Calming your anxious mind blog
Being grateful is a powerful emotion , you can even make it up it doesn’t matter, being grateful promotes positivity and a good mindset to good mental health when done daily.
Be grateful for what you have not what you can’t have.
I have an uneasy feeling that the world is slipping into a far greater mental health crisis than we have ever seen before.
Why am I saying that? Well it’s a simple fact that we are exposed to poor mental health through a number of daily outlets on a constant basis.
I drove home the other day and switched on the radio and someone was talking about how we are all going to become mentally ill at some point, at some degree, really! I got home and the kids were watching TV and there was something about how it’s ok to not feel ok and that you should always…… You know the rest, right!
My thoughts are we are focusing on mental poor health rather than mental good health. It’s almost as if we are expected to become mentally ill at some point .
Are we teaching our young to become mentally ill?
Well we are quite rightly raising awareness but are we raising awareness the right way? Why are my kids not yet in their teens regularly using words such as stressed anxious and depressed. This is becoming the school language and is causing our children to normalise stress anxiety and depression, this simply should not be happening at such a young age.
We are thinking our way to depression.
We are constantly bombarded with negativity through media.
When was the last time you saw a positive news headline, how many positive news articals have you read lately?
The TV is constantly passing on bad news, are you aware that every single thing you see feel smell and experience is stored in your brain. The brain works by pattern matching .
Every time you see read hear a negative experience you wire your brain to that experience. The more negativity you experience the more you begin to hardwire your brain and it begins to seeks more negativity.
The same is true with mental poor health, your brain learns over a period of time to accept that you will become mentally ill if you let it. Most of us are not born with mental illness but most of us are expected to develop it at some point if you believe everything your fed and that point is now becoming younger and younger and it all depends on the what your brain is fed.
Start a healthy diet
This has nothing to do with food it’s a diet of thoughts. We can feed our brain with negativity which sets off a programme that runs in the subconscious that connects us to negativity, we wake up thinking negative thoughts and go to bed thinking negative thoughts, what chance have we got when our mind is set to this mode?
Instead we want to feed our minds with healthy thinking, stop following people on social media that only post negative stuff ,chances are they are depressed themselves and are trapped in the negative thinking world. Start following people who make you feel good make you laugh and inspire.
Get off social media when you around your kids , a big cause of anxiety in kids is when they start feeling they are not getting the attention that all kids crave, it’s not uncommon now days to see mums and dads out with their kids and totally absorbed by their phone and leaving the kids to get on with it.
Kindness
Make sure you include in your diet kindness, acts of kindness have a massive effect on both the giver and the receiver. Acts of kindness are like ripples on a pond , they spread out and touch more people than you can imagine.
Be mindful
The practice of daily mindfulness is one of the best things you can do for yourselves. In times of uncertainty we often conjure up unreal predictions in our minds on how bad things are going to be, it’s rare that anything turns out as bad as we predict. In the end we end up experiencing our thoughts.
What to do
Go for a walk, look at the stars stare out the window and be in the now, we spend far too much time in our heads living in the past or future and missing out what’s really important and that is now.
So feed your self a diet of good mental health it’s free and will serve you well.
Woody
A little sory about holding grudges
Here’s a short story I heard from someone some while ago
It’s probably more relevant now because people are frightened and scared one of the first things we do is to look to blame someone for our problems.
This story is about two monks who are heading back to their monastery, the path is flooded because of torrential monsoons and they have to take a more direct route.
The two monks belong to a monastery where it is forbidden to have contact with women.
They are walking along and come to fast filling stream, there is a women on the other side who is crying and pleading for help.
The eldest Monk stops much to the horror of his younger accomplice, brother you can not go near that women
But she needs our help
Brother you have made a sacred vow, you will disgrace the monastery.
The elder Monk stops, wades into the water and without a word walks up to the women picks her up ad carries her to safety and gently puts her down and then continues his journey with his young colleague.
The young Monk struggles to hold his frustration and after several hours he explodes and says how could you disobey our vows and carry that women.
The elder Monk turns smiles and say gently, my bother I put that women down hours ago but is you who is still carrying her.
The story shows how holding grudges holds us back and gives us a heavy burden to carry.
This gets heavier the more we continue to carry it. It’s affects your mental health and creates negative emotions which build and become your behaviour, your brain will begin to programme you to follow this behaviour.
Instead of this you can chose to let things go, do the best you can, find positives in everyday things.
Remember one thing a grudge only affects you not the other person.
Once you let go you will see things differently, keep holding and they will become
Try not to carry grudges especially at this time as during the quarantine this this will keep getting heavier and heavier in your mind.
Instead chose to let go and chose to look for the positives things in life no matter how bad things seem.
Stay safe be kind to each other
Woody
We complain and moan a lot , but did you know that moaning and complaining becomes a learned behaviour and over time becomess an instant subconscious reaction that we barely realise we are doing.
Moaning causes you to become negative , constant complaining starts to have an adverse reaction to not just our mental health but also our general health.
Once we become programmed to complain we can start to go downhill leading to I’ll health and depression and anxiety.
We start seeing the glass half empty in everyday situations, we start to cultivate a depressing views of life which can become hard to reverse.
Often negativity can have a direct effect our work performance and our relationships with our loved ones. It can also start to become contagious and affect others in our circle of friends and work colleagues.
How do you feel when in the presence of someone who is addicted to moaning, I say addicted because it becomes a form of addiction that we are not even aware of having.
So what can we do ?
Well here is a very simple thing you can try to become aware of your own moaning whinging and complaining.
Try this .
Where a band on your wrist and every time you catch yourself complaining moaning or whinging about something swop the band to the other wrist. After a day or two you will start to become aware of how negative you are becoming.
