Is it really a long hard road to let go of anxiety?

Does it really have to be hard to overcome that anxiety that we bump up against from time to time in life and business. Is it really a long, hard journey to work through the issues that have created it and get past them. I'm not gonna be around the bush here. The answer's no, it absolutely does not. The prevalence of coaching, and I'm not knocking coaching let's just be 100% straight up, I have coaches I've had other coaches in the past, I have 100% benefited from coaching, but for people who have only given themselves the opportunity to work with coaches are only given themselves the opportunity to work with therapists, to work through normal average everyday things have this misperception that this is like some fucking cross you have to bear. And it's not. I mean, when we're engaging in therapy, when we're engaging in coaching, we are dealing with surface level strategies.

[00:02:14] I was recently a part of a conversation with someone I know who had an experience where they went through a week of an intense period of anxiety. And it all started with a decision that they made to go along with something that someone else wanted. So this person has a tendency to people, please. They went along with what this other person wanted, even though they knew that going into this situation, it was 100% something they did not want to do. 100%. So if you watch my previous podcast episode, you know, I've talked about alignment and values and what brings us happiness and joy. When we make a decision that throws us totally out of alignment, it's going to activate our subconscious mind because our subconscious mind does not like situations that cause us to feel unpleasant feelings. The mind just does not like it. So, what does it do? The mind fires off one thought, then it fires off another thought. And then the next thing you know, those thoughts begin to make you feel bad and you're going, why did I do this? And then it's… it's like firecrackers going off of emotion and thoughts. And we can end up in a spiral that creates this anxiousness, this anxiety. And there's just this perception that it takes forever to work through it. And I want to tell you that it does not. I'm actually gonna walk you through a couple of very short case studies to make my point. 

[00:03:54] Now, as a former healthcare professional, I'm going to make this very clear. One: I'm not knocking therapy because with people who have diagnosed conditions, they have trauma and really complex issues around that therapy is totally appropriate. Is therapy appropriate for people dealing with normal everyday problems? Sure. You wanna see a therapist and if just talking about it makes you feel better. That's great. But I'm going to make clear that I'm not talking about clinically diagnosed anxiety, the anxiety that gets in the way of your living every single day, because here's the thing, I'm gonna go into this sidebar for 30 seconds and then I'm back to the topic at hand. The word anxiety is a word that people use to describe how they feel. It is also a clinical term. I'm not talking about the clinical term. We're just gonna make that clear. I don't diagnose people. I don't treat people. However, I do help people get control of their confidence, their self-esteem, let go of self judgment, let go of people pleasing so that they have dominion over their thoughts, so that you have control over where your mind is going to a much greater degree. Now you may say, well, Penny, you can't control your mind, and if you know me long enough, you know that I live by the mantra that control is in illusion. Absolutely. So, what do I mean by controlling your thoughts? When we get into that situation where our thoughts are popping off like firecrackers, and they're creating all these feelings, that is coming from the past, the mind is going, oh, here we go again, we're doing something we don't like. Oh, here we go. We're gonna have to get on an airplane. We hate airplanes. Oh, why did you say yes to something you didn't want? Again, all of those thoughts are rooted in the past. And they're rooted in the past because somewhere in the past, the mind put an importance upon those things that was emotional in nature, and there's still emotions stored up around those things. So the mind is like, I don't wanna feel that way again.

[00:06:09] When you can go in, and if you think of the old experiences, the old perceptions, the old biases, if you think of those things as legs on a three-legged stool, and you go in and you're able to neutralize the emotion around those events so that you can go, yeah, this thing happened to me. I don't let it run my life anymore. Because I have the benefit of taking what I know now and letting that neutralize the past so that I can move forward so that in the future, I can choose to go into a venture with someone. Do it with my eyes open. And if it's someone coming to me with something that doesn't align with my values, it doesn't align with what I want. I'm not going to feel obligated to say yes, because I'm totally confident in knowing that it's okay for me to want what I want and that I can say no out of compassion and kindness, and it means nothing about them. And it means nothing about me. I'm just honoring myself and I'm standing up for what's important to me.

