who said, “In view of the challenges we’re facing individually and globally at this time, anxiety is a luxury we no longer can afford.” Apart from the fact that most people wouldn’t consider being anxious as a self-indulgent hobby, at first glance it certainly appears to be sound advice to dedicate our precious time and focus on more important matters than combating our own fears and worries—unless fear and anxiety have a much more significant purpose than just distracting us and draining our energy. You know by now that is the case.

Looking back, you probably agree that it’s easy to take our fears and anxieties too personally by letting them become our reality—or even our identity. Like a galactic black hole, fear and anxiety can seem to swallow all our powers and aspirations, leaving us feeling small and helpless. However, as the processes in this book show, fear and anxiety neither demand our power nor aim to shrink us into insignificance. In many ways, we diminish ourselves by misinterpreting the message these feelings are trying to communicate.

By working with your negative self-talk—the “inner, younger protector” and other aspects of your subconscious mind—your relationship to and communication
with fear and anxiety have already significantly changed and improved. The key to making peace with fear and anxiety is to avoid getting caught in their emotional charge and to instead decipher correctly the valuable information they have to convey. Then, ideally, you can make the appropriate adjustments.

I would like to leave you with my fear and anxiety checklist, which contains the most common fear and anxiety triggers and which allows you to accurately pinpoint the reasons you’re feeling anxious or worried. By turning to the checklist’s questions the minute you start to notice that you’re getting anxious or worried, you’re already shifting from passively enduring to proactively engaging with your emotions. Then by addressing their underlying causes—for example, through the tools you’ve masterfully practiced during the forty-day CARE program—you will quickly move beyond them. Even more important, you’ll take full advantage of the growth and balance-promoting leverage fear and anxiety offer you.

Approach this process with the intention of gaining more information about why and what your subconscious is communicating to you through fear and anxiety. Ask yourself the following questions when you begin to feel uneasy, stressed, or self-doubting. Don’t overthink the answers. Instead get an intuitive sense for which of the following topics resonates with you the most and appears the most important to address.