SIMPLE Trick To Radically REDUCE ANXIETY!

Do you sometimes get overly anxious about something happening in the future? Something that maybe is outside of your control, but it just keeps looping through your mind and you're worried about, what if this happens? What if that happens? What if that happens and you just can't let it go? It's like a worm that's boring a hole in your brain and your body's getting more and more tense. If so, watch this episode. I want to share one simple, powerful tool with you that can help you radically release that anxiety and feel a lot more at peace right now. Welcome to another episode of the Art of Extraordinary Confidence. I'm your host, Dr. Aziz, and this is a show for you if you want to 10x your confidence in every area of life that matters. And one important component of building confidence is not being anxious, is being able to let go of the things that we're afraid of or anxious about. Because if you're really anxious about something in the future, you're naturally not going to be that confident. You're going to feel tense. It's the opposite of relaxed, solid, present confidence. And yet we know this. But sometimes it's hard to let go of our mind. It's kind of chewing on something. In cognitive therapy, they call it catastrophizing. You go into the future and there's something terrible that's going to happen, and you kind of know it's absurd or it's unlikely, but it just keeps going and going and going. And anytime you're doing the what if thing, you know, what if this person breaks up with me? What if I lose my job? What if I get hurt? What if I fail at that? What if they reject me? What if this, what if that? And we get stuck in that? What if they don't like me? What if I fail? What if I get embarrassed? What if it doesn't work? And any of those things, our mind starts to build up this tension in our body, this anxiety, and we need to learn how to release it and how to let go. And there's many different techniques for that. There's meditation, there's challenging the thoughts, all that stuff. Those can all work. But I want to share one in this episode that's really going to help you. By the way, if you're enjoying this show, hit the subscribe down below and click the little bell to get more of these episodes. Because the more of the stuff that you learn, the more confident you become and therefore, the better your life. Let me share this technique with you. This harkens back to my Days in graduate school is when I learned this from one of the anxiety experts that I trained under there. Basically, you use the power of math to save you. Oh, yes. Who knew that math was going to be the thing that was going to save you? We all thought it was the thing that. Well, I don't know, maybe you didn't dislike math. I actually liked math when I was young. But I want to pull out my little calculator here because you're going to use a calculator for this anxiety hack. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to think of something right now that you're feeling anxious about in the future. A what if blank happens. And it could be small, it could be big, but something that creates anxiety in you. And if you don't have anything, like, right in this moment because you're like, no, I feel fine right now, then when was the last time this happened? What's a reoccurring thing for you? Okay, great. So you have something. If you don't, you should probably pause this video until you do, because otherwise you're just gonna be watching passively. And I want you to be able to do this with me. So you learn it, so you use it. That's the goal. Okay. I'm gonna use an example that came up recently with a client that I was working with. And his is he was afraid. He runs his own business, and he's afraid of not only getting in trouble, like, having done something wrong, but that he's gonna. Basically, the ultimate fear that he gets anxious about is that he's gonna get prosecuted criminally and have to do, like, some amount of prison time and be away from his kids and family. And he basically sells things online, E Commerce. So it's pretty far stretched that that's going to happen. But anxiety doesn't. The patterns of anxiety aren't necessarily rational. You can try to rationally explain to someone why, statistically it's safe to fly or less of a risk to fly than to drive in your car or you get hit by lightning, or you try to hit him with logic. And. And people are like, yeah, yeah, nope, still terrified. Right. So this is a different way to approach it that seems to work better than that. So here's what you do. You use the power of probabilities. So probabilities work in a very interesting way. So what's the probability? So we're scared of this is going to happen in the future and what's happening and why we're so anxious is because we're convinced on some level emotionally that it is going to happen. And then we're emotionally reacting as if it's happening or right about to happen. So what's happening is we're stacking the probability as way too high. 100%, 90% it's gonna happen. Oh my God. What if