My friend Hello, welcome back to the profitable nutritionist Podcast. Today, we are talking about anxiety. Let’s go there. Now I’m not talking about chronic anxiety that you would go to a practitioner or seek a third party assistance with, I don’t know anything about that. But I do know a thing or two about low level anxiety in your business or in other areas of your life. And that is what we are talking about today. So a little disclaimer here, this is not severe anxiety that I am any sort of an expert on. However, the kind of that creeps up that makes you doubt yourself and the viability of your business. And if you should keep going or not, I’m pretty well versed in that one. So that’s what we’re talking about today, when we’re talking about business anxiety and pressure. And why I think this is a really interesting conversation to have be is because we don’t have anxiety in our business all the time. I know this is true. For me, this is true for a lot of my peers, my entrepreneur friends that I talk about this kind of stuff with and I was recently bouncing this off of a few of them. And we got into a great conversation around it. I said, Isn’t it so interesting, that there’s no anxiety and very little pressure. In business, when things are going well, when you’re hitting the goals. And the milestones and everything is exceeding expectations and you’re just crushing it, you don’t necessarily have anxiety. Now for sure, it can creep in from time to time in sneaky little ways. But it isn’t paralyzing the same way that it can be when things aren’t going the way that you thought that they would. And in those times, your brain is going crazy trying to keep you safe and secure and out of harm’s way. Hence, the anxious thoughts that come up when the goals are not being met. And when the money is not coming in the way you need it to be. And when there aren’t clients banging down your door the way that you thought they would be. Or maybe you’re gone backwards, maybe things are, were going really well. And all of a sudden they aren’t oh my gosh, then your brain goes in sane, and hence some anxious thoughts arise. doesn’t really happen, though, when you’re exceeding your own expectations and crushing the goals. So interesting. Why is that? Let’s explore. So the anxious thoughts we’re talking about here come up typically, when expectations are not being met, and the reality isn’t what you anticipated it would be. And the reason for the anxious thoughts is that your brain is trying to keep you safe. Like I said, it’s going crazy trying to get out of harm’s way when you’re in business. And of course, this conversation could be applied to so many areas of life. But we’re going to keep the scope of our focus here on business and anxious thoughts about business, but you could apply it elsewhere, of course. But when you’re when your brain is trying to keep you safe and secure and out of harm’s way in your business, it’s because you’re doing things that feel risky, they feel like it’s really putting you out there in a vulnerable spot. And your brain doesn’t like that. Of course it does. And it wants you to say very safe in the cave protected, and amongst the herd never to be judged or rejected or, you know, risking failure in any way. Because we’re humans. And that’s how our brains operate. Guess what is the opposite of that. Being in business, being an entrepreneur will put on all of your insecurities on full display for yourself and the world, the moment you decide to be an entrepreneur, it’s also totally worth it. But without managing your brain around some of the anxiety that comes up along the way can feel really horrible. So that’s what we’re talking about right now. It’s when your brain is looping on the what ifs, the worst case scenario is when things aren’t going great. And the reality is not meeting your expectations, your brain is freaking out about it, and is trying to get you to quit and trying to get you to go back in the cave where things are safer. And what it will do, if left to its own devices is bring up all of the worst case scenarios. Think about them, ruminate on them loop on them, like I said, so then you dwell on that anxiety and you play out those worst case scenarios on repeat and they get stronger and stronger in your mind. Or the opposite tendency would be to feel that anxiety and some of those worst case scenario thoughts and immediately avoid them. Shove them down deep. Think of Pollyanna positive thought think anything else at all other than about this negative thought so that you don’t give any airtime to it and bury it deep. So it doesn’t come true. This is kind of like law of attraction PTSD, I think, where on some level, you me, anyone who’s having this that would be believing, oh my gosh, if I if I even think these negative thoughts, they’re going to come through I’m going to call them into my life. Okay, first of all, no, we needn’t worry about that. But I understand why we would think that or why it could feel that way. So dwell or avoid dwell and play out the worst case scenarios and just spend all Have your time imagining that feeling