I made a discovery a few months back, and it’s one you need to know about.

I discovered that the history behind the everyday objects that surround you is controlling your thoughts, moods, and emotions, and you probably aren’t even aware of it.

Something that has this much power over how you feel needs to be fully understood, and I’m writing this post to help you do that – to help you understand the power of the everyday objects around you and how they influence your mood.

I Am A Strange Loop

About 6 months ago I read a book called “I Am A Strange Loop.” The book is as weird as its title suggests, but it’s got some clever ideas in it, and if you like to read you should check it out.

In the first chapter of the book, the author tells the story of an encounter he had with his mother. This encounter took place a few months after the author’s father had passed away.

Even though several months had passed, both he and his mother were still grieving. He had lost his father, and she had lost her husband of many years.

During the encounter at the heart of this story, the author and his mother were talking over the kitchen table, sharing their grief.

As they talked, the mother was holding and examining an old photograph of her deceased husband, and in her grief she stated that the old photograph was useless and meaningless – just an old piece of paper.

Her son replied to this, and it was his reply that led to the discovery I made about the objects around us and the power they have to control how we feel. So here is his reply:

“In the living room we have a book of the Chopin études for piano. All of its pages are just pieces of paper with dark marks on them, just as two-dimensional and flat and foldable as the photograph of Dad — and yet, think of the powerful effect that they have had on people all over the world for 150 years now. Thanks to those black marks on those flat sheets of paper, untold thousands of people have collectively spent millions of hours moving their fingers over the keyboards of pianos in complicated patterns, producing sounds that give them indescribable pleasure and a sense of great meaning.

Those pianists in turn have conveyed to many millions of listeners, including you and me, the profound emotions that churned in Frédéric Chopin’s heart, thus affording all of us some partial access to Chopin’s interiority — to the experience of living in the head, or rather the soul, of Frédéric Chopin. The marks on those sheets of paper are no less than soul-shards — scattered remnants of the shattered soul of Frédéric Chopin. Each of those strange geometries of notes has a unique power to bring back to life, inside our brains, some tiny fragment of the internal experiences of another human being — his sufferings, his joys, his deepest passions and tensions — and we thereby know, at least in part, what it was like to be that human being, and many people feel intense love for him.

In just as potent a fashion, looking at that photograph of Dad brings back, to us who knew him intimately, the clearest memory of his smile and his gentleness, activates inside our living brains some of the most central representations of him that survive in us, makes little fragments of his soul dance again, but in the medium of brains other than his own. Like the score to a Chopin étude, that photograph is a soul-shard of someone departed, and it is something we should cherish as long as we live.”

I thought his words were wonderful, and I’m sure they gave some comfort to his mother. His words also helped me to see several of my own photographs in a very different light.

To think of photos of people I’d lost as “soul shards” was a profound idea to me, and it changed the way these photos made me feel: they’d once made me feel sad, bittersweet, but now those same pictures made me happy, almost joyous.

This story that the author told of his encounter with his mother made a big impression on me. So big, in fact, that these ideas stayed on my mind for some time.

And here’s where my big discovery came.

How The History Behind An Object Has The Power To Control How You Feel

Because of the story in the “I Am A Strange Loop” book, I was now seeing the photos of people I’d lost in a very different way.

I was finding pleasure in looking at these photos, so I started placing them in more prominent positions around my house so that I’d see them more often.

The result? I was thinking about these photos a lot. Specifically, I was thinking about:

• the people in the photos
• the places in the photos
• the occasions in the photos
• the stories behind the photos
• the history behind the photos

Everything was positive in these photos. I loved the people in them, I loved the memories they had captured, I loved the occasions they reminded me of, and so looking at them and having them on my mind felt good.

But what really struck me was the history behind the photos.

These photos were just pieces of paper, and would be meaningless to anybody who didn’t know what was behind them.

But for me, these photos had real history behind them. And just a glance at the photos was all the time it took for all that history to come rushing back.

And I didn’t need to consciously remember the history behind the photos. I didn’t have to cast my mind back and sit reminiscing for extended periods of time.

The history behind the photos just kind of washed over me whenever I looked at them. It was as if a moment’s glance at a photo would leave me with a new mood, one that came on me instantly without my being aware of it.

And that mood would positively affect me for minutes, even hours.

This was a big realization for me – that pieces of paper, inanimate objects, had history behind them that could affect my mood.

So I started to expand my thinking, asking new questions. Did all objects have histories behind them? If they did, were all the objects around me affecting my mood the way the photos were?

It didn’t take long for me to realize that the answer to both of those questions was yes.

Pretty much all the objects around me had histories behind them, and so those objects were affecting my mood – just like the photos were.

How The History Behind An Object Determines Your Moods, Both Good And Bad

When I’d first noticed that the objects around me had the power to affect my mood, I’d never considered that the changes they caused could be negative.