[00:07:21] I've worked with clients; I probably had a handful of clients that we worked together for about a dozen sessions, but most of my clients in under eight weeks, usually within six to seven sessions, we bust through multiple levels of these beliefs and we neutralize 'em. We eliminate them. So that they can move forward with a clean slate. When you have that clean slate you're not bringing all this stuff from the past. It's just amazing. It's light. It's free. It's peaceful. These are words my clients use. So, I have one client that had had a lifetime. of anxiety. He made the comment once that he woke up one morning, he could hear his daughter singing in the other room and he thought, wow, this is peaceful. And as soon as he had the thought, “this is peaceful”, his mind went into overdrive. The other thing that this person had dealt with is they had been through 11 years of therapy for anger management. I think we did a total of six sessions together. Not only did we eliminate the anxiety, we eliminated the anger issues. We busted through the pattern where this individual was attracting business partners and friendships of people that wanted to manipulate them. Once he got sovereignty of himself, he was no longer available to be manipulated by other people, and this person is doing some major freaking things now because once he got out of the anxiety, and once he was objective about his relationships, he just hit the ground running finding investment capital. Let's put it that way. Getting investment capital for a product he was launching. I have had another client who lived through a lifetime of people pleasing and that people pleasing came about because at a very early age, he learned to keep the peace because father was an alcoholic. He learned to keep the peace. That was what he did. He was in a job that he hated. It was actually causing physical symptoms, causing him to have to take time out of work, to take leave. And he had a very specific goal in mind. I'm not gonna share it here, but it involved letting go of people pleasing and letting go of this anger.

[00:09:56] Well, once he shed the people pleasing, he realized that a lot of very major decisions he had made in his life were based on people pleasing. They were based on what some people might, would call a codependent type personality. He let that go. This person is now they're outta corporate, they're building their own business, and they're doing it their way. They're traveling the world and supporting other people in making their lives better. They're, oh gosh, I could just go down the list because the majority of my clients have some amalgamation of these things and it doesn't always come up as anxiety or people pleasing, but my point being is that you can radically change your life. You can radically shift your way of thinking and being so that as things come up that in the past would've caused you anxiety or people pleasing, you're just like, oh yeah. Oh, okay. Now, you know, I really don't think I wanna do that. And you're okay with it. Or you can say, well, I understand that you really want to do this. I would enjoy doing that. Is there somewhere we can meet in the middle? Like how can we both get our needs met in this situation and feel comfortable having those conversations without having to just lay your sovereignty down at someone else and give over yourself to keep the peace.

[00:11:36] So when we get into these behaviors, it's subconscious, it's past experiences, and, to quote one of my clients, for them therapy felt like scraping the scab off, letting the wound bleed, as soon as it started to heal, you scrape the scab off again, you let it bleed some more. And, the work that we did was like going in doing surgery and fixing the problem. It depends on what you want. Do you want fast results or do you want to drag this around with you like a bag of rocks. And we all get to choose. And some people aren't ready to do this work, and I totally totally respect that. Some people aren't ready to do this work , and sometimes I have to very kindly and compassionately, you know, let people know that, maybe you're really not quite ready to do this work because this work is messy. It's messy. It's powerful. And I like for people to have some tools and some skills and some before diving in if they're not planning to work with me long term. So if you're dealing with this, if you are having this anxiety, if you catch yourself up in people pleasing, then I want you to go back and listen to some of the past episodes. We will pull those links. We will put those in the show notes. And not only can you hear me talk about it from a different perspective, but you can also witness my own evolution and how I have learned to help people through these issues, help them through these issues quickly so that they can just get on with living their life, because you deserve to get on living your life as well.

And when you are ready, when you are in that place, reach. just go to the website: pennychiasson.com. Reach out. I'm happy to chat. You can apply for a call and I will see you next week.

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