super anxious, or avoid? Don’t look at it very deep. Oh my gosh, we can’t even think about it must be positive must be positive at all costs must be positive. Which one? Which one? Is your anxiety flavor? Or is it a roller coaster of both of those extremes? I know for me, sometimes it could be a roller coaster. Oh, it’s so fun, isn’t it? All right, well, either way, I have a very tactical solution. And that’s what I’m going to share with you today. So I just wanted to open up with First of all, let’s normalize these feelings they happen. Hopefully, that’s the vibe that you’re getting. We’re gonna keep this lighthearted because it does happen, you get anxious in your business, you aren’t going to crush it all the time, I’m not going to you’re not going to no one is going to there’s ups and there’s downs. And when we’re in the downs, it can feel overwhelmingly negative, and it can feel like holy cow, the train has left the tracks, we are off the rails, we are going to careen over the cliff and die. Again, again, it happens, nothing has gone wrong. Okay, especially when things aren’t going as planned, your brain can really go there, to a very, very dramatic place. I have seen my brain do this. In the last six months, I’ve talked a lot on this podcast about how my business has changed, things that worked before haven’t been working the same way anymore. We haven’t been hitting goals in launches that we have before or even close for the last six months or so which has me first of all curious, and troubleshooting. And then also anxious because I have a human brain too. So I know this, like I live this too. I work with my own tendency for my brain to go off the rails. And I have created a protocol for myself, which is what I’m sharing with you today. I also have coached hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people on these same topics. So I know something to be true. At the earlier stages of business, you’re you’re anxious about making your business work, you’re anxious about it being viable, you’re anxious about making some money about getting some clients about testing your process out about just your business having a pulse. So there’s anxiety there about maintaining it and keeping it working right. Now, further along in business, I coach on this in the mastermind with students of mine that have a more advanced business at the six or multiple six figure level and I know this for my business as well, that that anxiety doesn’t go away, it shifts a little bit, you get to a point where your baseline is yes, we’re like we have a business and we keep the doors open. And we have clients and there’s money coming in. But then it changes to oh my goodness, I have a team, I have other people’s livelihoods on the line, oh my gosh, can I maintain this level. And then your brain can get really anxious about that too. Because no matter what level you’re at, it’s new. And you’re doing things that you’ve never done before. And you’re adopting skills that you have not mastered yet. And you’re probably in uncharted territory in some way and your human brain will freak out about it, get super anxious, and then you will either dwell or avoid. Well, first of all, let’s just normalize the fact that this happens to everybody, it will happen to you usually doesn’t happen as acutely when things are just chugging right along and you’re exceeding those goals. But when and not if but when you don’t, because we aren’t always winning all the time, things don’t always just keep going in a linear, upward trending graph, like we would love them to do. They don’t that’s just not like that. So when things are not going the way that you anticipated that they would, your brain will freak out. And that’s why I want you to have this tool to actually help you, which is a two step exercise. Okay. Like I said, at the beginning of this year, end of last year, beginning of this year, I was feeling a lot of this anxiety, and I had to create a protocol for myself, which is what I’m going to share with you today. I wanted to really get out of that anxiety before I really could coach on it or talk to you about it not because I want to always have solved every problem. And I don’t think that that’s even a thing. But because I just do think it is more useful to be giving a framework that I’ve seen get results first. So just know that I have used this exact framework, this exact two step process as a protocol for myself since the beginning of this year, which has helped me so much in calming down my brain when those anxious thoughts are present. And sometimes they are. I do this every day. It takes five minutes and it is very easy to skip. Just like most things that are easy to do. They’re also easy not to do. So don’t be fooled by how simple this is. It will change your entire business experience. Truly it will. I can attest to that 1,000% hand on my heart. This will change your business experience. It also goes against every instinct that you probably have to want to avoid it Are you ready with that good
