by Janelle Legge | Jul 23, 2020 | Anxiety
Anxiety coping strategies for uncertain times lead to good mental health, more awareness, resilience, happiness, inner peace and calm. There’s the old saying “knowledge is power” and I’d add to that for today “awareness” is not only power, but the most potent way for you to disengage from collective fear and panic that’s just not serving anyone.
Never before has it been more critical to become more self aware, educated and informed so that you can take a more objective and constructive view of things.
When you’re being presented for months on end with statistics without any kind of meaningful or relevant context you have to step back and ask “What’s not being said/explained?”. Why aren’t the improvements, the recoveries and mildness of 98% of coronavirus cases being highlighted also? Why isn’t the fuller context being given?
You have to wonder about the level of consciousness of the people generating and broadcasting such negative messaging night after night – messaging that’s potentially far more harmful because of the mass fear and anxiety it creates which as we’re seeing has devastating mental, wellbeing, economic and societal impacts.
It’s widely known now how harmful stress, worry and negative thinking are to our immune systems and overall physical and mental health. The quality of our thoughts have a direct impact on our health, productivity, self-confidence and relationships.
5 Anxiety Coping Strategies For Uncertain Times
#1 Stay focused on the present moment and what’s going well
Let’s choose instead to focus on the present moment and the positives – where you have the most power and agency. Looking after yourself mentally, spiritually and physically so that you’re more present for yourself and the people who depend on you.
#2 Be the gatekeeper of your mind and focus
Key to this is taking care of your daily mindset and mental health – being the gatekeeper of the quality, accuracy and usefulness of the information you expose yourself to so that you’re not being bombarded and assaulted each day with alarmism which perpetuates feelings of fear and powerlessness and becomes addictive and hypnotic for some.
There are more positive and constructive sources of information out there if you use discernment and switch off from the nightly drama of sensationalist style news.
#3 Develop critical thinking skills
And if you don’t use critical thinking skills or listen to your own instincts and commonsense, particularly when you’re in uncharted terrain, you’re constantly giving your power away and that’s when you can slip into feelings of helplessness and inner despair.
#4 Take time out to detox your thinking, replenish and reboot
Even if you can only grab 15 minutes alone time for yourself each day, it’s worth the effort. Regular time out allows you to turn down the noise, clear out repetitive, negative thoughts and connect in with yourself and your own inner wisdom and guidance. For some people that’s having time out at their local cafe, for others it’s yoga, swimming, running, walking in nature or regular journaling. Find what works best for you and make it a regular date with yourself.
#5 Believe in yourself and learn how to hold the longer view
What you say to yourself every minute of each day is powerful. Staying grounded and at the same time optimistic and confident in your own abilities are vital skills during uncertainty. Regularly reminding yourself that you are strong, capable, healthy and resourceful builds self confidence and self belief. As does developing the stamina and resilience to be able to hold in mind the longer range view – that this situation will eventually become yesterday’s news. It’s about focusing on how you can use challenging situations to emerge healthier, more resilient and more aware.
Tags: Anxiety Coping Strategies, Anxiety Relief, Coronavirus, COVID 19, Fear, Health, How to back yourself, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Positive Mental Attitude, Positive mindset, Power of daily rhythms, Practice Self Care, Present moment, Purpose led living, Rewiring your brain for success, Self Awareness, Self Empowerment, self-care, Toxic Thoughts, Wellbeing, Worry
by Janelle Legge | Jun 1, 2016 | Case Studies |
Here are the facts, if you don’t get feeling valueless under control and learn how to value yourself, you will fail. Feeling valueless will continue to affect you into the future, as it has in the past. Negatively impacting your personal life, your business, and your career. So it’s really important you get it fixed. Valuing yourself improves every area of your life and the results you get in powerful ways.
Why Not Valuing Herself Set Rachel Up To Fail In Business: Case Study
Rachel had always wanted to run her own business. She had a natural flair for business and helping others succeed. But when opportunities arose to go into business for herself in partnership with people she knew, each time a pattern of failure had emerged. When it came to working through differences of opinion around the direction the business needed to go in order to continue to grow, Rachel repeatedly felt blocked and overridden by her business partner, and couldn’t stand her ground. She froze when it came to negotiating and working through differences of opinion. Instead she eventually just walked away from both business opportunities, feeling angry, resentful and taken advantage of.
