Saying Yes To Life: Overcoming Anxiety's Limits

When we're feeling anxious or worried and we think it's because of our circumstances, it's common to see our world getting smaller and smaller. We tend to avoid things that make us anxious, which limits our lives and our experiences. We end up saying no to things we really want to do, which can impact our self-esteem and sense of worth.

But what if anxious feelings don’t come from our circumstances? Clearing up this simple misunderstanding can mean freedom from anxiety and worry in a truly life-changing way.

In this audio lesson, we will explore: How our circumstances are never creating anxious feelings, with real-life examples to illustrate this. A tip for how to start seeing this liberating fact for ourselves. Why does knowing this make it easier to simply experience the feeling of anxiety or worry, so we can say yes to what we want to do in life.

Transcript

Hello and a very warm welcome to this audio.

I'm Lindsay.

Chances are that you're listening to this audio because you are struggling with feeling anxious or feeling particularly worried about something.

And I want to share something that has been really,

Really helpful in my own experience with anxiety,

In it being completely different to what it used to be.

So in our society and in our belief system,

It's a bit of a pervasive belief that anxiety and feeling worried about things comes from the circumstances in our life,

Comes from the things that we have to do,

Comes from the things that we have to deal with.

And I want to gently,

Well maybe not gently,

Maybe quite strongly,

Poke a hole in that belief.

Because if we believe that the anxiety we're feeling,

The stress that we're feeling,

The worry that we're feeling is coming from our circumstances,

And because we don't enjoy or like the feeling of anxiety,

Then quite naturally we start to avoid certain situations.

Or if we feel we can't handle the feeling of anxiety and worry,

And therefore quite naturally what we choose to do changes,

And our life just gets smaller and smaller and smaller.

And I've seen this with so many people who've been struggling with anxiety,

Is that they've started to notice that anxiety was showing up,

And it looked like it was coming from maybe driving,

Or it looked like it was coming from having to go to parties,

Or it looked like it was coming from giving a talk at work.

And then because they thought that was true,

They started to say no to things,

And their world is just getting smaller and smaller.

And this may be you,

This may be your experience,

And certainly I've experienced this at times in my life as well.

So that's why we really do want to see the truth about how anxiety is working,

Because otherwise we're just going to end up with this tiny microscopic little life that we know we're not happy in,

And we tend to just feel anxious anyway.

And then we get into some sort of like low self-esteem and feeling rubbish about ourselves,

Because we're saying no to things that we know we really want to do,

Or things we think we should do.

And it just ends up in a bit of a spiral.

So what I want to point to is that our circumstances,

The things we have to do in life,

It's impossible for those things to create feelings in us.

Now,

It can look really real that the circumstance is the thing that's creating the feeling.

So for example,

I'm going to the dentist this afternoon.

Now,

If I'd had anxiety about the dentist in the past,

Which I don't,

I'm just going to use this as an example,

But if it's something that I felt anxious about in the past,

I would now be working myself up about it.

I've got to go to the dentist,

I know I need to go to the dentist for checkup,

I've got to go,

But it's making me feel really anxious.

And at some point,

If I started to really buy into that,

And to believe that thinking that this was true,

The anxiety is coming from the experience of going to the dentist,

Then it's very well that I might cancel my appointment or not have booked it in the first place.

So I definitely know lots of people who haven't been to the dentist for years,

Because they believe that the anxiety and panic that they feel when they're there is coming from being in the dentist.

But what if that isn't true?

So it might be true that for you,

You feel anxiety,

Maybe not all of the time,

But pretty much most of the time when you're doing a certain activity,

Like going to the dentist,

Or for some people,

It's driving a car,

Other people,

It's going to a party,

Some people,

It's giving a talk,

Any numerous amounts of things that some people can get a bit habitual about in their anxiety.

So what we want to start to notice is even if you have a pretty regular feeling of anxiety or worry,

When you think about doing a certain thing,

Or when you're actually in it doing a certain thing,

If we can step back and see,

That doesn't mean everybody is experiencing anxiety about that.

So we also know,

Even if we're really worried about going to the dentist,

We also know there's plenty of people who just show up at the dentist with no thought about it at all.

So if it was coming from the circumstance,

Going to the dentist,

Then every single person who went to the dentist would feel worried about it,

But that isn't how it's working.