lead in, it’s easy to do, it’s also easy not to do. So don’t be fooled by the simplicity. And also, your everything in your instincts is going to want you to not do this, which means it’s probably worth doing. Alright, let’s dive in. So every morning, I take five minutes, especially when I’m feeling anxious about my business, I take five minutes to write down all the negative or anxious thoughts that I’m having. So I can get them out of my head and get them onto paper. For me, it’s actually digital, sometimes I handwrite. But often, it’s digital. So I put them on a blank page. Okay, and I answer very specific questions to tease out those thoughts. I’m going to share those specific questions with you in a minute. But this is the process, I get all of those negative, anxious thoughts, I literally don’t allow myself to put any positive thoughts on here, it’s only the negative ones, which is a departure from a regular thought download a regular self coaching practice that you may know from being in one of my programs, if you’re in the mastermind, if you’re in the profitable nutritionist program, you know that we do a variation of this with all thoughts. But for this particular protocol, I just want the negative ones. Okay, so I put all of those down, I list them out. That’s all I do for day one lists are all of the negative thoughts that my brain would much rather avoid. Because I am of the avoiding, I mean, I do ruminate as well. And I do loop on worst case scenarios. But more often than not, my brain would like to quickly reframe every negative thought as a positive one and not even think about the negative thoughts and not even entertain them for one second. Because if we look at them, they could come alive. God knows we don’t want that. So that’s where my brain goes. And I make myself do the uncomfortable thing of writing them all down and actually acknowledging that I’m having these negative thoughts. So that’s step one, for day one, take five to 10 minutes, and put them all on paper or on a screen. Then the next day, I revisit that negative thought list and I make an action plan from it by answering one very specific question, which I will also share with you in a minute. And then the next day, I do I rinse and repeat, I do that all the negative thoughts again. And then the day after that, I make an action plan for addressing them by answering one question. So simple, okay, five minutes a day to brainstorm all the crap thoughts you’re having that are making you feel anxious. And then the next day, you take five minutes to create an action plan for addressing them rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat day after day. I want to challenge you to do this daily. It is so simple. But it’s so powerful. And the discipline that you have to do this one thing daily will change your entire business. It takes discipline to do things day after a day, especially super simple, easy things that are really easy not to do that your brain might be like, ah, that’s, that doesn’t really make a difference. We could skip that today. No, no, don’t skip it. Discipline is really important here. Okay. This is a central part of what I teach in the TPM program. And in the mastermind is the discipline of doing self coaching every day. And what self coaching is, in a nutshell, is having an awareness of what thoughts your brain is thinking, so that you can create strategies to plan and address them. But first, we need to know what is going on in that brain of yours. Okay, so what is your subconscious mind anxious about? That’s step one, we need to tease it out. Step two is making the plan with your conscious mind to make sure that those scary worst case scenarios don’t happen, or that you at least have a plan to deal with them if they do happen. So that’s what we’re doing here. We’re teasing out the subconscious. And then we’re using our planning, forward thinking conscious mind to address it. So I suggest you do this for a minimum of 30 days, see what happens. This is my challenge for you. I’m throwing down the gauntlet 30 days of negative thought exploration. Are you in, be in do it, this is a gift to give yourself. Here’s how you do it. Remember, I told you I was going to give you my exact thought prompts and the exact questions to ask yourself. So first of all, sit down for five to 10 minutes uninterrupted, turn off your phone, turn off all notifications, set a timer and answer just one of the following questions. I’m going to give you a whole list of questions that I use and I pick one per day. I grab it. And I just brain dump exactly what my brain offers up as an answer to this question. I don’t edit. I don’t censor myself at all. Other than it has to be the real actual negative thoughts that I’m thinking okay. Just write just type free type free write it will be a muddled and messy and a run on sentence see and probably really dramatic and negative. That’s perfect. That is what you want. You want to see what’s going on in that brain of yours. Here are some of my thought prompts to tease out the negative anxious pressure thoughts. You’re ready. Okay. What are the negative thoughts? I’m thinking right now? Answer that question. What am I worried about? What’s not