How To Free Yourself From Anxiety Now

Would you like to be able to release anxiety and feel more confident right now? 

In this article, you’re not only going to discover a tool to release anxiety, but I'm going to guide you through the process as well. This is immediately useful in your life so you can go out there and feel less anxious, more, and more ultimately you. 

When you're in an anxious state, you're usually not being you. 

You're focused on survival. 

You're focused on “Am I going to be okay?” 

You're looking at other people and situations wondering, What am I going to get out of this? Am I going to stay safe here?

You're not bringing your full self to the table. You're not looking at what can you do to contribute, enjoy yourself, or create. When you’re in anxious-mode, it’s a completely different way of living.

When you exit anxious-mode, you step into a much more inspiring way of living.

A more confident way of living.  

How can we do that?

The Source of Anxiety

There is one fundamental perception and pattern that creates a lot of anxiety. 

And instead of just telling your brain with words, I’m going to help you see it for yourself. Are you ready? Just follow along with the instructions below as you read.

Take a moment right now with me and breathe.

As you breathe, simply bring more awareness to your chest, and to the area around your ribs as well. 

Take a full breath in right now.  

As you breathe out, slowly pay attention to your chest, your ribs, your throat, and the whole central area of your torso, even down to your stomach. 

 Stay with this for a few breaths…

What do you notice? 

When I do this myself, or guide clients through this process, the first thing people often notice is some sort of tension in these areas. No duh. I'm anxious, I'm tense. 

What's happening though? 

The more I practiced this myself, the more I slowed down and meditated and got curious, the more I realized what this fundamental tension is:

We are afraid of feeling. And we’re afraid of being impacted by life.

This fundamental fear can manifest in a thousand and one ways in our lives

Someone is going to reject me… 

I'm going to fall in love and they're not going to like me back…

Someone’s going to get upset and leave me…

I’m going to try and go for something and I’ll fail…

To deal with this tender vulnerability, we brace ourselves. We subtly contract our ribs, low back, chest muscles, throat, jaw, everywhere else

Like a boxer with his guard up, we armor ourselves to life: You’re not going to get me!

But, here's the conundrum my friend. 

One Liberating Insight To Free You From Anxiety

There is no way to stop life from getting you because LIFE IS YOU, AND YOU ARE LIFE.

 It’s not like you’re over here and then there’s “your life” over there.

That’s like saying a drop of water is different than the ocean. It's all part of the same thing. A giant interconnected soup of energy and oxygen and heat and light and electromagnetic waves.  

All this stuff is moving through this body, my body, your body, all our bodies… it is your body.

You are part of life. 

You are connected. 

You are the fabric of life. 

It's like one big tapestry, one big blanket. And there is no escape. There's no escape from feeling. There's no escape from living. 

By the way, you do know that when you're bracing like that, you're not successfully protecting yourself, right? 

You're not effectively guarding anything. It doesn't work. All you're doing is creating physical tension, physical pain, and a boatload of anxiety because “something bad is going to happen” in your life. 

Something bad still could happen no matter how much you're bracing. 

Just think about it for a second, because when you step back to see what we’re all doing it’s pretty humorous. It’s almost like if I clench my guts strong enough, then my dog's not going to die. Then my friend's not going to ever move out of town. Then I will never be reprimanded by the boss because I'm clenching my bowels. 

How absurd is that? And yet we all do it! And we do it habitually. 

Freedom From Social Anxiety

What would it be like to live fully open to life—an undefended life of connection and meaning?

When you really see the futility of that resistance and blocking, you can ask yourself, What would it be like to just really open? 

IT CAN REALLY FEEL AMAZING. I've personally had some moments, right in the midst of that bracing where I choose instead to just open.

A feeling of peace and perfection rushes in, even as the pain might still be there. A sense of: Oh, I'm exactly where I need to be. I’m guided, connected, and part of this beautiful mystery that we're in. 

Of course this isn’t some permanent blissed out state. Those habitual contractions can occur 700 times per day. All it takes is one thought about a bad future, one fantasy of someone disliking you, and so forth.

As you’re reading this, do you feel any contractions against life? It’s almost like armor. A way that you're trying to block yourself from life. 

By the way, this isn’t metaphorical, it’s very literal. You're physically tightening parts of your body, hardening your tissues and contracting around your emotions. As you do this, bring your attention to a place that feels particularly tight right now.

Just breathe in. 

You find that area that's all tied up, and you just go breathe into it. And then on the out-breath, you let go and soften a little bit. You're not forcing it or jamming anything. If anything it’s like easing into a hot tub that’s just a bit too hot for you. Remember…

Resistance to your emotions is futile… just let yourself feel. 

And guess what? It does sometimes hurt. It does hurt if someone leaves or you get broken up with a dream falls through or is delayed in its achievement. It does hurt to get sick or have someone close to you become ill or die.

These are the vicissitudes of fate my friend. What the buddhists call the 8 Worldly Winds…

 There's gain and there's loss. 

There's pleasure, there's pain. 

There's fame, there's disrepute. 

You're not only going to have gained, but you're also going to have lost too. It's going happen. You can't block that from occurring in life. There is no perpetual safety from loss or something. 

While pain is inevitable, peace and confidence are possible no matter what happens.

If you really practice what you’re reading here… if you really surrender, if you really soften continually throughout the day and say, Okay, okay, I get it…I'm part of life. I'm going to feel all this…

 Not only do you feel a lot more joy, but you also feel peace, even in the challenging moments, because you know that it's part of life. It's not like something “wrong” is happening. 

I hope this serves you on your path towards greater confidence and freedom. 

If you feel moved to take control of your confidence and your life, I encourage you to explore my Unstoppable Confidence Mastermind program, which is the primary way I help hundreds of clients liberate themselves from social anxiety, excessive niceness, and self-doubt.

Until we speak again, may we have the courage to be who you are and to truly know on a deep level that you are amazing. 

You are awesome. Any story in your mind that tells you otherwise is an illusion.