Stress busting tip 4 - the tennis racket, but this is not a game!

Hi there, my name's Caroline Cavanagh. I'm an anxiety specialist, and over the course of Advent, I'm sharing a stress-busting tip every day, leaving you with 24 options. And today is number 4. And the best way I can explain today's tip is through a little story. It was about, I guess, about 3 and a half years ago, I was driving down the M3 to take my mum to Guildford Hospital to have a chemo session. We knew it was a palliative care regime, she was dying, and I suddenly became aware that I was driving down the motorway with my tears streaming in an absolute devastating state of sadness because I'd been planning in In my head what I was going to say at her funeral. I was taking my mum— my mum wasn't even dead, but I was ruining how I was going to have those precious few times that I had with her by getting myself worked up into this dreadful state of despair, just because of a blinking thought. And so I used this technique. To me, the thing that works for me is a tennis racket. I took a tennis racket and I did the best ever lob, and this thought just went boom! And I just— I don't know, it didn't— it ended up somewhere the other side of Saturn. I hit it so flipping hard, and I didn't just hit it, I said a few words which were a bit like, go away, but might have been a little bit stronger than that. But— and it was with such absolute passion. It's just like, get out my head! I'm not having it. And you know, I can honestly say with total integrity, I never thought about what I was gonna say at her funeral until the 2 weeks before her funeral when I did sit down at my laptop to write it. That's the power of your mind. Thoughts aren't real, but we allow thoughts to take control. But that day Bloody hell! Pardon my language. I took control of that thought, and I sent it out my head so far it didn't have one heck of an option of ever coming back, and it didn't. We spend a lot of time entertaining thoughts that are just no good for us, and for me that was such a realization of how the thought was creating the feelings of that moment. And had I not got control of that thought, I would have turned up at my mum's house. Covered in mascara— really bad mascara moment— and destroyed that moment, that time we would have had together. So for some people it might not be a tennis racket. I often say to kids, you know, if they— if it's guys, football, imagine it's football. It doesn't matter what you imagine. And if sport isn't your thing, another way that I talk about this that some people can relate to is imagine your thought is just a stranger knocking at your door. You can't control, you can't stop Strangers knocking at your door, just the same as you can't stop a thought coming in, but you don't have to let the stranger in, especially if that stranger is hostile. Hi Paul. Hi Carlton. John as well. Fantastic. If that thought, if that stranger is hostile, is nasty, you're not gonna go, hey, come on in, let me make you a cup of tea. Do you want to stay for the night? Because I'll entertain you while I'm laying in bed thinking about that as well. No! Shut the door and go, go away, or Stronger, if it may be appropriate. A thought is just like that stranger. Don't let it in. Shut the door. They may knock again. Slam the door in their face. Get aggressive, as I did with my thought, because it was a flippin' horrible one. And you'll find, just like a stranger knocking at your door in real life, they go away. They don't come back. They're not going to come back to somewhere where it's a really hostile environment. So that's today's tip. As I said, I call it my tennis racket technique. Tennis racket worked for me. You can call it football, you can call it your stranger at the door technique, but it's recognizing you don't have to entertain that thought. You can't stop it coming in, you don't have to keep it, but if you do, it's going to affect your feelings. You be in control of your feelings by you Controlling your thought. I hope you've enjoyed that. Tomorrow is Saturday and I'll be coming back with number 5. If you like this tech tip, please share it with other people. Something that I'm going to be doing after Christmas is offering some people to do some free work with me so they can take some of these tips, or we can do some other work on anxiety, on stress management. And I'm going to choose those people based on people that have helped share these toolkits with others. So if you share this post to others, I'm going to put your name in the hat, which will be— and the more names in the hat, the more chance you've got of working with me for free. I found something with people that have shared things over the last few days that if there's a privacy thing, I don't know you've shared it. So pop a comment in underneath this so that I know you've shared it and I can say thank you as well. And also, if you haven't liked my page yet, that would be an amazing thing to do too, and I would be very grateful, and your name will go in my hat equally for that. So the reason I'm sharing all of these tools is we do have a stressful world out there, but the world that we can control is inside here, and the more tools that you have to leverage that control The easier the outside world is going to be. So please help me to help others, and perhaps we can all have a wonderful stress-free start to Christmas, to the new year. And let's make 2021 very different to how this year's been. Over and out for now. Thank you very much for those of you that have been watching. Thank you very much to those of you who are going to watch this after I've said goodnight because it is now Quarter to 6, there's a gin and tonic waiting for me. Have a wonderful evening. Bye-bye for now.