there's a 90% chance that you're gonna get in a car accident today? You'd be pretty freaking nervous when you were driving, right? But what if you said, you know what, there's a 0.0003% chance there's a one in a hundred and you know, or one in 100,000 or one in a million chance that's gonna happen. Then you'd be like, all right, those are pretty good odds. I can relax. So that's what we want to get you to with this. So here's how probabilities work though. If there's a sequence of events, in order for that final event to occur, every event has to occur in that sequence. So for example, what is the probability of rolling on a six sided dice? Six sided die would be the singular. Even if you roll a six sided die and there's going to be a number that comes up one through six. So I said, great, what are the odds of rolling a six? You'd say, well, the odds of rolling a six on a six sided dice are one in six right now. But I say, what are the odds of rolling two sixes in sequence? Two sixes in a row? Is that one out of six plus one out of six? No, that's not how probabilities work. In order to get six and then six in a row, it's one out of six times one out of six. So that's one out of 36. So do you see how it's way less likely to roll two sixes in a row? So in fact, we were to do the math on that. We're getting our calculators out now. One divided by six is about a 16, 17% chance. Now that times itself. So there's about a 16% chance of getting a six when you roll the dice. Now you multiply that by getting a six again. Now you have a two point about a 3% chance. So you see how it goes from pretty high 16, 70% down to three. And what about three sixes in a row? Well, we're not going to do the math on that, but very unlikely, right? So how does this apply to you in your life? Well, the thing that you're scared of has a sequence of events that has to occur for that to happen. So let's take the example of my client, and then you can use it in your life. So for him, you know, the end result that he's scared of being in prison, I was like, okay, well, what needs to happen? So first he needs to have, you know, the reason he gets this anxiety is he was doing some selling of something online in the past, and then he found out that there was. It was against some regulation or something like that, and so he stopped doing it. He didn't know at the time he found out he stopped. And that was like a year or two ago. And so but sometimes he'd wake up in the night anxious about, oh, my God, but what if something happens from this? So this is what we were working on. So I said, okay, what is the likelihood that you know that because you broke this rule, the company that was infringed upon finds out about it? So you want to, you want to. No, actually, before we give it probabilities, you're going to do it this way, you're going to come up, what's the sequence of events? So I said, first the company has to find out about it, Then the company has to want to, you know, go after it. Right? Because they could find out about it and be like, yeah, whatever, but they're like, no, no, no, we're going to go after it now. Not only that, after deciding that they're going to go after it, some decision maker in the company has to decide that it's important enough, then they have to decide to go after it not just for money, like a civil suit or suing you, but a criminal pursuit. Right? Because if it's a civil suit, they say, hey, you owe us money. We're gonna get our lawyers and send you a letter and you pay us out or we're gonna take you to court. Right? But he's not afraid of that because he's a powerful business owner, he's been successful, he knows he can earn more money. What he's afraid of is they're gonna pursue me criminally. So I said, okay, they have to not want to pursue it civilly and pursue it criminally. Then when, you know, they don't decide who charges people with what, that's like the state or the county or whatever jurisdiction you're in. So the DA or someone has to decide. Some decision maker within a government body has to say, you know what, because they report it to that person or that organization, and that body of the government is like, you know what? Yeah, yeah, we're going to make an example of this guy. This, this is. This was. This will not stand. You know, so then someone in there, a decision maker, has to decide that it's worth pursuing criminally. Then the next step is you have to go. You know, they have to follow through with the trial, and you have to fail horribly at the trial. Your lawyer has to just, like, really screw you royally because, you know, even if you are being pursued criminally, you can plea, you can take a bargain, you can do something, right? So. So your lawyer has to be so bad that he can't plea you out or pay him off or do anything. And then you end up in jail. And then on top of that, the judge has to be like, yeah, you know, it's not just like, okay, yes, they lost. Now I'm gonna give him this sentence which is like, you know, probation or pay this back or whatever. He's gotta be like, no, I'm gonna throw