Having spent most of her life shaping herself according to other people’s wants and needs, any situation that required negotiation and conflict resolution skills triggered stress and anxiety. After her second business partnership failed, a friend suggested Rachel do a mindfulness program to help her deal better with stress and conflict, and get some new self insights. But attempting mindfulness exercises increased her feelings of anger with herself and brought up feelings of low self worth and failure, triggering implicit memories from her childhood.
People try and work on themselves having to struggle with patterns of behaviour that sit in their implicit memory system. Memories of threat, stored implicitly, often come up first. Implicit memories operate outside of conscious awareness and drive subconscious beliefs and repetitive, default behaviours. Operating outside of conscious awareness, these memories cannot be visualized or reflected upon.
Rachel realised she needed a one-on-one relationship to talk about the issues directly affecting her. When we looked at what was triggering her, it turned out Rachel was still reacting to childhood experiences of being controlled and put down. Something she hadn’t been aware of. Now in her early 40s, Rachel still felt valueless and insubstantial inside. Feelings that stemmed from her childhood.
Common Reasons For Not Valuing Yourself
Early adversity in your home life growing up has huge impacts on your sense of value as a person, and your self esteem. Common examples of early adversity include:
- Parental depression, anxiety or substance abuse.
- Physical or emotional abuse or trauma.
- Prolonged feelings of not being understood.
- Repetitive devaluing experiences such as ridiculing, bullying, shaming or stonewalling.
Rachel had grown up in a family that was judgmental and critical. Her siblings would make fun of her and exclude her because she thought differently to them. Her parents were strict and controlling and openly favoured the youngest child, who could do whatever they liked. Rachel felt alone and alienated in her family growing up. As if she didn’t have a right to just be herself. She had always felt that her family just didn’t get her. This shaped how she viewed other people and her expectations around how they would treat her.
Feeling Valueless Influences How Other People Treat You
Not being listened to, validated or taken seriously growing up leads to subconscious expectations that you’ll encounter the same experiences in the outside world. Particularly when you’ve been repeatedly criticized, bullied or ignored for disagreeing with or questioning your family’s view on things. You end up defaulting to flight or freeze and sometimes fight responses that are security and safety based. This becomes your inner blueprint for how you do relationships and react to conflict.
Not expecting to be listened to and valued plays out in a variety of ways. When you don’t value yourself you can sit in meetings with managers and peers and put forward an idea that is dismissed or ignored. People just talk over you. Minutes later, someone else who’s confident and values themselves says the exact same thing, but in a different way, and everyone thinks it’s a great idea and takes it on board. This was happening to Rachel in her business partnerships, mirroring exactly what had happened to her growing up.
Rachel also found that over time her partner, who she had thought was different to her family, started talking to her in the same dismissive way as her family whenever he got annoyed with her. Each time this happened, all of her feelings of vulnerability and low self worth bubbled up to the surface, which then made things even worse.
3 Ways To Stop Feeling Valueless And Thrive
1. Work With Someone Who Can Help You Become More Self Aware
You can’t change what you don’t even know is there. To change deeply ingrained negative beliefs about yourself you first need to become more self-aware around why you feel valueless. The most powerful and effective way to do this is to find some who’s qualified to help you remember, think, and talk about your life in safety. Powerful constructive conversations with a therapist or coach creates new neural pathways in your brain and brings about the self-understanding required to be able to reflect, rather than react. You’re then able to identify what’s triggering you and why.
Reflection is a conscious process. It’s not something that we do automatically.
2. Commit To Valuing Yourself
When you’ve identified and understood the negative beliefs and scripts that have been making you feel valueless, you’re able to change the way you think about yourself. You’re in a position to commit to the process of valuing yourself. When you love and respect yourself, people pick up on this and treat you the same way. You’re able to express what you really feel and think, regardless of whether someone agrees with you or not.
3. Learn How To Set Boundaries
Personal boundary setting is an excellent way to value and take care of yourself. Boundaries give you effective strategies to handle people and situations where you’re feeling invaded, manipulated, or overwhelmed. Boundaries: When to Say Yes How To Say No To Take Control Of Your Life by Cloud and Townsend is one of the best reads on this.
Valuing yourself is essential to success in your personal life and career. It’s about releasing the negative and critical views about yourself that you’ve absorbed from other people growing up that don’t even belong to you. But just doing positive affirmations or CBT alone won’t shift low self value if your subconscious beliefs and behaviours aren’t first identified and understood. Seeking out positive, transformative relationships and experiences and then backing yourself is the key to no longer feeling valueless.
