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Home | A Jedi Masters Fear | Anxiety - The Ultimate Survival Tool. |
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Anxiety - The Ultimate Survival Tool. Without Anxiety, The Human Race Would Have Disappeared Long Ago by Mark Shepard, NLPT “Modern Jedi” As much pain and suffering that highly sensitive people go through because of our worry and anxiety habits, these are traits that have ensured humanity's survival since time immemorial. What do I mean? First of all you have to understand that anxiety is a thought process. It is not a mental disease. When you are anxious, what are you thinking about? What's great? What's wonderful? How everything is going to turn out better than you can possibly imagine? No! You are imagining the worst case scenario. Anxiety is thinking about what you do not want to have happen. Think about it! Let's float back in time for a moment to One Gazillion B.C. You are hanging out with your hunter gatherer tribal buddies and it's summer time... There's plenty to eat and it's warm. All of a sudden you have an anxious thought. You think of something unpleasant about the future. You suddenly think of the coming... winter! You imagine digging through snow drifts scavenging for whatever scraps of food you can find. You imagine starving. You imagine your children, hungry, cold, sick. That’s anxiety. Thinking about what you do not want to have happen. What it’s supposed to do is trigger a resourceful response. In this case, you come up with a brilliant idea. In order to avoid starvation in the coming winter you start drying food and storing it in underground containers. Thinking about the cold, you come up with the idea that you can make warm clothing. Come Fall you gladly trade that little summer loin cloth in for a nice wooly mammoth coat. Thus the first root cellar is born and the fur coat is invented, because of anxiety. Your ability to think ahead and visualize bad things happening enables you to plan ahead and take decisive action to create a different outcome... This planning for the winter results in your family and tribe surviving! Your children and their children pass along this anxiety gene. The “lug-heads” who don't have this ability perish. Survival is good, isn't it? So those who were able to foresee the future and imagine the worst were able to better plan and as a result create a better future. Now. Fast forward to today. I would be willing to bet that you've been using this wonderful imagination of yours to imagine the worst. The added factor here is that your unconscious mind does not know the difference between what is real and what is imagined, so when you imagine the worst, your body reacts as if that bad thing is really happening. The major anxiety relief tool I use with my anxiety and phobia clients is a technique from NLP and Time Line Therapy™ and it is simply a reversal of what you've been doing all along: Instead of thinking about what you do not want to happen, think about what you do want to happen. Imagine floating out to the future to the event about which you thought you were anxious... stay floating up above the event, looking down on the event as an observer... Now go 15 minutes farther out into the future and turn and look back seeing that event "working out better than you can possibly imagine." Now where's the anxiety? It's either gone or less intense isn't it? Again, the reason this technique works is that your unconscious mind does not know the difference between what is real and what is imagined. So if you imagine horrible stuff, your body will literally react as if the negative event is really happening. Imagine positive outcomes and your body will relax as if that good stuff is actually happening. So practice this. Think about what you want to have happen. The point of this article is to stop beating yourself up for having anxiety, and start to use your imagination to create a different, more positive result. How about a little appreciation for your "anxious" ancestors. Anxiety - the ultimate survival tool! © 2007 by Mark Shepard Mark Shepard, "The Courage Coach" is a certified Master Practitioner and Trainer of NLP and Time Line Therapy (tm). Get his FREE SPECIAL REPORT, "17 Secrets to Clear The Fear Fast And STOP Anxiety Without Harmful Drugs or Endless Therapy" at http://www.ClearFear.com This article can be reprinted free online, as long as the entire article and this resource section are included.
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Home | A Jedi Masters Fear | Anxiety - The Ultimate Survival Tool. |
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Mark Shepard, "Modern
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