the book at you and you're going to prison, motherfucker. Like, okay, that's extreme, right? So it's even just this. Even just mapping out what needs to occur from get to A to B, because your mind is just going, I'm here. That's there. I'm screwed. And what we're doing here is we're mapping out all the steps. And that in itself can start to create relief. But then here's where the real magic is. It's in the calculator. So I said, we go through this with him. And I said, each scenario, I want you to give me a percentage of how likely that is. So what is the likelihood that they find out about that you've done something like this? And he's like, well, that could be high. I was like, good. Err on the side of overestimating these probabilities, right? So you really reassure yourself that you're really being accurate here. So I was like, what's likely? He's like 80% chance that they find out about it. I was like, great. And let's say that someone finds out about it and they're like, they're pissed and they want to go after you. And he's like, 80% as well. I said, okay, great. So we have 0.8 times 0.8 because that's 80% is 0.8. And then I said, okay, great. So. And what is the. Then they proceed. They're angry about it, and then they decide they don't want to go after you. Civilly, they don't want to get money back, which I don't understand because of course a business is going to want to get their money back. They're not going to care if someone goes to jail or not. But any case, I was like, let's say they want to pursue it criminally. And he's like, seems pretty unlikely, but let's say 50%. So 0.5 times 0.5. I said, okay, great. And then I said, and then that someone in the, in the 50% is a very extreme estimate, but we're just still going with this. And I said, okay, and what is the chance that the DA is like, or someone in the business, in the, in the court system is like, yeah, yeah, we're gonna go. This is, this is top priority. Put down the, you know, the drug dealing, the child trafficking, the ser. Like, we're gonna go after this guy who sold some stuff and didn't. On technicality, didn't do something right online. We're gonna just crush this guy. Like, what are the odds that's gonna happen? He's like 25%. I was like, okay, point times 0.25. Also very extreme, very high estimate. But I said, good, go for it in that way. So 25%. I said, okay, then what is likelihood that your lawyer is totally inept and you can't in any way plea in any way, you know, reduce the sentencing away from the potential harshest sentence, which would be prison time. And he's like 30%. I said, okay, great. Now that's times three. I said, great. And then what is likely that you've lost? And then the judge is like, I'm gonna throw the book at you. And he's like, 30%. I was like, okay. And you also start to realize that this stuff is so arbitrary. You know, how do you know? But you know, it gives you a sense. Okay, so we did that. And I don't. I didn't write down the exact numbers from that session with him. So he came up. His numbers were actually a little lower than mine. I was even amplifying them even more for this video. But after doing that, we just multiplied. This has to happen times this, times this, times this. Just like the six sided dice. Remember, you have to roll a six times another six times another six. That is 0.7% chance of happening. Now I've already. It's actually the number I got on my calculator is 0.0072. So but you got to multiply by 100 for percentages. So it's 7%, which is not 7 out of. It's not 7%, which is 7 out of a hundred. It's 0.7, which is 7 out of a thousand. 7 out of a thousand times. That's gonna happen. Extremely low. And when I did this with him, I think it actually was even lower. It was like zero. It might have been even out of a 10,000 number, or maybe like one or two out of a thousand. Extremely rare. And just going through this process, take the time to do it, you will feel so, so much more relief. And you also start to realize how you have power at each stage of the process. Oh, I could intervene here. I could get a different lawyer. I could do that. So whatever it is for you, follow the sequence and see what power do I have at each position. Maybe after you've gone through it and say, well, wow, it's a very low likelihood. And any step of the pathway, I have some agency, I have some power, I have some choice. I'm not a victim of my life. I'm a creator, I'm an owner. And reclaim that. And as you do that, you start to realize that a, the likelihood is very, very, very, very low. And you get it in a very visceral way when you. Not just intellectual way, but in your body when you go through this exercise and then also reminding yourself, I can handle whatever happens along each step of the pathway. When you combine those two, your anxiety dramatically reduces. So share below what you're using this on, what. What your numbers are. I'm really curious about how this works for you and if it can serve you in your life. And until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. I'll talk to you soon.