Once you become self aware try to stop yourself , keep changing the band untill you can go a whole 24 hours without being negative.
It will take a while but you will start to feel better for it.
A positive mind has more motivation learns better gets more done and is generally more successful in life.
Take care
Woody
There once was a terrible storm that blew for days, it hit with such ferocity that the people had to stay in their houses untill it stopped. .
When it was over a little boy was seen on the beach, crouching, then standing then throwing things into the water.
You see after the storm the beach wa left covered in millions upon millions of starfish and this little boy was picking them up one by one and gently placing them back in to the sea.
He had been doing this for hours when an old lady took pity on him and said son you will never make any difference there are millions of them.
The little boy looked up and said gently as he places the starfish gently back into water, it made a difference to this one.
The moral of this storey is you can make a difference, just one random act of kindness everyday is all it takes.
Image this if everyone did one kind thing today that would be over 60 million acts of kindness in the UK alone, each single one makes a difference to someone’s life including the person who did it.
Kindness is one of the greatest powers in developing wellbeing both mental and physical.
You can’t be angry whilst your being kind, it’s as simple as that.
Be the little boy and change the world for someone even if it is just for a few seconds it’s effect is immense.
Stay safe be kind to yourself and each other.
Woody
Think before you post.
What effect is all this negativity having on your body.
Everytime you post negative stuff about your life, you start to create negativity throughout your body.
This effects every cell in your body, every time you are negative, your brain rewires to become more and more negative.
Your cells even start changing.
All the bad cells that contain illness and diesese start multiplying and taking over.
Your immune system starts breaking down
You will become ill and your life will get worse.
Sounds bad right.
But post something positive, look for positives and you will see positives and you will feel the opposite effect.
Positive people are happier, have less illness and generally live longer and better lives.
Think before you post what good is this doing to me or what harm could it be doing to me.
Take care
Woody
As a driving instructor over the years I’ve noticed a rise in the number of people who are struggling with self confidence esteem and general anxiety and worry.
This anxiety is often just a developed behaviour that manifests itself within us and often we are unaware as it grows.
We go about our daily lives and routines whilst all the while unhealthy patterns of thinking about ourselves as well as others develop in the subconscious part of our mind.
Deep in our subconscious these patterns stealthily run without our knowledge and gradually and silently they take over our thinking.
Invisible programmes start running in the background of our lives which start switching to auto pilot whenever new circumstances arrive in our lives.
The problem is the programme switches to a negative default mode as it runs over and over.
We start seeing the glass half empty in every situation we come across, we start seeing every flaw in ourselves, we dislike what we are, we constantly want to be someone else, we see only the bad in every situation as the programme cements itself deep down in our subconscious mind where all our fears and terrors dwell.
If we continue to allow negative circumstances to shape our thoughts, that keeps the cycle going, over and over.
This negative thinking then starts to take over and hijacks our beliefs and changes our behaviours which in turn starts to change our life experiences.
It influences how we see life and how we experience life.
It determines the path we follow
Why is it that two people can have identical situations and yet experience completely different experiences.
The answer is simple, it depends on what programme they have running on autopilot in the background.
We can change all that by reprogramming your subconscious to run on a more positive programme by making a few simple life changes.
All this and more is explained and covered in the Calming Your Anxious Mind Workshop.
Good morning everyone
My message today is that there is a far worse virus than COVID19 that is affecting many of us
This virus invades our life and sweeps through everything we do.
Like corona it’s unseen, buts it’s even more powerful and pervasive and feeds off of us.
It takes away our energy, it ruins ambition and hope. It’s a silent virus that creeps up on us when we are at our most vulnerable and scared.
It enhances our fears and anxieties and has become so good at changing our thoughts about our future to dread and doubt.
Once we catch this virus it’s turns us against each other, it loves to watch us affect each other. Best friends become enemies it tears families and relationships apart.
Once affected it works tirelessly, even in your dreams there is no respite. It affects your health breaking down the immune system that promises to keep you healthy.
It even has the ability to make the days cloudy colder and dark.
The virus is NEGATIVITY20
The good news there is a vaccine which is inate in every single human being on this planet.
It’s activated with a smile, a kind deed or a thought, it fights Negative 20 and is so much more powerful and longer lasting.
It’s spreads and affects everyone it comes into contact with and makes the days brighter sunnier and a bit warmer. it’s the most contagious thing in the universe.
It’s called positivity.
Spread some today
Look after each other and stay safe
Woody
Good morning everyone
There is a saying that goes something like this.
“Never believe everything you tell yourself”
Often we tell ourselves the worst case scenario and most of the time we end up saying things weren’t as bad as I thought.
I’ve experienced many terrible things in my life most of which never actually happened.
Think about this, we often experience our fears anxieties and dread just through thought alone.
To our brain thoughts are real, the brain is tricked very easily.
Ever watched a scary movie and felt your heart beating faster and that feeling of it all being very real, your body led by the brain reacts as if it’s real, goosebumps shivers and the hair on the back of your neck are all physical reactions that your thoughts manifest.
It’s not real but your brain interprets it as real.
This is exactly how we start reacting when we start to worry about the things that threaten us like finances, the virus or any other perceived threat that we conjure up.
The thing is every single thing that you see hear feel and experience is recorded in your brain
How much have you seen heard and experienced yesterday, or the past week, what ever it is it’s all played out like a subconscious movie that is playing on a constant loop in your mind, it never stops playing even while you sleep and it sets the movie for the next day.
You decide what’s on that movie
What ever you feed your mind with will be on that movie.
The great news is that you have a choice.
You can change that movie just by choosing what you want to follow.
You are the editor of your own life movie, if you don’t like what’s playing change the movie.
Chose to follow the positives and the movie will be positive
Stay safe, be kind to yourself and each other
Woody
Calming your anxious mind blog 