The experience of anxiety and worry,

Or any other emotion,

Is always coming from inside of us.

It's coming from our thinking in the moment,

Our thought in the moment,

Our psychology passing through us.

That's a hundred percent of the time where anxiety is coming from.

So I want you to imagine two train tracks side by side.

On the left-hand side we have the track which is going to the dentist,

Then we have the right-hand side which is our thinking about going to the dentist,

And those two tracks never actually meet.

They never meet in the middle,

They just run alongside each other,

Because we know that we've got lots of people,

So over here on the left-hand track,

Which is going to the dentist,

And then we've got lots of people over here who have no thought at all about it.

Then we have some people who might have mild worry,

We might have some people who might quite enjoy it,

We might have some people who go into utter panic,

We have people who have to go on tranquilizers before they go.

So there's loads of different experiences of the dentist going on the right-hand track,

And that's because it's all coming from the power of thought,

Or the energy of thought,

That's coming to us in the moment.

And that's why it's only ever anxious thought on the right-hand track that is creating an anxious feeling.

It's never coming from the dentist on the left-hand track.

So you can also see this in experiences of being on a plane or flying.

So I don't particularly enjoy the experience of flying,

And I tend to have a bit of anxious and worried thinking come up.

And this is why it's been so helpful to me to know this.

It's really helpful to know this,

Because even though it may feel really real,

And it does feel really real,

That it's the plane,

The flying,

That's creating the anxiety within me,

If I not believe that for a moment,

And then if I can pull back and I can realize,

Oh,

I know this isn't coming from the flying,

I know this isn't coming from the plane,

Because otherwise my husband,

My son,

And all the other 300 people on the plane would all be in a similar anxious state.

And I know that isn't true.

There's so many people who get on a plane and absolutely adore it and love it.

So in terms of helping me to manage the experience,

When I pull back and note,

Oh,

Okay,

It's not coming from the plane,

It's just coming from my mind,

Getting really revved up,

Lots of overthinking,

It's creating a feeling of anxiety,

I can just let that be there.

So all of that is on the right hand track,

It's just there,

It's bubbling along.

We've got the experience of me sitting on the plane,

The fact of being on a plane on the left hand track,

Then we have all of my experience just bubbling along on the right hand track.

I don't have to buy into it,

I don't have to believe it,

I do have to experience it,

I do have to feel it,

I do have to just let it be there.

But eventually that feeling passes and it fades if we don't kind of innocently rev it up,

Giving it more attention and giving it more sort of airtime in our minds.

So I'm going to give you another example from my own life to experience this in action of how this is helpful,

Knowing that the feeling of anxiety and worry or stress isn't coming from the circumstances.

So I had to have an MRI scan which is where you have to lay down in a big tube machine and it makes lots of whirring noises and you actually have to go inside of the tube.

I was feeling a bit of trepidation about it,

Feeling a little bit anxious because I also don't particularly enjoy being in enclosed spaces and as the technician slid me into the MRI machine immediately my instinctive reaction was I said no get me out.

So they pulled me out and they said are you okay?

Do you want some earphones on?

Do you need some time?

Do you need to reschedule?

And I said no just give me a moment and what I reminded myself in that moment,

So I had an instinctive reaction and I let myself feel that and then I reminded myself this feeling of anxiety and panic is not coming from the MRI machine.

You're totally safe,

It's coming from your mind,

Just being busy,

Overthinking,

Revved up,

Telling a story and it's going to pass and once I sort of reminded myself I said to the technician okay you can put me back in and I felt really anxious so I just closed my eyes and I let the feeling be there,

I let myself experience it and as that happened what I noticed was bit by bit eventually my mind gave up the feeling passed and my mind just started to think about something else and eventually I actually ended up with my eyes shut almost having a little sleep.

So if the experience had been coming from the MRI machine I would have stayed in a state of constant panic the whole time but it wasn't,

It was coming from my mind from my thought in the moment and because that is designed to move and pass and change my experience of that MRI machine absolutely changed.

So this is why it's so helpful to know when I know it's not coming from the MRI machine or the airplane,

It's not coming from the dentist,

It's not coming from a health condition,

It's not coming from money,

All of those things.

