If you can learn to slow down, while anxiety, fear, panic, and stress are telling you to speed up, good things will happen over time.
On this podcast episode we take a look at the speed response that is baked into anxiety, fear, panic, and stress. When you are anxious or afraid, the odds are very high that you will automatically speed up. This is not helping. In fact, it is making things worse for you. This is why I wrote my new book Seven Percent Slower – A Simple Trick For Moving Past Anxiety and Stress. Let’s talk about this, and let’s listen to a free chapter from the book while we’re at it.
The Highlights
- SPEED is baked in to your anxiety, fear and stress response. When afraid, anxious, or stressed, the odds are very high that you automatically begin speeding up and rushing around.
- This is natural and normal, but it still isn’t helping you.
- I had to recognize that I was doing this while I was in the thick of my recovery efforts, and I had to learn how to change that speed habit. It was making things worse for me.
- I came up with the idea of going “Seven Percent Slower” as a little mental trick to remind me to go slower. It proved to be VERY useful in my recovery and has served me well ever since.
- Remember that recovery is all about building a new response to anxiety and building a new relationship with anxiety. Going slower – even when anxiety tells you to go faster – is part and parcel of building this new response and new relationship. It matters in your recovery.
- As always, this is not easy. The speed habit has been with you for quite a long time. Learning to catch and break that habit requires learning and practicing new ways, even when it is difficult to do that.
- When you do learn to slow down even when anxious or afraid, you will find it to be a tremendous help as you work the recovery process.
- Chapter 3 of Seven Percent Slower is about recognizing your speed habits and learning to catch them when you engage with them.
- If you are unaware of your rushing habits and behaviors, then you will have a difficult time changing them, so this is a big step.
How can you learn to go slower, even when anxiety is telling you to speed up?
- Understand that speed is part of this equation.
- Understand why this is the case.
- Understand why this is not helping you.
- Recognize your speed habits.
- Practice ways to break those habits.
- Put those new ways into practice when anxious, afraid, or stressed.
- Enjoy the benefits!
Any questions? 😉
You can also get chapter one of Seven Percent Slower as a free MP3 or PDF, so check that out.
See you next week!
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Podcast Intro/Outro Music: "Afterglow" by Ben Drake (With Permission)
