How to Overcome Anxiety and Depression

Trapped by Anxiety and Fear? - How To Find The Fun Again!

Have you ever felt like you were trapped in a cycle of fear, something over which you thought you had no control? You just felt fearful and anxious; your heart racing for no apparent reason, a burning feeling in your spine, a churning in your stomach and you just wanted your Doctor to give you a magic pill to solve it. Read on to discover how to break free from the anxiety. It all feels so physical doesn’t it? You can get a pill for a headache, another physical pain, which most times works really well, so why not a pill to take away anxiety and fear? Well, of course, you may say there are plenty of pills. Tranquilizers, particularly the benzodiazepines, of which Valium (diazepam) is one of the most common, which can make you feel more relaxed. Unfortunately they wear off and afterwards you are back where you started, perhaps also with a muzzy head – great! You really would not want valium use and its long-term effect on your health get the better of you, would you?

Anti-depressants, if you are lucky enough to find the right one for you amongst the huge array of SSRIs, MAOIs, Tricyclics and others, can have a dramatic effect on your mood and may well redress the brain chemistry sufficiently for you to feel almost anxious free, and in some more acute cases are a necessity. However, does any body want to offer a guarantee on the side effects of these drugs over long periods? So what about life after drugs – nobody wants to be on drugs for the rest of their lives, and anyway are these medications just treating the symptoms not the cause?


Do you find yourself thinking a lot about your symptoms, what you are feeling, and wondering why - trying to figure out what could be the cause, perhaps some tumour, heart or other organ defect. Do you run the thoughts around in your mind again and again? Anything negative you read in the papers, hear on the radio or see on television that relates to how you feel, do you immediately adopt it as a possibility? The answer is probably mostly yes because you are on defence alert level 1 – constant fear. Everything and anything is a possible threat. How does that make you feel - more anxious, and more fearful? This fear loop accelerates and expands until eventually something gives and more often this only needs a further stressful trigger, such as a difficult journey to work or a long queue at the supermarket, and it leads to a full blown anxiety or panic attack.


This is a vicious loop caused by over-focusing on yourself and the fearful symptoms you feel. Your nerves are already over-sensitised and by focusing on negative and fearful things that is exactly how you will feel – more fearful and anxious. Seems obvious doesn’t it? So why do we do it? We focus on all this negative stuff to desperately try to understand a solution. The irony is that all this negative thinking, or focus, on what is wrong is in itself keeping us there. What you think about is what you feel. So try this. Think about one of the most embarrassing things you can think of that has happened to you. Did you ever say something about someone and they were right behind you? Think about it now. Do feel like cringing at the thought? You have recreated the thought in your mind and you relive the awful embarrassment again. This is the same thing with anxiety. The more you keep thinking about it the more you feel the symptoms of anxiety. For many Anxiety sufferers they do this to such an extent they become so damn good at it that they create the symptoms most of the time!


Now try thinking about one of the best moments of your life; a special love, winning a sports event, gaining an award, or where other people complimented you on an achievement. Recreate the thought and memory in your mind and run it through like a movie in your mind’s eye. How does that feel? Do you get the same sense of well being through your body as you rethink about that happy event as if it had just happened? Do you now feel more calm and relaxed? So it’s important to keep in mind that what we think about has a huge impact on what and how we feel.


All this time spent thinking about your symptoms, anxiety, what is wrong with you, and when you may recover, is preventing time thinking about the fun things in life you want to do and enjoy. You may initially say that in the midst of anxiety, and possibly depression as well, that you just don’t feel like thinking of fun. You aren’t in the mood. Fun things just don’t appeal any more. Well bear in mind that you have been 24/7 thinking negatively, so it may take some effort at first to change your habits from thinking about anxiety to thinking about fun. However, it probably took you some time of permanent negative thinking to get you into this fear cycle you are experiencing.


So get to it and put the same effort into thinking about fun when ever a negative thought pops into your mind. It’s OK to let your anxious symptoms run along side, just don’t think about them, and don’t dwell on them. Accept them and then think about fun. Before long your anxiety will begin to ease. If you keep at this for a sustained period you can look forward to a new dawn. As you rise above the ruts created by the anxiety and into the daylight, you will at last recover the zest for life and rediscover where all the fun had gone.

Read More

How to Conquer your Fear of Public Speaking with these 5 Simple Steps

Top 5 Tips to Conquer your Fear of Public Speaking

Does public speaking scare you? Did you know that in a famous poll which asked "what is your no.1 fear?" That the second most common answer was death. What was the top answer? What could be more scary than death...?

That answer was public speaking. So here are five great tips to beat your fear of making speeches,giving presentations or whatever form of public speaking awaits you.

Plan, Plan, Plan, Plan

The old saying is still true - fail to plan then plan to fail... The key to delivering a successful speech is to know your material, write about what interests you and speak about something you are passionate about - for some it's much easier to talk about cars then finance. Always plan out what is appropriate for your audience, if it's something with a lot of data or numbers - then it may be more appropriate to include a variety of print outs whereas a meeting about cars could have a slide show on a projector with a variety of cars you will talk about. Sometimes you don't get to choose what you get to talk about and so you just have to find your own personal way to discuss the topic that has a personal touch, something that makes it unique.