All I knew to start with was that the photos I was looking at were lifting my mood, improving it.

But once I saw that all the objects around me had histories behind them, I quickly became aware that objects could have a negative effect too.

Here’s how this works in a nutshell: all the objects around you affect your thoughts, your emotions, and your moods, and it’s the histories behind the objects that determine if your thoughts, emotions, and moods are improved or made worse.

• objects with positive histories improve your mood
• objects with negative histories worsen your mood

You keep hearing me refer to objects, and everyday objects, and you might be wondering what I mean by that.

It can mean anything – literally any physical object that you see or interact with where you live, work, exercise, anything.

Here are a few examples so you can see that I really do mean anything:

• photos
• furniture
• art
• books
• CDs
• DVDs
• clothing
• toys
• childhood possessions

You could name any object and it would belong on that list. And almost every object you name would either have a positive history or a negative history.

I’m sure there would be some objects that would have a neutral history, one that was neither positive or negative.

But for most ideas, the history would be positive or negative.

Let me show you exactly how this works – how these objects with positive or negative histories affect how you feel.

An Object With A Good History

I have a photo of my cat Scoobie on my chest of drawers in my bedroom. I had him for 17 years, I loved him lots, and he passed away 2 years ago.

For a long time after he’d gone, it hurt too much to linger on his memories or on random thoughts of him. But now that time has healed the wounds and the memories are no longer raw, remembering him makes me happy.

So now, every time I wake up in the morning or go to bed at night, his photo is often the thing I see.

When I see the photo, I don’t consciously do anything, and I don’t intentionally have any thoughts at all. But here’s what happens anyway:

• I’ll see the photo, just a glance, nothing more
• he’ll be on my mind for a moment
• a montage of memories of him will flash through me
• anything negative on my mind will give way to positivity
• my mood will improve, even if only slightly
• my improved mood will remain for several minutes

I’m unaware of all the things in that list that happen to me in the moment, but they do happen. When I force myself to take note of what happens, everything on that list above takes place.

And that’s how something as simple as a photo with a positive history can improve my thoughts, my emotions, and my moods.

It’s also important to note that when the above sequence of events happens, there’s no place for negativity.

You can only ever be in a positive or negative state of mind at any one time, so while the photo causes me positivity it is also preventing me from having any negativity inside me at that moment.

That’s a big deal, because if you can create enough of these positive moments during the day then the negativity never gets a moment to get in.

An Object With A Bad History

I had a terrible time at school when I was a teenager. I had no friends, I was bullied, and things were always bad.

One of the worst things about that time in my life was the 2 times per week that I had to play rugby with the school team.

I would get singled out during the game to be tackled hard, and it would usually end up with the whole team piling in on top of me so that they could all get a hit in.

I would get called names throughout. I would get singled out in the locker room before and after the game, physically and verbally. My clothes would get thrown in the shower.

All the stuff that asshole bullies do.

Anyway, all this stuff happened 18 years ago. But for some crazy reason I always kept my rugby shirt from back then.

I’m nostalgic by nature, apparently even for the stuff that reminds me of terrible times, because I’d never thrown that rugby shirt out and for many years it hung in my closet with my other clothes.

I didn’t ever stop to think that this was causing me any harm, but that changed not long after I made the discovery that I’m talking about in this post: that the objects around you have the power to affect your mood.

I quickly realized that the rugby shirt I’d kept all those years had a massively negative history associated with it, and that every time I saw that shirt hanging in my closet I was being affected in a negative way.

The reaction this shirt caused was very similar to the reaction the photo of my cat caused, except this one was purely negative.

Here’s what would happen when I saw that shirt in my closet, and all this would happen without me thinking anything – it would all be automatic:

• I’d see the rugby shirt, usually just out of the corner of my eye
• a montage of unpleasant memories would flash through me
• anything positive on my mind would give way to negativity
• my mood would worsen
• my worsened mood would continue for several minutes

It’s important to note that during all these events and for some time afterwards, there would be no place inside me for positivity.

Remember how I said that you can only ever be in a positive or negative state at any point in time? Well that’s true here too, so that stupid shirt hanging in my closet left no room for positivity inside me for several minutes every single day for years.

Crazy, right?

Everyday Objects Have The Power To Change How You Feel So Choose Your Objects Wisely

I’m hoping by now you’re starting to see the power of the objects around you, and how they all have the power to change your thoughts, emotions, and moods.

The 2 examples I just gave you will hopefully demonstrate just how these simple objects really do have the ability to make you feel great or terrible, depending on the histories behind the objects.

But is there a way you can actually make use of all the ideas I’ve shared with you in this post? A proactive way to improve your thoughts, emotions, and moods using the power of the objects around you?

Actually, there is, and it’s really simple.

I call it “The Object Inventory,” and it’s a great way to make sure that you’re surrounded by as many objects with a positive history as possible, while at the same time eliminating as many objects as possible with a negative history.

