How to shift the focus and change the channel on counterproductive thoughts and behaviors; Guest writer on managing anxiety; the 17-seconds rule and remembering cars in San Francisco to stop momentum.

Welcome to the August edition.

In SAVVY, Taylor guest writes about his two-prong strategy for managing anxiety: What to do when freaking out; and How to minimize freak-outs in the first place.

In SKILLS, Taylor suggests three Tips on how to change the channel and shift your focus from unwanted anxiety, thoughts and behaviors.

In SOUL, I share two concepts that I have found effective for stopping the momentum of counterproductive thoughts, worries and anxieties.

I always feel that something is “true” when different models, perspectives, cultures and religions teach essentially the same concepts even if expressed in different terminology. The explanations may vary, but when the bottom line practice is the same or similar, it’s worth noting the wisdom.

I was talking with my son, Taylor, about the Law of Attraction and how what you focus on attracts even more attention to those “good” or “bad” thoughts. He was pointing out to me that the idea of shifting focus so as to direct your energy and attention was not just a Law of Attraction concept. Having dealt with anxiety of various degrees throughout his life, Taylor has invested a lot of effort in studying different modalities to manage anxiety, including cognitive behavioral therapy and intensive Buddhist meditation.

Taylor expanded my awareness that the practice of shifting focus is not just a Law of Attraction concept, but one that has explanations from brain science, cognitive behavioral theory and practice, Buddhist teachings and other cultural and religious teachings I don’t know about yet.

So I asked him to share his knowledge about the SAVVY and SKILLS of shifting focus, especially when dwelling on certain thoughts is counterproductive to daily function and well-being.

Here’s Taylor:

Broadly speaking, I try to approach managing my anxiety with a two-pronged strategy: 1. What to do when I’m freaking out, and 2. How to minimize freak-outs in the first place.

The two tips in SAVVY are what I’ve found to be very helpful when I’m in the throes of a freak-out. The tips in SKILLS are what I do regularly to make myself more resilient and hopefully reduce the number of freak-outs in the first place.

Tip 1
When you’re in a negative thought loop, you just have to “change the channel.”

When I’m in the grip of an anxious thought loop, all I want to do is “figure it out.” The hope is that if I can solve the problem or banish the source of what I’m worrying about, everything will be fine and I can go back to normal. Unfortunately, this rarely works because, as the Clinical Psychologists Catherine Pittman and William H. Youngs point out, our brain neurons operate on a “survival of the busiest” basis. That is, the more we use certain brain circuits, the stronger they get. This is maddening, because it means that the very things that most of us anxious people do ruminate and obsess about what triggers us — only make the problem worse! So where to go from here?

Pittman and Youngs recommend we “change the channel” and switch to another activity, any activity that feels even a little bit better.

• If I’m anxious about getting sick, I might go put on a load of laundry.

• If I’m stressing about money and conjuring up images of financial disaster, I might go do dishes or go for a walk around the block.

For me, I’ve found that physical, rather than mental activities (i.e., reading or writing) work best. If I’m really anxious, it’s hard to focus on anything, and doing something physical helps to remove energy from my overactive mind and bring it back into my body. The fact that I’m doing something positive that adds to my life (cleaning up, exercising) only helps.

Tip 2

It will be hard. Stick with it!

I don’t know about you, but when I’m ruminating or obsessing about some imaginary disaster in the future, the idea of just putting down the whole thing and shifting my attention feels not only impossible, but actually threatening. The voice in the head says something like, “You have to think about this!  If you don’t, ______, ______, and _______ is gonna happen!” This is the voice of fear, of the ego, of the part of us that feels that we will cease to exist if we don’t do what it says. And there’s no way around it… It is hard to ignore that voice when it is screaming at you. But you must.

Rather than thinking of it as ignoring the elephant in the room, go back to the TV analogy. Change the channel from the fearful pundit that says the world is ending, and shift the dial to the calm voice that says, “I know this is scary, but you’re actually OK.” In other words, listen to the “higher” part of you that knows it’s really not as bad as you think. Use this quiet knowing to marshal the courage to shift your focus into doing another action, changing the channel more concretely as discussed in Tip 1.

Here’s the payoff of all of this:

• By changing the channel from our anxious thought loops to anything that is even a little bit more positive and beneficial to our lives, we weaken our upsetting neural circuitry. 

• The energy that was trapped and stuck feeding patterns that made us miserable is now available to flow to areas of life that are more uplifting and additive to our well-being.

Just remember, you are not alone in this. And there’s nothing wrong with you. You just have a well-worn habit of feeding brain patterns that no longer work. You’re ready to change and you CAN change!

SKILLS

Tip 1

Move your body!

I resisted exercise for a long time. As a skinny teenager who played cello in the youth symphony, I let myself believe that I was better than the brutish jocks, and somehow equated working out with being less sophisticated. When I realized that women like men who are fit, I begrudgingly started lifting weights in college, but still viewed it as a chore. It’s only in the last five years (I recently turned 40) that I have fallen in love with working out. Sure, I like looking toned or being able to grab my backpack with one hand from across the car, but what I LOVE is knowing that no matter what mood I’m in, I can go to a building, move around for an hour, and leave feeling stronger, more energized and more capable. I love knowing that no matter what I’m experiencing in this moment, there is something I can do to make myself feel better. For me, exercising is a light at the end of the tunnel.

It will be very hard to “change the channel” from your anxiety and rewire your brain if your “doing hard things” muscle is weak. Changing the channel from an anxiety loop to a more positive action requires a willingness to feel discomfort and pain, and take positive action anyway. Exercising regularly is the best way I’ve found to strengthen this ability.