Learn Your Material
You will find it amazingly easier to deliver a speech that you know what your talking about and that you have rehearsed, rather then one that you finished writing and printing the night before. Preparation is essentially the key to doing well in a speech and you will find that over preparing will never hurt.

The Delivery
Okay, so your standing in front of a crowd and it doesn't matter how big that crowd is, you may be feeling like your heart is beating at 150 miles an hour. Everything is moving so fast, and you hear your name called to start your speech. You feel queasy inside and as you open your mouth to say a word, you feel no moisture - just a dry mouth. This is what you will feel like most likely and don't worry, there are many other people who feel the exact same way when delivering a speech. This is how you may feel at the beginning but when you finish speaking you will feel completely different if you manage to keep the audience interested and maintain in control of yourself.

Do's and Do Not's

Do: Relax
Before you start, take a deep breath and just build yourself up. My favorite quote to say when I am in that position is to say, 'I can achieve whatever I believe'. Keep taking deep breaths whenever you need to, your audience will be thankful that you are pacing every now and then - it also gives them a chance to soak in the information. If you have the option, you can take a sip of water every now and then as a breather break.

Don't: Apologize for a Mistake
Don't apologize for a mistake. People most likely didn't notice it and stopping and saying, 'I'm sorry - that wasn't meant to be there' is more likely going to do more harm then good. Just continue on like you didn't even notice you made a mistake, it's the same concept when performing in a dance competition or a music recital - don't stop if you mess up - just continue and show you have the ability to adapt to any situation.

Do: Enthusiasm
Nobody likes a speech without enthusiasm and you will often find it may be difficult to speak up and project your voice but it will involve your audience and be worth it in the end.

Don't: Worry about Blushing/Embarrassment
Everyone hates speaking in a crowd (well mostly everyone - including me) and naturally some people will blush or get 'red faced'. The more you worry about it, the more people will take notice to it. If you focus your energy on engaging your listeners and forget about the blushing then it will fade as soon as it arrived and less people will care about it because you obviously don't seem to.

The Aftermath
You did it! You finished your speech and guess what? You're still alive and I am sure you even got a hand of applause when you finished. Feels good doesn't it? Well, you put in the hard work and survived - take a deep breath and acknowledge any complements with a quick thanks.

Read More

How To Overcome Fear

Anytime you’re procrastinating or not following through on something, it’s because you don’t have enough LEVERAGE on yourself.  You’re avoiding facing the truth and being 100% honest with yourself, so instead you say things to yourself like, “I can do it later” or “It’s not that important” or “I don’t feel like it” or whatever B.S. story you tell yourself.
It’s not until you say, “WAIT… that’s bullshit.  What will it cost me in my life if I don’t do this?  What’s the ultimate consequence?”
When you face that reality, you will have a rude awakening and get your butt into gear towards doing whatever you need to do.
We’re all driven by PAIN and PLEASURE.  We’ll do almost anything to AVOID pain, and anything to GAIN pleasure.
If you’re not doing something, it’s because you’re associating PAIN to doing it.  Instead, why not associate the PAIN to not doing it?  If you think about it, the pain of being over-weight and having low energy and getting a serious disease FAR OUTWEIGHS the temporarily pleasure and satisfaction you will get by eating that cookie.  But when you eat that cookie, you are only thinking about the pleasure, instead of looking at the consequences of eating it.
Here’s the questions to ask yourself to get leverage:
1. What will it cost me in my life if I continue living this way?
2. What is the ultimate consequence?
3. What will it cost me in emotionally, in my relationships, friendships, family, finances, health, spiritual life?
4. What will I have to give up or miss out on by living this way?
5. What have I already missed out on?  What has it already cost me in my life?
6. What will it cost me 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years from now if I continue living this way?
Alternatively, you can also ask pleasure-enducing questions to associate PLEASURE to doing whatever it is that you want.
Here’s some pleasure-enducing questions to get leverage:
1. What will I gain by doing this?
2. How is this going to move me closer towards my dreams and who I want to become?
3. How will doing this add to every area of my life?  My relationships? Emotional life? Finances? Health?  etc…
4. What will my life be like 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now by doing this?
The trick is to make sure that you’re consistently asking yourself these questions throughout the day.
If you find yourself still not consistently doing it, it’s simply because you’re not getting enough leverage on yourself.  I’ve had times in my life where I broke down in tears and experienced massive pain, until I hit what I call “Emotional Threshold” and that’s when things clicked and I transformed.
I didn’t hit emotional threshold by intellectually thinking of the pain or pleasure, instead I really made sure that I FELT IT at my core – I experienced the pain/pleasure fully, which is what propelled me to make the change permanent.
Today, there are things that I will NEVER AGAIN indulge in because it’s far too painful for me to go back – things like video games, sitting around watching TV, binge eating, depression, being lazy or procrastinating.
The truth is, you should be MORE AFRAID of those destructive habits than doing what you need to do.

The truth will set you free.

Read More