working? What am I frustrated or upset about? Why am I worried? What am I afraid of? And why? Now, here’s some interesting ones get these get a little bit deep, you might be very, very surprised at what you come up with here. What rules did I unknowingly adopt? And why have I been keeping them? That’s a juicy one. How about what have I been wanting to let go of? And what’s in the way of letting it go? What part of me Have I been ignoring or bulldozing over? And if I listened, what would I hear? Lastly, what have I been resisting? And what would allowing that thing look like? Okay, I’m gonna read all of those again. But just grab one, you’re not going to answer all of these questions in one day, you’re going to grab one, and you’re just going to brain dump. Whatever your brain offers as an answer, it’s going to be probably pretty negative, but insightful. All right, what are the negative thoughts? I’m thinking right now? What am I worried about? What’s not working? What am I frustrated or upset about? Why am I worried? What am I afraid of? And why? What rules did I unknowingly adopt? And why have I been keeping them? What have I been wanting to let go of? And what’s in the way of letting it go? What part of me Have I been ignoring or bulldozing over? And if I listened, what would I hear? What have I been resisting? And what would allowing that look like? And that’s it for the day? Okay, you’re going to answer one of those questions for five to 10 minutes and just brain dump all of the negative stuff that comes up in answer, specifically, these first two, when in doubt, I always go to one of these, what are the negative thoughts? I’m thinking right now? Or what am I worried about? Especially what am I worried about? Doesn’t have to be more complicated than that. Okay? So you want to just get an awareness of what those negative anxious pressure thoughts are that are going on in your brain? That is half the battle, you have to know what it is. And you probably think you do know what those thoughts are. But I guarantee it will really surprise you, when you write them out or type them up. You’re not trying to fix them. You’re not trying to bury them or hide from them. Just be curious. Be interested in what thoughts are going on in there. Okay, so you make your your brain dump of all those negative thoughts. And I want you to just practice thinking okay, Hmm, no wonder I’m feeling anxious. If those are the thoughts, I’m thinking right now, that makes sense. Of course, I would feel anxious when I’m thinking that. Great. Now I understand. Okay, that’s all you do for day one, just an awareness, get those thoughts on paper. Now, the next day, you’re going to look at that list of thoughts from the day before and ask one very simple question. Here’s that question. What am I going to do to solve for or prevent those things I listed yesterday, this is where you’re actually making an action list or an action plan. What am I going to do to solve for those things? Or how am I going to prevent those things? You make a list? One by one, you go through those scary thoughts, those worst case scenario, thoughts that your brain says this is what I’m worried about. These are the worst case. Like, for me, I can laugh about this, because I’ve done this work. And I’ve listed it out. And I know, because I’ve seen in black and white the worst case scenario that my brain goes to, I know that when I’m thinking, Oh, my goodness, my business is crumbling, I’m going to be homeless, my family will be homeless. I know that that’s not really true. I know, a while my business isn’t crumbling. But my brain would love me to think that when I don’t hit a goal in a launch for an exam, for example, it doesn’t, it doesn’t look at what went well, it doesn’t look at how well we are doing in other areas. It just goes to oh my gosh, crashing and burning, we’re going to be homeless. That’s so interesting. No wonder I feel anxious. When those are the subconscious thoughts going down in my brain? Okay. So then I asked myself this question, what am I going to do to solve for or prevent those things? And I’m worried about that I make an action plan around it. Like, how would I make sure my family isn’t gonna be homeless? Well, brain, it’s great to know that we think that that’s a possibility. But really, when I make an action plan, I can see that I wouldn’t let it get to that point, my brain thinks we go from zero to 100. Like today, we have a thriving business, and we’re good, but tomorrow, we might be homeless. That’s what my brain would like me to think that that’s not actually how that goes. So when I look at it, and I create, like, Okay, well, we, you know, we
