Warning! Anxiety Expands Unless You Do This…

Watch out. This video is a warning. It's a warning about how anxiety expands and will overtake you unless you do something about it. So stay tuned for this to really learn why that is and what to do about it. It's actually quite simple and I can't wait to share in this video exactly what to do about it so you don't get overtaken by it. If you're benefiting from these videos or as you're watching, if you benefit, click down below to give it a like and also subscribe so you can watch these videos as they come out. So what do I mean by anxiety expands? Let me give you a quick example. I was just talking to someone the other day and he said, you know, I used to be really nervous before high stakes stuff. A big meeting, a meeting with certain people at a certain level, executive level, you know, a public presentation, something that felt high stakes. And so he avoided those things because he felt like he couldn't do them well. He thought he'd make a fool of himself. He was worried about it. So he said, you know, he found ways to dodge those things, you know. But as time went on, he found that he was anxious. In smaller meetings, he started to get anxious around, you know, daily meetings, he started to get anxious. Even outside of work, he would be anxious. He'd be going to a hangout with some friends and, you know, with his wife and a couple friends, dinner party. Some people there he knew, some people didn't know. And he's like, I was nervous before going in there, and it wasn't always like that. I was just nodding my head as I listened to him. I said, I get it, I get it. Anxiety expands. He's like, what do you mean? I said, anxiety expands. It's like it will encroach on territory. It just expands, you know, like ants, ant colonies will expand into their territory and set up another little colony, another little colony, another colony. And then if there's another ant colony, queen, like, what will happen is they'll start to encroach, encroach, encroach. And then they meet each other and then boom, there's an ant war. And you can watch them on YouTube and they're quite fascinating. But don't stop this video to go watch an ant war. Just pause, hold on a second before you leave and go watch an ant war, realize that your anxiety is like an invading ant army that's encroaching. And if you don't, combat will overtake you. Is this true in your experience? Have you seen this? Have you seen that encroach? Because here's the thing. What happens is he, and perhaps you, and certainly I, lived this way for many years. We go into a defensive, almost like retreat, like posture, like, oh, anxiety is coming. Go further back. Just give it space. Just do whatever it says. And then what happens is the anxiety encroaches on that territory, and now it's got a new stronghold. And for him, it was a stronghold in regular meetings. And all of a sudden, you show up to those, and what happens is you feel weak, you feel weaker, you feel there's less power available to you. And then you say, you know, oh, jeez, I don't think I'm going to manage that one. Let me avoid that, too. And so you expand, and you can see that this is a downward spiral. But the good news is you can change this, and you can change this right now. How do you do that? You go on offense, baby. You decide, you know what? I'm going to move into the anxiety. I'm going to be the aggressor. I'm going to go into this. I forget who it was. My brother is a big fan of history from all different time periods. And he said, there was a general, I think it was in World War II, and he was asked about a certain retreat that they did in this battle, and he said, retreat, hell. We attacked in a different direction. So retreat, hell, attack in a different direction. Find a way to say, you know what? I'm going to move into this. And literally, it's an offensive mindset. How does that work? Well, give me another quick example. Just the other day, I was at the beach with my family, and we were camping, and so you had to walk from the campsite down to the beach. And I left my shoes. I didn't have my sandals. I forgot them. So I had my running shoes, and I was like, I don't want to wear my running shoes and go down to the beach and take them off and have to worry about my shoes. I'll just walk barefoot from the campsite to the beach. And I don't walk barefoot that often. You know, maybe I'll be outside in the grass or something. But my two sons, they love to walk barefoot everywhere. And so we're walking along, and, you know, there's, like, gravel and these different terrains, and I'm like, ow, ow. And my little kids are just walking along like it's nothing. I'm like, dang, these guys are tough. And so I had been on a defensive Posture with my feet, they were very soft. They're weak. The skin is weak. And so we do that for a couple of days. And by the second day, I'm just like, bitching. I'm like, my feet hurt. But then when I got home, I said, you know, I've made some great progress over these last couple days. My feet are already a little bit stronger. What if I go on offense? And so to put our trash from our house out to our trash cans, they're in the corner of our yard and there's a bunch of bark chips between our front door and the trash cans. And normally every time I go out there to put our trash or recycling or compost or whatever, I put on sandals to walk across those pokey bark chips. But my sons walk in the bark chips, no problem, all the time. I said, hmm, let me adopt their training strategies. And so, sure enough, just the last couple days, I walk out to the trash cans, I'll walk along the bark chips barefoot. But my mentality is, bring it on. So when it hurts, instead of it being bad, it's actually like, oh, this is making me stronger. So what would it look like to bring an offensive posture to the things that scare you, to the things that make you uncomfortable, to those work meetings, to those work meetings with those executives, whatever it is, how can you go into an offensive posture and start to seek that stuff out not once in a while, not when it's forced upon you, but actively, regularly, consistently? And each time it's like, whoa, that was a hard one. Here we go, because I'm going to do it again tomorrow. And it's the same thing with physically working out. It's the same thing with anything. It's a form of fitness. This is a confidence fitness, a social fitness, an assertiveness fitness. So the question I have for you is, are you willing to get fit? Because if you don't like anything else, it's going to encroach. Those are really your only two options. There's no set point of like, well, I did enough, I got fit enough, and now I can just do nothing right. It's like, you need to consistently be in practices and habits that are going to grow your fitness, grow your confidence, grow your strength, grow your ability to step into situations in life. So it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. And I'm a big fan of now. I don't know about you. So what are you finding most valuable from this video? Please share down below. I love reading the comments and definitely subscribe if you're enjoying these videos and I look forward to seeing you in future ones. Until we speak again. May have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.