Motivational Speaker, Personal Coaching and Tools To Tackle Anxiety, Panic and Fear When Nothing Else Works
One of the greatest antidote to fear is your inner self. How well you know and can rely on yourself is a direct correlation to how quickly you recover when startled, stay calm over ice and “put fear on the shelf.”
This meditation is a practice of self-exploration.
Let me know how it goes for you and let’s discuss how this might work towards a clearer vision of self.
Start the meditation here:
In our second guided meditation in this series, I want to build on what we spoke about yesterday: noting and also showing compassion and curiosity to what shows up.
Start the guided meditation here.
And let me know how it goes for you.
Namaste
January 21, 2018
This first guided meditation is an acknowledgment of my teacher Tara Brach, her words and her methods which are sprinkled throughout my guided meditation.
My initial goal is two-fold: To get you used to a “sit,” quietly for ten minutes a day AND to help you to create a quiet (and safe) clearing in the woods, where you can begin or to continue to see your life more clearly.
Start the Guided Meditation: A Clearing in the Woods
I will be doing a new guided meditation this week for Seven Days. I call this Seven Days Search For Joy. I hope you find it helpful.
I remember when one of my law school classmates told me that they had signed up for a bar prep course different from mine. I remember the self-doubt. Did I make the right decision?
I remember when that same person started studying and they told me that they had a study group, was going to take a separate essay writing class and a separate multi-state question class that I had not signed up for. I had only signed up for a comprehensive bar prep class (*Disclosure: I took Bar Bri and passed three bars with it – first time around). I had some self-doubt.
BUT ONLY FOR ONE SINGLE MOMENT. And then I remembered, this:
I picked Bar Bri because my cousin – whom I respect – took Bar Bri and passed New York easily. I remembered why I had signed up and who I was going to believe – someone who had taken the Bar and had passed it OR some fellow classmate who had not yet taken a bar or studied for one. Why did you pick the course you signed up for? I’m betting it was because someone you respect – who passed the bar taking that course – told you to sign up. I was so confident in my cousin that I signed up for Bar Bri the first week of law school to get the savings. She said actually “sign up at that table, keep the receipt and forget about it for three years.” That was precisely what I did. Worked for me well.
If anything, I was over prepared. But better than the other option.
Most people don’t just do the work in front of them. They add other “to dos”, and “other” courses to the courses they signed up for as if all the make work of the “other” stuff is going to help them pass. But they know the truth. There are only two things – that is right TWO things that will make you – permit you to pass:
One thing I want you to start to tell yourself, after you have begun to visualize your success is this: It is a BAR exam – something you either trip over or hit your head on. It is designed to filter out those that (a) don’t study; (b) can’t figure out how to study; or (c) those that think they can study 22 subjects the week before the exam (ie, those that don’t study.).
This post is about how you can stop bombing important meetings, a test and even your sports games.
More specifically, I will teach you a basic technique that changed my life in many ways and brings about overall calm. Les Paul, the famous guitar player, once said to me, “when you are called up to stage it is already too late to practice.” So, this post is all about practice.
Here is why this is important. Can you admit that sometimes, or maybe even often, your important meetings or events have been messed up because you panicked or were anxious?
Sure you prepared what you were going to say and knew your topic cold but still things did not go well or as well as you had hoped. You could feel it right in the middle of your talk, your test or your meeting. You could feel it in your body.
I know it is embarrassing and uncomfortable to discuss this topic. Even if you never hit rock bottom, you did not nail it when you were “called up to the stage.”
You’re exhausted by all the energy that you have wasted from anxiety and feelings of panic and fear. I get it.
But you’re the kind of person who wants to figure this out, even though life, parenting, work has become a bit of a logistical nightmare. Have you ever been woken up in the middle of the night before your big day? Were you able to fall back asleep and relax? It is ok if your answer is “sometimes yes, sometimes no.”
This post is not about the causes of panic and anxiety. It is about how it feels. For me, it comes out in my throat which gets tight. My chest would get tight too. I would get redfaced and even sometimes my body would shake. These symptoms or a combination of these symptoms are common.
What I have found to be common regardless of how panic and anxiety feels is that you cannot completely talk you way out of it.
This is true, even if you have a yoga practice or have meditated because while those tools are essential for the tool box of happiness, they often do not go deep enough into the place where panic and anxiety starts.
In my first lesson on belly breathing, we are going right to the root of where panic and anxiety starts.
Now, for this lesson I am sitting in a chair that has some give to it so it is easy for my lower back to arch a bit. A chair that has give – like a tilting chair – helps initially so you can use the chair to tilt your pelvis/hips using the chair. If you are sitting in a firm chair you will need to point and roll your pelvis/hips forward. I would like you to comfortably roll your pelvis forward and back once or twice. Don’t force your pelvis/hips forward but see if you can get them to rock a bit.
The Goal:
By learning and practicing what is “Belly Breathing,” you will teach your body a deep, calming state of being. Your body will switch to breathing in this fashion because your body and mind seek comfort. Once your body learns this state of breathing, this new way to breathe, you will start off calmer and it will form a foundation for addressing panic. Once you do this for 21 days or so, you will have taught your body how to restore itself, and you to calm.
Continue reading “ARE YOU GOING TO FK UP THAT IMPORTANT MEETING, AGAIN?”
This is the excerpt for your very first post.
This is the excerpt for your very first post.
