Mind Over Fear: How To Squash Your Fears, Overcome Anxiety, and Boost Your Self-Esteem In Just 30 Days (2 page)

It seemed as if all these books were in one way or another pointing in one direction. They were all basically saying that if you want to overcome your social anxiety, you will have to -- metaphorically speaking -- “Jump into the shark infested waters and swim for your life.” In other words, they were all saying that facing your fears was the only natural cure.

As you can imagine, I was not happy about these suggestions at all. After all, I was hoping there was a bit of an easier way to do it. Besides, facing your fears to defeat them wasn’t a new concept to me and I felt that I didn’t need to read so many books to learn something so simplistic.

After contemplating some more, I came to a conclusion that I wasn’t going to settle for less than I could be. I decided that if facing my fears is what it would take… so be it -- that’s what I’d have to do. I also knew that if I was going to do it, if I was going to go down, I would have to go down swinging. I decided that in order for me to overcome social anxiety for good, I would have to do something really drastic. I figured, if I could put myself in a position from which I couldn’t retreat, I would be forced to face my fears and overcome them in the process, just like the books said.

After a few more hours of thinking, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I realized that there is probably no better way to tackle my fears and overcome social anxiety than for me to move 3000 miles away from home, which was in Brooklyn, NY, to Los Angeles, CA and force myself to make a living as an actor. It sounded ridiculous, but I knew that if I could pull it off, I would change my life forever.
 

So that’s what I did. I was 18 years old, I packed my bags and flew out to Los Angeles, CA with nothing but a few articles of clothing in my suitcase, a book on self-confidence; which I proceeded to read on the plane, and a small container of anxiety pills that I actually bought a few weeks prior to leaving New York. In fact, my social anxiety was so bad that when I was buying those pills I paid extra money for expedite shipping so that I could get them delivered in 2 days instead of 7, but the only problem was that I didn’t receive them until nearly 2 weeks later. I was so insecure that I couldn’t even pick up the phone to find out why the shipment was late and how I could get my money back.

Moving to LA was by far the scariest experience of my life. I was going to a city where I’ve never been before, and I didn't know anyone there. To make a long story short, after living in LA for a while I realized that every expert on social anxiety was dead wrong! It probably shouldn’t have been a big surprise to me because most of these "experts" never had any firsthand experience with social anxiety.

You see, over the time I spent living in LA, it occurred to me that confronting your fears only works for specific, individual circumstances. Every time we face a situation that would normally scare us, we get more and more used to it until the fear goes away. That's why social anxiety sufferers usually feel more comfortable talking with someone they already know as opposed to talking to a total stranger.

If I were to follow the advice I found in those books, I would have to keep attacking fears my whole life, and that's not something I wanted to do. Keep in mind, all these people who have no problems communicating with strangers, never have to face their fears; it’s just natural to them.

After it was clear to me that none of this stuff really worked, I developed an obsession to learn everything there was to know about the human mind and how it operates. I decided that if there is no specific cure for social anxiety, I would have to find it myself, and I refused to believe that it was impossible.

From that point on, I started studying everything from traditional psychology to NLP, Hypnosis, TFT, etc. I also read biographies and autobiographies of highly successful confident people. Plus, to get a better perspective on how successful people think, I did my best to meet them in person -- some of which were even quite recognizable names such as Will Smith, Brad Garrett, Paul Mckenna and a few others.

Many years and tons of information later, I had a crystal clear understanding of how the human brain works and how it can be reprogrammed to eliminate anxiety and gain total self-confidence. In addition to all this knowledge, I was later introduces to a few secrets which made what I already knew a lot more powerful. This is exactly the kind of information that I intend to share with you throughout this book.
 

Right now you possess the power to eliminate your most undesired fears and anxieties faster than you can even imagine. In fact, you have the power to be, do, and have anything you want. The only problem is that up to this point you have been using this power against yourself without even realizing it. These statements might not make much sense right now, but I promise that you will know exactly what I mean before you finish reading this book.

Every human being on the planet was born with this power, but most people don’t know how to use it to their advantage even if they are aware of it. I believe that less than one percent of the population knows how to use this power, but even less than one percent actually uses it. That’s why it’s very important that you pay attention to what you will read in this chapter and not disregard the information just because you might have heard some of it before.

As you probably know, your subconscious mind is responsible for approximately ninety percent of your daily experiences. I know, this information is no secret and you’ve probably heard this many times before; however, I believe that it’s because we are exposed to this information so frequently that we no longer stop to acknowledge what it really means. It’s like we have grown immune to hearing about how magnificent the subconscious mind is. This is exactly why I want us to take a few minutes to explore the subconscious mind and what really makes it so great.

When a child is born, its subconscious mind is wide open and begins to absorb everything like a sponge. Everyone who comes in contact with this child will potentially have a great impact on the development of its subconscious mind, especially if it happens on regular basis. The subconscious development will usually last until the age of five years old, at which point the child’s personality will really begin to emerge.

Even though the subconscious mind continues to develop throughout your entire life, most of the damage could have been done when you were little.
 
Have you ever noticed how most kids grow up to have very similar character traits and beliefs to those of their parents, guardians, or anyone else who played a significant role in their lives? If you were exposed to a lot of negative conditioning from your environment, make no mistake, it has influenced you to be the person you are today. Of course the same is true if you received a lot of positive conditioning.

