How Self-Awareness Can Relieve Anxiety Naturally

Hi my name is Elisha Goldstein I am the founder of the mindful living collective and also the creator of 21 days to overcome anxiety naturally and I want to talk to you a little bit about self-awareness and why that actually matters you know really what it is how we can cultivate it and how it can make a big impact in your life right now.

You know every day we’re moving around we grow up we we learn how to repeat certain physical procedures like taking food and putting it to our mouth to relating to people on a daily basis our relationships the people that we love to the work that we do to the way that we exercise the way that we sleep and and more. 

Our brain memorizes certain procedures it makes them automatic now that’s not so much a problem sometimes that’s really good because as our brain makes things automatic we can handle more and more complex tasks but what if our brain makes things like anxiety automatic or what if it makes things like depression automatic or what if it makes things like fixing your belief in what you’re actually able to do automatic? What if it holds you back in life in some way automatically? Self-awareness allows us to wake up from that step into what Victor Frankel who is a Holocaust survivor and a neurologist and psychiatrist he said between stimulus and response there’s a space in that space lies our power to choose our response and our response lies our growth and our freedom. 

Mindfulness or awareness or self-awareness mindfulness of ourselves helps us step into that space and widen that space so we’re more aware of the choices and have a greater sense of perspective of what’s in front of us. Why is that important? 

Well, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, roughly roughly 1 in 12 Americans say they have the symptoms of anxiety disorder that was in 2019. Here we are in 2020 let’s say if you’re watching this many years from now this is according to 2020 is now we’re seeing that has changed to one in three… hat’s a dramatic difference! 

So what happened? We’re operating automatically paying attention to the headlines, the most blaring headlines, paying attention to our own worries that are just kind of happening automatically and we’re developing these anxiety disorders. 

So this is what I call an anxious loop. What’s important about this with self-awareness is we can recognize our nervous system is getting kicked up we can recognize when we’re caught in certain habits of eating or maybe lack of exercise things that could be really helpful for us and then we can begin to wake up to that step into that space between stimulus and response and say aha got here how did I get here? What kind of drew me off track? And then invite ourselves to begin again.

The more and more we practice self-awareness the beauty of it is the stronger we the stronger we get with it and i’ll give you an example of something really personal to my life. 

For years and this may sound kind of silly but if you know if you know me or if you don’t know me this now you’re gonna know all in all the programs i’ve ever written and all the books i’ve ever written um what’s really important is this thread of play why is play actually important to bring into our lives maybe with an awareness we can look at and say yeah where is the play in my life because play not only creates resiliency and actually has positive um can make a positive impact to our brain and not only is it fun and can and can help us be happier but um play helps us actually learn more and more effectively so for years i’ve been kind of was playing guitar off and on in my life um and uh and it was only recently had not been playing for many many years have three young boys life is busy you know in that way and i’ve always told myself the story that like who has time to play you know the guitar don’t know how to play the guitar and so all of a sudden one day kind of woke up stepped into that space between stimulus and response and told my and looked into the future and said my kids are going to be grown you know and out of the house in some years and if don’t give them the gift of music in my house… 

This is for me personally. Everyone has their own stuff. I’m going to look back and i’m going to regret that and and so was in that space between stimulus and response in that space made a choice could see that had a choice that could play at certain times and um and my kids were a little older now so they allow me to play maybe or something that could play could play with it and see what happens who knows and so and so did now i’ve been kind of playing more and all of a sudden my five-year-old is picking up guitar and playing and like this is the inspiration that happens.

All it took is is stepping into that space between stimulus and response now for you that might be you get caught in certain anxious reactions you feel overwhelmed and stressed we all do and or you get caught in negative thinking or self-critical thinking where you get caught your hand way too down way too deep down the bag of potato chips are too deep down in the ice cream jar you know too often or or the bottle you know a little too often or there’s some kind of bad habits we might get caught in mental bad habits or behavioral bad habits self-awareness is again it’s like a muscle we can build it it’s just in our brain practice and repetition makes us stronger so when we practice self-awareness which i’m going to give you a very simple exercise to do in a moment to do that and we do with some level of practice and repetition we can actually get stronger in it. 