When I know it's never coming from there it makes it so much easier just to be with the experience to know that it's going to pass and that the anxiety and this is really key the anxiety is never telling us what we should or shouldn't do,

It's never telling us when it's here this anxiety that I'm feeling,

The worry that I'm feeling means I shouldn't go to the dentist,

This anxiety,

This worry means I shouldn't get on the plane,

It means I shouldn't say yes to the party I want to go to,

It means I should reschedule my MRI appointment,

That's not what it's telling us the anxiety and the worry,

The busyness of the mind,

The racing thinking,

All of the feelings that go with it is only ever telling us one thing,

That you are up in your head believing a story.

So I'm going to say that again,

It's never telling us the feeling of anxiety or worry,

It's never telling us yes or no to what we should say yes or no to in life,

It's never telling us about our circumstances,

This is something I need to worry about,

Anxiety worrying about it is really going to help here,

It's not saying that,

What it's trying to wake us up to is that innocently you're up in your head,

Your head's got super busy,

Your thoughts are racing and invariably you're believing a story about what's going to happen in the future or what it means about you and the feeling is trying to wake you up,

That you are lost in your head,

You are not in the present moment and you're believing something that isn't true,

That's why it feels bad,

It feels bad for a reason,

It's trying to wake you up.

So when we can really know this,

That we have our circumstances on one track and our thoughts and feelings on the other track and that they never meet,

A whole world of possibility opens up to us.

So where our life got smaller and smaller and smaller,

Suddenly as you see this bit by bit in your day-to-day life,

As you start to see this is true,

Your world can get larger again.

So if you're struggling to see this,

A really helpful place to look is to see that other people don't react in the same way to you,

To the same circumstances,

That's how I really saw this,

When I saw oh my husband is feeling completely differently about this exact same circumstance as me,

I knew that it wasn't coming from the circumstance and once we start to see that our world can get bigger and a bit bigger and a bit bigger until eventually there's nothing that we have to say no to,

Unless we just simply don't want to do it.

There's nothing that we have to say no to because we're fearing it's going to create anxiety or stress within us,

There's nothing that we can't achieve,

There's nothing we can't accomplish because it's never coming from the circumstances,

It's always coming from inside of us.

So as a final thing,

I just want to reiterate,

A way to explore this is to look in your own life to see how other people can be in exactly the same circumstances as you and have a completely different experience and get really curious about that,

Get curious about where your experience is coming from.

So for example,

If you're an anxious flyer see those people who look really calm and happy and if you're someone who struggles with health anxiety see those people who might feel grotty when they're ill but they don't have all that anxiety and worry that goes along with it.

If you feel really anxious about money see if there's people with similar income levels to you who feel completely differently about it.

So just see if you can start noticing that because honestly it's so freeing to know that there is no circumstance that can make you feel anything,

There's no circumstance that can make you feel anxious,

It's always coming from within you.

We're not doing it on purpose and it's going to pass,

It's going to change because that's the beautiful nature of thoughts and feelings,

They are designed to pass all on their own.

So I do hope this has been helpful,

Please do reach out to me if you have any questions or comments and thank you so much for listening.

Bye for now.

Reviews

Thankyou so much for that, it was beautiful and really helpful.🙏

This is so very reassuring, thank you. Your personal examples and how you started to see this are really helpful too. Thanks for sharing.

This track gives such a helpful view of anxiety. I loved hearing Lindsey’s experience in the MRI. Excellent track!

I loved how you explained this! Made me really think about anxiety in a different way. Thank you!

Thank you, Lindsey- I really appreciated your discussion. You sound so warm and welcoming! You inspired me to consider an area of my life where I have anxious thinking. I love running outdoors, but I somehow got worried about the possibility of encountering large dogs during my runs. As you described, this made my world small, in that running on a treadmill or not running at all became my only options. Obviously there are tons of people who exercise outdoors despite the presence of the occasional dog! I have recently started running outdoors again. My anxious thinking gets revved up when I see a dog, but I am able to keep running. I like how you clearly pointed me in a new direction that helps me to find possibilities and expansiveness. It’s not the dogs that are creating my anxiety, but my own worried thinking that they pose a threat of some kind. Thanks again for your guidance!

I love how Lindsey clearly explained where our experience of anxiety is actually coming from. The stories shared helped demonstrate that our circumstances aren’t making us feel the way that we do… despite what it seems like and what we’ve been conditioned to believe. Seeing this will certainly help making saying “yes” to things far easier.