Some people may try to convince you that one can be born with anxiety, but it is absolutely, categorically wrong. No one was born with anxiety. We are all born with only a few prewired fears; they are the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. In some cases, a child can be born with a slightly heightened fight or flight response, but it has nothing to do with developing anxiety. Anxiety is only acquired by being exposed to certain situations in your environment.

When it comes to social anxiety, it is something that people get at an early stage in their life. When the mind is young it is highly vulnerable and therefore extremely susceptible to the messages that are bombarding it all day long. Let’s use a hypothetical example to give you a better understanding of how you could possibly get social anxiety.

Imagine yourself as a little kid going to kindergarten for the first time. This place is totally unfamiliar to you. You don’t know anyone here, but notice a group of kids playing a game of tag. Being a free spirit that you are, without giving it much thought you approach the loudest kid in the group to see if you can join them. Of course this kid turns out to be really mean and embarrass you in front of everyone.
 

Now, let’s look at what happens inside your mind at the moment you experience these painful emotions caused by other kids. In order to avoid experiencing these emotions again, your conscious mind tells your subconscious mind to remember this situation and to keep reminding you of it for the rest of your life. In other words, at this moment your subconscious mind became your own personal bodyguard. Its job is to prevent you from ever putting yourself into this kind of situation again. Every time you will want to approach someone you don’t know, your subconscious mind will use the brain to send a signal through your nervous system, which will make you feel a sensation of anxiety in your body. When this happens, your conscious mind has no choice but to pick up on this signal and act accordingly, which usually means that you won’t follow through on what you want to do, such as approaching someone to you really want to meet.

After this kept happening again and again, giving you a feeling of anxiety became a natural process for your subconscious mind in any social environment. Now it’s automatic and no matter how much you may logically understand that there is nothing scary about talking to people, it is an involuntary response inside your body. This concept applies to any other form of anxiety as well.

Once I learned this, I remember thinking to myself, “If only I didn’t have a subconscious mind, I wouldn’t be suffering from social anxiety.” Consciously I knew that all these fears that I kept experiencing were completely irrational. Logically it made sense that nothing bad would probably happen if I were to start a conversation with a stranger, but I felt like there was nothing I could do because it was my subconscious mind that made me experience anxiety in such situations.

Of course it was absurd for me to even think that we could survive without the subconscious mind. It’s our subconscious mind that is responsible for keeping all of our bodily functions working properly 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. Amongst many things, the reason you can breathe without consciously thinking about it, the reason you can walk without even being aware of it, the reason you can navigate around your home without giving it any thought is because of your subconscious mind. Imagine having to consciously think about how to do everything that you currently do every minute of your life on autopilot.

A human being is not very different from a computer. The only significant difference is that a human mind is way more powerful than any super computer in the world. Imagine if all computers carried the exact same or similar hardware. The only major difference would be in the kind of software that was installed on each computer.

We humans are no different. We all have very similar physical attributes to one another (hardware) like arms, legs, head, eyes, including all the organs, etc. What makes us all different is the way our brains are wired (software). It’s absolutely mind-boggling how many different layers of information are stored in your brain. Your subconscious mind has a model for everything that you do and feel on a daily basis.

Like I said earlier, ninety percent of things you do are actually subconscious. When you wake up in the morning, you immediately go through your usual morning routine. For some people it means to press the snooze button on the alarm, turn over and go back to sleep. Someone else will jump right out of bed and go to the shower. Another person will go straight to the coffee machine, and some of us immediately get dressed and go for a jog. Remember, this was only a brief description of what you could possibly do during the first few seconds in the morning.

Let’s not forget, the reason you can probably tie your shoes with your eyes closed while simultaneously thinking about something else is because of your subconscious mind. The reason you can drive a car for an hour and not even be able to recall how you’ve arrived at your destination, and the reason you can read this book without thinking about each and every word is all because you have done it so many times that it’s now automatic. It is now a part of your subconscious process.

Your subconscious mind is also responsible for how you see and understand the world. The reason you can turn a doorknob anywhere in the world without thinking about how to do it, is because you already have a general subconscious understanding for how doors work. The process was ingrained into your subconscious mind through constant repetition. In these last few paragraphs we didn’t even cover anywhere near one percent of what your subconscious mind is doing every minute of your life.

I hope you are starting to grasp the true power of your subconscious mind. But don’t forget, your subconscious mind can be your greatest ally or your worst enemy. If you have many disempowering subconscious beliefs and habits, it will greatly affect the quality of your life. To be even more direct, the only reason you have anxiety is because it’s a part of your subconscious process.

If you have trouble socializing with people and study those who are natural conversationalists, you will notice how they don’t feel any kind of fearful emotions when doing it. In fact, they see it as a pleasurable experience. They were fortunate enough to not have the same kind of experiences as you did when they were young. As a matter of fact, it’s very possible that they experienced a completely different situation. Imagine if they were rewarded for talking to people when they were young.
 
This is probably why they feel a great deal of pleasure when talking to people to this day.
 

If only you could go back in time and keep yourself away from those negative experiences, today you would have a completely different lifestyle. Imagine being able to enter any social environment and feel absolutely comfortable in your skin. Imagine always feeling calm, confident, and even excited when talking to people. But what if I told you that it’s actually possible and you won’t even need to invent a time machine to do it. Would you be interested? If so, you will find the rest of the book really interesting.