Tip 2
Build a relationship with your breath.

When I get anxious, I get lost in my mind and become completely unaware of my body, breath or any other physiological function. In a very real sense, I’m “not here.” In that state, even practices like “change the channel” can feel too fractal to be accessible and actionable. What really helps in those moments is using the breath to guide myself back to awareness of where I actually am in this time and space reality. The beautiful thing about the breath is that it is always with us, whether we are aware of it or not. Because the breath is always in the present moment, it’s the perfect anchor, the perfect lighthouse always there to bring us back.

• I’ve found a few techniques to be particularly helpful. In times of stress, the 4-7-8 breathing technique from Dr. Andrew Weil helps me calm my nervous system.

• If even that feels like too much, this very short technique from the neuroscientist Andrew Huberman is foolproof and simple.

But for my money, the best investment of all is training yourself over a long time period in general breath awareness. The more generally aware of my breathing I am–in all moments of life–the easier it is to escape reactivity, change the channel on my negative loops, and find my way back to clear headedness. In this endeavor, I’ve found no better technique than Vipassana meditation. I won’t lie, it’s an intense practice that takes a serious level of dedication and willingness (it starts with a 10-day silent retreat where you meditate from 4:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. with breaks), but it’s been well worth the effort.

Tip 3
Don’t do it alone.

This is a hard one, at least for me.  A part of me hates that I’m anxious and feels embarrassed and ashamed of it.  I can’t stand how weak and incapable I feel when I’m rocked by anxiety. The person I imagine myself to be — intelligent, generous, peaceful — feels totally foreign in those moments and my instinctual reaction is to hide away until I somehow get back to being normal and presentable. Of everything I’ve written thus far, the thing that has helped the most has been “coming out” about my struggles with anxiety.

• It hasn’t been some grand pronouncement, but rather a gradual relaxing of my instinct to hide.

• My therapist regularly encourages me to “acknowledge what is and tell the truth,” and I have discovered that the more I do this with myself and others, the less ashamed I feel.

• The charge around it all weakens drastically. And unsurprisingly, the more I share, the safer others feel to share about their struggles as well.

For many years I have asked myself the question: “What is the worst thing that could happen to me?  What am I really afraid of underneath it all?” And the answer has always been some iteration of “ending up alone and ashamed.” If I had to paint a picture, it would be this: I’m lying destitute on the side of the road, completely alone, and as others walk by, they look at me and just laugh and move on.

The cosmic joke of it all is that we hide ourselves from others because we’re afraid we’ll end up alone and ashamed if we dare show the truth.

• But whenever we actually show ourselves, our real selves, the opposite often happens: People are drawn to us and we feel more connected and more accepted.

• Maybe not by everyone, but definitely by the people who count.

• Whenever I’m hesitant to reveal myself to others, I lean on a quote often attributed to Dr. Seuss: “Those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.”

I wish you well on your journey of changing the channel to the life you’ve always dreamed of.

SOUL

There are two concepts that guide me to focus on thoughts and behaviors that serve me to attract peace and serenity. Esther Hicks’ application of the Law of Attraction speaks to me amongst the many versions of this law of the universe. The first is the 17-seconds rule to stop momentum of counterproductive thoughts and behaviors.

If you aren’t familiar with these perspectives, it can sound too “woo woo” for people like me raised in the scientific tradition. But once I got passed that and started to understand the brain science that supports the practice of shifting your focus to create new brain patterns, the 17-seconds rule started to make sense.

I practice it to forge new directions of joy. But I have also noticed that Law of Attraction works in the opposite direction as well. When I focus on reading or watching negative reports of the presidential candidate I don’t plan to vote for, I see more and more articles, reasons and “news” to justify my rising levels of anger and disgust at the other side (the social media algorithms don’t help either). It does not bring me peace and serenity. That is why I limit (not always successfully) my time reading the “dirt” on the other candidate.

Try the 17-seconds rule. Next time you worry about money, give less than 17 seconds to:

• “I have so many debts”;

• “I don’t think I can make it this month”;

• “I’m so bad at budgeting”;

• “Why don’t I have enough money all the time?”. The longer you stay on that momentum, the more you will attract even more reasons to feel depressed and stressed.

Shift to:

• “I’ve been in this situation before and made it out”;

• “There must be a way I can move some money around to meet my bills this month”;

• “I can’t think of the solution this hot minute, but let me sleep on it, meditate or workout and something will come to me.”

If that level of specificity about finances is still too anxiety-producing, shift even more to an attitude of gratitude:

• “I’m glad I at least have a job or access to welfare benefits”;

• “I’m glad I live in a country where a bomb won’t drop on me at any second”;

• “I love these trees or my dog or the sound of the ocean”;

• “I’m so happy I can go for a walk and am not bedridden.”

It’s simple, but may not be easy. It’s worth having the Law of Attraction work for you not against you. You don’t fight the Law of Gravity and we intuitively know how to have that law work for us not against us.

The second concept that I heard Esther Hicks explain in a simple example of momentum is to imagine a car at the top of the hill in San Francisco.

At the top of the hill, you can stop any movement of the car with your hand or body IF you catch it in the first seconds of descent. But wait even 17 seconds and there’s no way you can stop the car’s downhill momentum. Only pain, destruction and even death would result from trying to stop the car with your body. That vivid image of the car on the hill helps stop counterproductive thoughts and behaviors dead in their track.

Negative thoughts and tensions are like birds. We cannot stop them from flying near us, but we can stop them from making a nest in our mind (Buddha’s Teaching & Science).

UNTIL NEXT TIME

Thanks for joining us this month. See you in late September.

David