So here’s a very very simple practice to begin self-awareness we know all the benefits we’ve talked about it and so here’s something very simple so this is a practice you may have heard of before and if you haven’t it’s a beautiful practice to bring into your life very simple to implement takes almost it takes very little time you can do it in a minute you can do it in 10 minutes it’s up to you it’s the acronym STOP 

so what is that s stands for stop t stands for take a deep breath or as many deep breaths as you need o stands for observe this is kind of doing a mindful check-in at any given moment there’s three things happening in a triangle there’s thoughts emotions energy and motion and sensations the sensations of your body so you just check in how’s my body feeling right now my tenses are holding if you’re feeling anxious or overwhelmed a hundred percent you’re tensing somewhere in your body they’re just connected and so what you need to do is take a deep breath and begin to with that awareness soften your body or maybe stretch it out a little bit open it up send the signals to your brain the opposite signals of anxiety or stuckness or rigidity create some flexibility there and and then we kind of and then we kind of loosen it and soften it. 

Then we ask ourselves how am feeling emotionally emotions are the greatest decider in your brain to how you’re going to perceive and what you’re going to pay attention to all the marketing companies in the world know this and they spend billions of dollars on this to try and get you to feel something so you’ll pay attention to their stuff and so you are doing some internal marketing here you’re realizing that your emotional state might influence your perception and how you interpret things in the next moment whether it an interaction with your friend or your kids or somebody that that’s there or how you’re perceiving yourself or being self-critical towards yourself your emotions have everything to do with how you’re interpreting your own life and the life around you so it’s good to know how you’re feeling emotionally guarantee you if you’re feeling like well and happy you’re going to interpret a situation very differently than if you’re feeling anxious and depressed so same exact event different interpretation based on how you’re feeling so it’s really important to notice how we’re feeling so here we are we notice how we’re feeling physically noticing how we’re feeling emotionally maybe noticing or feeling comfortable or uncomfortable or imbalanced in some way maybe there’s some sadness there some anxiousness there some restlessness there bring this self-awareness to our emotional life our physical life our emotional life take a deep breath we notice it and then we ask ourselves a question what’s the quality of my attention right now does my mind seem really busy and distracted or does it seem like it’s able to attend to being here right now either way you’re actually present when you’re asking that question and so there it is there’s the oh sensations in the body and you’re doing this take your time with it emotions how am feeling emotionally you’re naming it because you know that if you can name it you know then you can kind of work with what’s there you know what’s there it’s easier to kind of cool it down studies show that actually when you name something you bring more blood flow to the prefrontal cortex especially naming emotions and that’s what’s involved with impulse control emotion regulation perspective you know all of that so we want to do that so we’re naming it and naming the quality of our attention and we’re asking ourselves the question what’s most important for me to pay attention to right now because now what we’ve done is we’ve got to that space between stimulus and response and now we’ve widened it through this process so we have greater perspective we’re a greater sense of the choices that are there and so now it’s a good time to dip in and ask the question what’s most important for me to pay attention to right now geez you know i’ve been so overwhelmed and stressed maybe maybe what need is just to go outside and take a walk and take a break didn’t even realize how thirsty was need to go get myself a glass of water believe me have plenty of clients who they people i’ve worked with who who will work a whole day without drinking a glass of water because they’re just in that autopilot so harmful and so um and so or maybe just need to go outside and get some sunshine and splash on my face or maybe need to stretch maybe need to call a friend or maybe what need to sit down in meditation or do a little yoga or whatever it might be 

Right you’re so much more aware you have so much more opportunity to take that next action that’s going to be supportive to you what’s most important for me to focus on or what do need right now two guiding questions that you dip into that space between stimulus and response and see what comes up from that and then take the action from that it’s only with self-awareness that you can actually harness the ability to live the life you want to live to choose the life you want to live you’re feeling stressed overwhelmed anxious or anything like that this is the key self-awareness of is really where begin where it begins so here’s the question for you how do you want to live what’s present for you right now how do you want to live what’s your intention start by getting creating some intentions for how you want to live and start paying attention to it you will fall off the wagon just like if you’re doing a meditation practice your mind will wander in life you’ll have an intention you will fall off the wagon. 

The question is can you forgive yourself for that. Investigate why what happened. Invite yourself to begin again and again and again and again so you keep coming back to our intention. 

Paying attention to our intention eating exercise uh meditation connecting with people play all of that those are our intentions we’re getting clear on those and now we’re starting to pay attention to it so starts by strengthening awareness 

It’s a muscle you just get stronger as you just practice it over and over again. Practice with STOP practice you know over and over again and and know that you can choose in this way how you want to relate to life itself inevitably choosing the life you want to live