Managing Stress & Fear of Failure | Jack Canfield

Hi, everyone. I'm Patti Arbery, and we're back here again for another session of Ask Jack, where our community, whether it's Instagram or Facebook, sends us questions, and we get to ask Jack for the answers. All right, so the next question. This is a good one. How does Jack, AKA you, manage stress and worry?

Well, not perfectly. A lot of people probably think I do. I've talked to you and my wife, and they'll tell you otherwise. We all have stress. And basically, we're living in a time where we have a pandemic. We have an economic turndown. People are worried about getting sick and their parents dying, and you're getting. You're sending your kids to school again. There's just so many things going on like that. And so I think we are more stressed. And the rate of technology changing, you know, how something you used to do and all of a sudden you can't do it anymore because artificial intelligence came in and does it for you. Used to be, we had call centers in America, then they were outsourced to Asia, and now their artificial intelligence answers most of the questions. So those people are out of work. And so I think the main thing is to realize that everything's constantly changing. That is the nature of things. And we have to be willing to know that that's the case and adjust to that. So for me, worrying is negative fantasizing of the future. So it's one thing to have stress. Life has stress in it. Even walking up the stairs in a building stresses your body out a little bit. We need some stress to stay strong. When you lift weights, you're stressing your muscles that. That strengthens the muscles. Too much stress, the muscles give out. You can, you know, hurt a tendon, blow your knee out, whatever. But I think that we can learn to deal with stress through meditation, through yoga, through eating properly. So we're not having inflammation in our body through fasting regularly. I know it's something you do. I do through proper nutrition. There are things that are like, you know, I take Gabatrol in the morning. It's a helps. It's a neurotransmitter in the brain that helps you be less stressed. There's an essential oil called Peace and calming stress away, things like that that I can rub on my body or diffuse and inhale, and they're helpful, getting enough sleep, you know, those kind of things. But a lot of stress is caused by your own beliefs, your own thoughts, your own fears, your own imagining things in the future, which is what worry is. Worry is worrying about things that haven't happened yet, thinking about the negative things that you don't want to have happen. So if I'm worrying about you getting sick, or I'm worried about there's not going to be enough money to pay the staff, or if I'm worried about getting COVID 19 myself, or if I'm worried about is the stock market going to crash, which a lot of people are talking about, whatever. But I'm thinking about the future, and I'm imagining the very thing I don't want to have happen. What you do want to do instead is replace that with fantasizing what you want to have happen in the future. As Zig Ziglar used to say, worrying is negative goal setting. Whatever you think about, you bring about. And so basically, where your attention goes, your energy flows. So we want our energy flowing toward creating our positive future, not our negative future. I was talking to a nurse about a week ago who works with cancer patients. She said to me she noticed that this was like a support group she did for many, many years. She said, the people, when I would ask them, what are you going to do after you beat cancer? You know, when you're in remission, when you no longer have cancer, what are you going to do? And she said, if a person gave me a really specific, compelling vision, like, wow, we're going to move to Hawaii, we're going to live on the beach, we're going to snorkel, we're going to go deep sea fishing, we're going to bring the grandkids over. She said, those people by and large survive. She said, if they didn't have a compelling future, they said, well, I don't know, maybe I'll start a hobby. Maybe I'll organize the photographs, whatever. Those people mostly didn't survive. And so there's something powerful about having a positive expectation, a positive vision. And so now more than ever, with all this social unrest and everything that's going on, you have to be willing to control your mind, to really focus your mind and focus on the things you want, not with the things you don't want. And I think too, if the news stresses you out, it's pretty hard to watch the news, turn it off, stop watching it. It's like knowing that every time you talk to Bob, you get ticked off. Well, stop talking to Bob, you know, so we have a choice about where we put our att so we can bring less stress into our life. And when it does come in, we can do the things that help Us release the stress, like meditation, yoga, stretching, taking a hot bath, watching something that makes you laugh, you know, laughter is a great way to release stress as well.

I think stress is also kind of a gift from the universe sometimes. You know, what are you stressed about? Are you procrastinating? Are you tolerating something that you don't need to tolerate? Are you in an environment that's serving you all different kinds of things? Ask yourself, why do I feel stressed? And the worry side, I was listening to Oprah the other day and she said, I'll only worry or go negative for 17 seconds or less. Because that stuff comes right back if you know the law of attraction. So whatever vibration you're in, you're going to attract that same vibration. So I would say scare yourself straight, Literally be happy or else. But it's true, because we don't have a crystal ball. We don't know what the future brings. So why create a negative picture of what that looks like? I totally agree, but it's hard to.

Remember that sometimes it is, especially if you're watching a lot of television, because media is very seductive. You know, once you start watching it, it kind of puts you in a trance. It's very hard to pull yourself away from it. And so a lot of people sit down at 6 o' clock and 7 o' clock and like two hours of news goes by and the news doesn't report all the great things that are happening in the world. You know, it's the fire, the flood, the election, corruption in Belarus right now that's going on, whatever it is. And so the reality is that you can take a break from the news. I think Tim Ferriss calls it take a news fast.

I quit watching the news in 2008.

Very good.

I call you if I need news. Do you need to remind me? Okay, yes, I do. All right, so the next question is, how do you stop the fear and worry of what other people, other negative actions someone else might take?

Well, it's a similar thing to what we just said, that basically we're focusing on the future of what might happen that hasn't happened. I think if you're going to spend any time thinking about that, ask yourself, how am I going to respond in a way that's positive for me, in a way protects me in a way that I can move away from that. You know, obviously there are things that people can do that are, that are bad. I mean, that's why we have wills, that's why we have contracts. That's why we sometimes Create boundaries in our life for certain people not to be in our room. As Stuart Emery says, who's in your room? Well, don't let people in your room that are toxic, you know, and so if you think somebody's going to do something negative, sometimes you can head that off by doing something positive, maybe engaging them, finding out what they need or want that you can provide them so they don't have to do the horrendous thing, you might think. The other thing I would say is check out your assumptions. A lot of times we think people are going to do something negative or we think they're thinking something negative. Like, you know, you come home and your wife's in a bad mood, and all of a sudden you think, God, what did I do? Well, maybe you didn't do anything. Maybe it's the next door neighbor or the grocer or the person at the pharmacy that upset them. But we instantly go into thinking, oh, gosh, I better be careful. So check it out. You know, I notice you're feeling bad. Is there something I did, you know, inquire you're crazy? Or if they did, you're going to find out what it is, then you can make it right. But I think in general, again, it's just a matter of, like, not going into the future and imagining terrible things. Then you're going to feel defensive. And what happens when you think someone's going to do something negative?

Your guns are loaded and you're ready for it.

And then sometimes you do something that exacerbates the system.

I've never been guilty of that.

Totally crazy. Yeah.

Well, I think also, I think a lot of people that are watching probably worry too much about what somebody else might do. You know, it's like I have a husband. I'm not my husband. I mean, if my husband does something silly or embarrassing, it's not me. So lots of times we take on, oh, if our kids aren't perfect. I had people come over not too long ago and the little girl was acting up. And the mom, I think, was so worried about what I was thinking that she was taking it out on her daughter. And it was just a big story that didn't matter really. So we often worry too much about what other people think. Sometimes we just need to know who we are and where we're going and what we're doing, where we come from.

I think I agree.

Well, I hope you found this segment valuable. If you have questions that you want to ask Jack or ask Jack and Patty, please feel free to send them in and make sure you send us your comments or you can even post them below.

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