The Fear and Anxiety Solution (31 page)

2. Without analyzing extensively, circle three or four words that appear the most important, desirable, and enticing to you.
Let your subconscious make the choice. Notice which words trigger positive feelings and a sense of openness or expansiveness in your body—even if those sensations may appear rather subtle.

3. Using these key words, frame your new core belief as a statement
. Begin your new belief by saying “I am” or “I have.”

     • Through an
“I am”
statement, you identify yourself with the attributes of the new belief: “I am confident, capable, and resourceful.” “I am calm, centered, and secure.” “I am at peace and in the flow.” You affirm that this is who you are—or at least who you want to be. The only caveat with an “I am” belief is that it may at some point feel a bit limiting because it focuses only on a small subset of all the qualities of who you are.

     
• You may prefer an
“I have”
statement, in which you
own
your new belief versus
being
it: “I have powerful resources to create the life I want.” “I have confidence in my abilities to keep myself safe and well.” “I have inner peace and calmness.” The downside here can be that you may still see these qualities as separate from you and that you may, at least subconsciously, worry that you could lose them.

Try different variations beginning with “I am” and “I have.” To figure out which one works best for you, close your eyes and say each one out loud three times. Choose the statement you feel the most energized by and excited about.

4. If neither the “i am” nor the “i have” variation feels quite right to you, try these statements: “i love and appreciate myself” and “i trust and believe in myself.”

Although it’s very powerful when your new belief specifically addresses the limitations and shortcomings of the old one, it can be even more empowering to shift the focus to how you want to relate to yourself. Your relationship with yourself is ultimately the most important relationship in your life. When you declare, “I love and appreciate myself,” or “I trust and believe in myself,” you are free from other people’s judgments and you no longer try to live up to their standards. Once you’ve truly accepted such a belief as your new identity, you can stay in your power and at peace with yourself, no matter what the circumstances.

Saying you love, appreciate, and believe in yourself may sound rather self-absorbed, complacent, or antisocial. But by loving, appreciating, and believing in yourself, you fill yourself with these positive qualities, which you can then share with others from the fullness of your heart.

Keep in mind that if the wording “I love and appreciate myself” doesn’t quite suit you, you can always change it. A client of mine told me once that loving herself didn’t sound authentic or appealing to her. As a fellow German, she wasn’t used to the more liberal way the word
love
is used in the English language. The German “I love you”
(Ich liebe dich)
is usually reserved for the romantic partner, which is why, to her ear, “I love myself” sounded rather odd. “I appreciate and care about myself” worked much better for my client.

You can also create a combination of the “I am ____,” “I have ____,” “I loveand appreciate myself,” and “I trust and believe in myself” statements. For example, “I love and trust in myself. I am calm and confident and have all the resources I need to be happy and well.”

Remember, at this point you don’t have to fully buy into this new belief. Right now it’s just important to clearly define the new belief you want to focus on and to feel excited, or at least hopeful, about its promise and potential.

Until now, your new belief and identity are mainly good ideas and positive intentions. To be able to use them as replacements for the old, limited belief, you need to translate the words into the language of your subconscious mind—images, feelings, sounds, and other sensations.

1. Create a picture of the new you.
Imagine yourself as the person who embodies the qualities of the new belief—for example, someone who is peaceful, confident, energized, and empowered.

Make sure you can see
yourself.
If instead of seeing yourself, you’re looking through your own eyes at the imagined world around you, the subconscious will focus on those external circumstances, which right now are of secondary importance. In fact, you want to imagine the new you independent from any outside context. For example, you might picture your future self in a new office, on a Hawai’ian beach, or at an award ceremony surrounded by friends cheering you on. You might want to see yourself as confident and cheerful, seventy-five pounds thinner, and driving a brand-new red Porsche. But when you make specific people, outer circumstances, or significant physical changes a part of your internal identity, you’re adding certain conditions to your goals. Your subconscious could interpret these conditional images this way: only when you’re in that new office, on the beach, surrounded by effusive friends, have the perfect body, or are driving a new red Porsche can you feel confident and at ease. Your subconscious might consider the external details as unrealistic or even unachievable outcomes and therefore generate very little motivation to change, because it doesn’t want to set you up for failure. Including these conditions can also distract from the primary goal, which is to feel empowered and self-actualized regardless of outer circumstances.

Now notice whether the picture of the new you is:

     • In black and white or in color

     • Small, life sized, or larger than life

     • Bright, dim, or as it would normally appear

     • Focused or unfocused

     • A still picture or more like a movie

2. Entice the senses.
What will you see, sense, hear, smell, and taste when you are your empowered self? What about your body posture and facial expression?

Let’s say your new belief is “I’m confident and excited about all my possibilities.” Imagine looking into the mirror and seeing your face lit up with a big smile. You’re standing tall and straight, but at the same time you’re relaxed and comfortable in your own skin. You may have an upbeat and joyful song playing in the background; smell clear, refreshing air; and taste delicious, fresh-squeezed juice or invigorating sparkly water. By including the senses, you enrich and enliven the vision of the new you, which makes this goal for your subconscious even more exciting and palpable.

3. Energize the new you with emotions.
How will you feel when you’re the person you see on your inner screen? This step may appear redundant considering that you just decided that you want to feel confident, at peace, and energized. Nevertheless, I’ve seen what happens when my clients create wonderful internal images of their new selves but forget to link them with positive emotions. You can’t fly a kite without a breeze or plant a garden without warmth and light, and you can’t pursue an amazing new identity without enticing emotional charge. No matter how great your intentions, if you don’t feel anything about them they’ll never become your reality. A positive emotional connection to your desired outcome provides you with the subconscious energy you need to commit to and motivate yourself to follow your dream.