Our self feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do. William James
All names and identifying features in this article have been changed for privacy purposes.
© Copyright Janelle Legge | 2016
by Janelle Legge | Mar 22, 2016 | Case Studies |
The key to surviving the times of our lives is being able to learn from life’s valuable lessons. Whether it’s having to deal with life-changing events, being plunged into a dark night of the soul, or riding through those stages in life where everyone else seems to have it all together and you’re left wondering why you feel like you’ve hit an invisible brick wall. Your sense of purpose, direction and exuberance for life missing, nowhere to be seen.
These times can be painful and confusing if you don’t know how to move through them with self-awareness.
How Amber Found A New Lease On Life By Looking Inward, Not Outward
[A Case Study]
Amber* (not her real name) had a great job and was married with one child. On the outside everything looked good. She had ticked off just about every goal she’d set for herself. In her 20s she travelled the world and in her 30s met her husband and focused on building an impressive career. Amber loved being a Mum. Yet as she started to approach her late 40s, she started to feel empty inside and lonely in her marriage. Having achieved most of the things she had wanted in life, she couldn’t work out why she felt so flat. Things that used to excite and inspire her had lost their appeal. She felt directionless and nothing ever seemed to be enough.
Amber had become so fused with her negative, lacklustre feelings she couldn’t see a way forward. It felt like these feelings would last for her entire life. When you’re feeling flat, anxious or depressed your brain starts to normalise things after a while. It becomes your reality. You get stuck in a closed thinking loop.
You can’t solve a problem from your current level of awareness. You need to get fresh insights and guidance.
The Turning Point
What brought things to a head for Amber was the big gap left in her social life when some of her closest friends moved overseas. Making her more aware of how down and empty she felt. Things started to change when Amber realised she couldn’t sort this out on her own and came to see me to get some insights into what was going on and some practical strategies to fix it.
It was time for Amber to develop a more intimate relationship with herself rather than relying on excitement and other people in order to experience vitality and aliveness. Being constantly busy turned out to be a subconscious strategy for not having to deal with painful issues from her past. Always having friends around had helped fill an inner void.
The Solution
When it comes to our personal growth, at certain times in our lives we get presented with opportunities to become more self-aware. Amber chose to learn from her pain rather than have to deal with these issues further down the track. She finally understood what was making her feel unhappy and unfulfilled regardless of what she did or achieved. It was about learning to become more comfortable and relaxed inside herself by focusing inward instead of always looking outward. This included committing to self-nurturing routines. Prioritising emotional nourishment rather than constantly looking for external stimulation and distractions.
If you’ve hit a crisis point or don’t know why you’re feeling empty, hopeless or powerless inside, it’s actually an important turning point if you decide to learn from it. But when you don’t, the lessons and patterns keep turning up until you do. You’ll just keep repeating the same old patterns that everyone else can see, except you.
5 Steps To Surviving The Painful Times Of Our Lives
- Acknowledge you need help and support. It’s a sign of strength, not weakness. Don’t isolate yourself.
- Talk to someone to get new insights into what you’re going through and practical steps to deal with it.
- Accept the choices you’ve made to date. Owning your choices will re-empower you.
- Learn how to connect with your centre and be able to just sit with yourself and where you’re at in non-judgement and self-empathy.
- Establish regular daily and weekly routines that nourish and support you physically, emotionally and spiritually.
We all have to deal with different stages in life. For some, the best time in life is in high school. For late bloomers, it’s breaking out of high school, academia, and stereotypes we are supposed to live up to that life really begins. Life is a series of cycles that sometimes involve unexpected twists and turns. No one escapes this. It’s part of being human. It’s about staying focused on the unique journey that you’re on and choosing to learn from life’s valuable lessons along the way. That’s what makes you stronger, wiser and more enriched inside.
* All identifying features have been removed from this case study.
by Janelle Legge | Feb 25, 2015 | How To Self Actualize
If you’re not backing yourself and your own ideas then knowing the 7 essential self actualizing mindsets and behaviours is the antidote to living your life according to someone else’s ideas and rules.
It’s the pathway to evolving a style and philosophy that comes from your centre.
Choosing self actualization as a way of life, changes your life.
And if you look at artists, explorers, entrepreneurs, creators – anyone who’s totally rocking it and having a blast living their brand, you’ll find self actualization as one of the top common traits all these people share.
But most of us need regular inspiration and reminders to stay on the self actualization path. And it’s totally doable.