look at these metrics every week, and we monitor profit margin, like I have a whole financial plan, have an action plan for myself listed out? That is inaction that I know Oh, yeah. Okay, we have a plan for that. I actually do know what money’s coming in, where it’s going to make sure that we’re not going to be homeless, like I just have to calm my brain down, that we’re not actually going to be homeless. And now I can laugh about that as somewhere that my mind goes to but it left if left to its own devices. It really is thinking that that could be happening tomorrow. Yours probably does too. Okay, so this is why it’s is so valuable to list out all of those subconscious thoughts, the worst case scenarios that your brain could be thinking about. And then create the action plan for solving for that or preventing those things, you go through one by one write down how you either prevent it, or deal with it in the event that it does happen. How will you deal with it? What would you do? Like if if I was going to be homeless? What would I do? I could definitely make that protocol to how would I? How would that actually be okay? Now, I don’t want to be homeless. And I don’t want to be planning for that eventuality, because I don’t think it is. But it does really calm down my brain to know that I could handle it. And that also, I can make sure it doesn’t happen. Because I much prefer that option. Don’t do this in your head, you’re also going to be tempted to just do this in your head, don’t do it, you have to write it down or type it out. So you can see in black and white that you have a plan. That’s where the emotional charge really fizzles out. And your anxiety is lowered when you see the things that are making you anxious, the thoughts that are making you anxious, and you see that you have a plan for addressing it. So make sure you’re not just trying to do this in your head. And lastly, you put your plan in place as needed, you’re going to come up with some really genius ideas. When you do this, right now probably seems too simple, it probably seems like you won’t. But I just did this yesterday. And I came up with some really, really good ideas to prevent what my brain is looping on and thinking could happen my anxious thoughts. I just had two really good ideas yesterday, when I asked myself, How am I going to prevent that from happening. And I was like, Oh, my goodness, this is so clear. And I hadn’t thought of it before or hadn’t thought of it in that way. So that’s going to happen to you too, you’re going to see that you have control of a lot of action that you can take to make sure that these worst case scenarios don’t happen to you do this for 30 days. Okay, that’s my challenge for you continue doing it, you’re alternating between exploring your thoughts and having awareness of what they are, and action planning, alternating day after day for 30 days, my hypothesis is that you’re going to continue much longer than 30 days. But let’s go for 30 days, I also think you’ll probably expand this into other areas of your life because it is so useful. But let’s go Business Challenge 30 days of negative thought exploration, what we’ll call it, this is a negative thought download. It’s so simple, okay, you’re basically creating a habit and a daily practice of acknowledging what you’re worried about and solving for it, instead of avoiding or burying or ignoring, or increasing the anxiety and the pressure as your subconscious mind just makes that anxiety bigger and blows it up bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and you feel consumed by it. Because the reality is it’s expected to feel negative emotions like anxiety in life. Yes. And that’s just that’s just part of being human. And especially in business, where you’re constantly putting yourself into situations you’ve never been in before. You’re learning new skills, you’re doing new things constantly, your brain is tripping out about this sometimes. It’s okay, nothing has gone wrong. But that doesn’t mean that you have to be miserable and anxious and feeling that pressure either. Avoiding the negative thoughts and emotions doesn’t make them less likely to come true. Okay, it makes you feel like you’re drowning and that you want to quit when you’re avoiding don’t do that. The real move here is to uncover and acknowledge those specific thoughts that you’re thinking that are causing the anxiety and overwhelm in the first place. And then make a plan to solve for it. Because that you can control and clarity comes from action. Avoidance does not give you clarity and doesn’t make you feel better. No certainly does not neither just ruminating, but action is going to give you clarity. So taking action on it, making a plan that is what you want. And there you have it, my friend. This is the tried and true two step process for reducing anxiety and pressure in your business. Before we wrap for today, kind of proud of myself. This was a short and sweet episode compared to some where I’m a little longer winded. So you’re welcome short and sweet today. But before we wrap up, I want to invite you to subscribe to the show and leave a review if you have not already done so it takes about 30 seconds to do. But each review is so helpful because it increases the visibility of this podcast and gets it in front of other health and wellness business owners that could really use some help with their business anxiety and pressure you know, so subscribe, leave a review. I read every single one. And it does mean the world to me. All right, my friend. Have a wonderful, wonderful week.