So how do you look? Are you excited about who you’re about to grow into? Or are you still not seeing or feeling it? If the latter is the case, here’s what you can do.

You may argue that you’ve never felt confident or powerful. Even after scanning carefully through the highlights of your life—graduations, athletic accomplishments, your first kiss, your wedding, the birth of your kids—you’re still convinced that confidence and empowerment are completely foreign to you. Well, there’s another very effective approach to connecting yourself to a desired emotion or state of being—even though you may never have experienced that emotion or state yourself. Neuro-Linguistic Programming calls this approach
modeling.

We all have a natural ability to learn and acquire certain skills by simply mirroring someone who has already mastered them. In fact, many of our behaviors
originate from modeling and imitating someone else. For example, pay attention to how you speak: the words you use, your intonation, gestures, and facial expressions. Do you recognize similarities to your mother or father? There’s a reason many of us come at some point to the same, rather shocking realization: “I am becoming my parents.”

As a child, you modeled not only your parents’ manners and behavior, but also that of the heroes and heroines you read about or watched in movies. While you reenacted the adventures of Superman or Wonder Woman, using “superpowers” to fight against the dark and evil forces, you became these heroes. Sure, flying and stopping trains with your bare hands or roping a villain with a lasso of truth was rather tricky, but your attitude, energy, and confidence matched those of the idols you were impersonating.

You can still flex these modeling muscles even though it may seem a long time since you last used them. If you don’t know what it feels like to be confident or empowered, mirror a person who embodies confidence in a way that you admire and aspire toward. This can be someone you personally know or a celebrity, humanitarian, or historical figure. Take some time to observe and study this person. Notice the characteristics that make him or her appear confident. Pay attention to this person’s posture, body language, facial expression, tone of voice, way of breathing, or—to quote the famous anthropologist Gregory Bateson—look for “the difference that makes the difference.” Then practice these characteristics on yourself and notice how your energy changes when you’re adjusting your own breathing, facial expression, and body posture to match what you have observed.

It often takes only an open mind and a few of these adjustments to understand how it feels to be as confident as the person you’re using as a model. It’s even more effective to model the characteristics of a variety of people and thus find out which adjustments evoke the most powerful sense of confidence for you. Over time, you’ll establish your own specific ways to feel and express this emotion. Although modeling is not as straightforward as drawing upon your own memories and experiences, it’s the bridge that can lead you to an empowered state of being, one you previously believed was impossible to attain.

The greatest obstacle between an idea and its execution is doubt. As the architect of your inner identity, you’ve designed, in the previous two steps, a clear
and exciting blueprint of your new concept of self. However, you may doubt the validity of the new belief, while the familiar, limiting perspective of yourself still appears more realistic. How can you alleviate the doubt and leverage your subconscious to release and replace your old belief and identity? The best way is to collect convincing evidence that shows you that you possess the potential and resources to truly become the empowered self you envision.

For the first twenty years of my life, I was very insecure about being clumsy. For as far back as I could remember, whenever I dropped or spilled something, my family burst into comments such as “Here he goes again!” or “That’s typical,” or “How can one person be such a klutz?” The belief was further reinforced by my grade-school teacher, who during each arts and crafts class sent me out to run his errands so that I wouldn’t injure myself, he said. As a consequence, I became more and more insecure about my motor skills. Even simple things like bringing a tray to the dinner table or wearing nice clothes during festive meals made me shake and sweat in anticipation of another clumsy accident followed by painful mockery, which was usually exactly what happened.

But one day I decided that the old belief was no longer true. I remembered the many times during medical school and my residency when I had proven to myself that my manual skills were much more proficient than I had believed. As a waiter at the Oktoberfest in Munich, I’d balanced hundreds of food trays on one hand while wading through the crowds—and I hadn’t dropped one chicken. I also realized that my college friends didn’t view me as clumsy, so why should I any longer? In light of all the evidence that I was quite handy, the old clumsy identity didn’t feel appropriate any longer. And because I was more confident and at ease with myself—even when I spilled or dropped something—my family started to acknowledge that my eye-hand coordination was more developed than they had given me credit for.

Anthony Robbins compares beliefs to tables. The pieces of evidence supporting the beliefs are the legs of the table. In other words, the more supporting data you have that your new belief is true, the more solid and stable the table becomes.

Here are three ways to find the supporting evidence that will prove you have what it takes to fully grow into and live up to your empowered self:

     •
Write down ten things you’ve accomplished in your life, ten skills and talents that you have, and ten times when you solved a problem or overcame adversity.
If listing ten things in each category seems like too
many, you’re probably being far too critical and harsh with yourself. Be as generous and open minded as you would be with the people you love and care about.

     •
Ask the people who care about you what they appreciate about you.
What reasons do they have to believe that your new, empowered identity is a reflection of your true potential? Don’t be too shy to ask. You aren’t fishing for compliments—you’re looking for objective outside input. The fact is that most people take their best qualities for granted while they’re busy focusing on their few shortcomings. Chances are that you won’t believe all the great things you’re getting to hear about yourself. However, give yourself permission to consider that the people who love you the most can often more clearly see your light because you’re shining it more onto them than onto yourself.