Self actualization is about cultivating attitudes, mindsets and behaviours that let you discover from real experiences what’s personally meaningful for you. What you’re made of. And to create from this.
It’s the pathway to reaching your perceived potential. But you don’t stop there. You keep going way beyond this into infinite possibility.
Here’s how you can get on the self actualizing path, if you’re not already, and stay on it:
7 Essential Self Actualizing Mindsets and Behaviours
1. Be curious
Curiosity coupled with optimism are trade mark qualities of self actualizers. Curiosity creates optimism, openness and excitement. When you’re in these states, you have more energy. You’re more vitalized in a natural and healthy way. It’s curiosity and optimism that keeps self-actualizers going, wanting to forge new paths, explore and test new ideas and see what happens next.
If you’re wondering what curiosity and optimism looks like in action in real life and in business, think Richard Branson, the high-end version of self actualization. If you can model just some of this kind of approach to life, you’re doing well.
2. Grow your potential
Self actualizers LOVE to learn and see personal development as a birth right. They totally get the value of investing in themselves and know they are worth it. They’ve learnt from experience that the more they develop and stretch themselves personally and in their biz/career, the richer and more amazing their life becomes. And everyone around them also benefits.
3. Back your own ideas
Self actualizers have confidence in their own ideas. They’re prepared to back themselves. It’s this kind of self-belief that frees you up to be creative and innovative. It’s not about waiting around for, or relying on, the approval or opinions of other people. Self actualizers believe they have agency in the world and can positively influence their environment and the lives of other people through their ideas and creations.
4. Know and Trust yourself
At the centre of self actualization is being self-aware. Get clear on your values, beliefs and what you want out of life. Self awareness is also about being intuitively tuned into what you’re feeling. It’s seeing your feelings as a live stream of vital clues and information about yourself, other people and situations. Self actualizers know how to decipher and trust their gut-feel on things. And if this is an area where you feel you’re not strong, it’s something that you can learn. It’s about first “looking inward, then moving forward” ~ Rachel Zoe
5. Love yourself
Being self-aware is also about self acceptance and self compassion. And applying the same consideration to other people. It’s about being okay with where you’re at – at any time in your life. Just being you and being in the moment. Self love is also about believing that you’re worthy enough to get your needs met. That you can go out into the world with self belief and confidence and get pretty much whatever it is that you want out of life.
6. Complete Things
Self actualizers know when they need to be disciplined and focused and can stay on task until the job gets done. They also get the value of bringing in the right people and resources. It’s through building a track record of bringing things to completion, that you build self-confidence, self-trust and self-belief. The positive reinforcement you get from each successful completion encourages you to take on bigger and better things in life, knowing you’ve got the goods to make things happen.
7. Live your passions
Self-actualizers are prepared to turn a personal passion into a successful enterprise, or at least give it a go and see what happens next. It’s a stand out quality that sets them apart. Most people don’t follow their passions, for a whole range of stories and beliefs that they have bought into. At a cost. Living your passions is enriching on all levels, because you’re doing and experiencing life through all of your senses. It’s great for building in new neural pathways from having meaningful and vitalizing experiences. When you live this way, you thrive. So start taking your passions more seriously. Optimism and passion are great for your health. They release endorphins and all the feel good chemicals in a beneficial way. Your passions are vital clues as to which pathways will nourish and reward you the most on a mind, body and soul level.
So if you want to feel self confident and start backing yourself and your ideas, self actualization is where it’s at.
“Our self feeling in this world depends entirely on
what we back ourselves to be and do.”
~ William James
by Janelle Legge | Dec 4, 2013 | Mindfulness for Success
When you can’t change a situation your challenge, and opportunity for self empowerment and growth, lies in looking at how you can change your thinking. It’s shifting your focus to what you can influence and releasing what you can’t.
It’s about opening up new possibilities and ways of responding. Replacing limbic brain knee jerk reactions and feelings of disempowerment with better insight, strategy, and awareness.
The key to this is deciding to not waste time and energy on people or situations you cannot directly influence. Choosing instead to focus on the areas where you do have influence. Stephen Covey writes about this in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He calls this focusing on the Circle of Influence. And when you apply this principle your focus becomes clear and proactive. You’re instantly re-empowered.
Success oriented people focus their efforts on what they can influence. They also know it’s what keeps them energized, proactive and optimistic, regardless of what life throws at them.
Start focusing on your circles of influence and watch how it changes your life and results in profound ways.