The Object Inventory

Step 1. Process 5 Objects A Day

Each day, starting from today, randomly process 5 objects around you. These objects can be in your home, your place of work, your backyard, anywhere you spend time.

All you need to do to “process” an object is:

• look at an object
• think about the stories behind it
• ask yourself what images it stirs in you
• ask yourself what emotions it causes in you
• ask yourself if the object’s history is positive or negative

Processing 5 objects a day should only take you a few minutes, and the rewards will be worth it.

Step 2. Surround Yourself With Objects With A Positive History

When you encounter an object with a positive history in your daily processing, place that object in a prominent position.

The more you see objects with a positive history the more benefits you’ll get, so keep them where you can see them.

Step 3. Get Rid Of Objects With A Negative History

When you encounter an object with a negative history, get rid of it.

Most of the time, throw it in the trash like I did with my rugby shirt. Or, if it’s an object that you can’t or don’t want to throw away, place it in the attic or the basement, or put it in storage.

Just get it out of sight and out of mind so that it no longer causes you even a single moment’s negativity.

Step 4. Maintenance

After a few weeks of processing, you’ll get through all the objects that surround you, and you should then have all the positive objects in prominent positions and all the negative objects should be gone.

When you reach that stage, it’s all about maintenance.

And all that means is that you stay alert and aware of the objects around you, either old objects that resurface or that you missed in your processing, or new objects that make their way into your life.

Ditch the negative stuff, and surround yourself with the positive stuff.

The result will be frequent exposure to objects with positive histories and infrequent exposure to objects with negative histories.

And that’ll mean far more positive moments in your day than negative ones.

The Takeaway

I really do believe that the objects that surround you are one of the most dominant forces in your life when it comes to your thoughts, emotions, and moods.

And the great thing is, when you develop an awareness of the power these objects have, as you’ve now done, you give yourself the ability to control how you feel in a way you’ve never known before.

So use what you’ve learned – keep this stuff in mind:

• keep yourself open to the idea of the objects around you having a huge impact on the way you feel
• start to care what objects are around you at any given time
• stop subjecting yourself to unnecessary negativity that objects with negative histories can cause
• complete “The Object Inventory” to take full advantage of the power that simple everyday objects have over you
• make it a habit to never let an everyday object make you feel bad ever again

I hope this post helps you. It was a hard post to write because it’s a weird concept to get your head around and there was a lot of personal stuff in there for me.

But I enjoyed writing it anyway, and I really do hope you use the ideas I’ve shared with you.

This post is gonna contain some advice on sleep that will sound a little crazy to you. That’s because we’re all so locked into the same old ideas about sleep and to hear anything new on the subject can be difficult.

But the ideas I’m about to share with you come directly from years of my own struggling with insomnia and sleep-related anxiety. These ideas also come from the thousands of people with anxiety I’ve talked to over the past 5 years.

Through my own struggles, and the struggles of people like me, I’ve learned a lot about sleep and how to change the way we sleep to reduce anxiety.

Using what you learn in the next 10 minutes could allow you to take a huge step in beating your anxiety for good.

Why Anxiety And Sleep Are Like The Chicken And The Egg

During my 17 year battle with anxiety one thing was always clear to me: there was a massive link between my anxiety and the quality of sleep I was getting.

When my anxiety was at its worst my sleep became terrible. I got less sleep, and I got lower quality sleep.

But I was never sure which came first:

• did my anxiety cause my sleep problems?
• or did my sleep problems cause my anxiety?

It’s a bit like the chicken and the egg – hard to know which one came first.

And even though I had no idea whether sleep or anxiety came first, and which one of them was the cause of my problems, I knew that if I could improve the quality of my sleep that my anxiety would improve too.

They were clearly linked, they clearly fed off each other, and if I could fix one of them it would break the cycle and I knew that great progress would be made.

So I focused on sleep, seeing it as a potential cure for my anxiety.

I started to read all I could about sleep: books, websites, studies, everything I could find. And pretty much everything I came across was the same old cliches I’d know for years.

And all that stuff had never helped my sleep at all. You probably know all these cliches too:

• go to bed at the same time each night
• get up at the same time each morning
• have a warm bath before you go to bed
• have an hour of winding down before bed
• make your bedroom peaceful and comfortable
• regulate your biological clock by exposing yourself to sunlight everyday
• do something physical each day to tire yourself out
• don’t watch TV in bed
• keep your bedroom cool
• avoid big meals at night
• cut out everything with caffeine in it

And so on – I could go on for much longer, but you probably get the idea.

So what’s wrong with all those tips?

For most people, nothing’s wrong with them. They’re all sensible tips, and if most people followed those tips their sleep would probably improve a bit.

But when you have extreme anxiety, you’re not “most people.” When you have extreme anxiety, your sleep is bad in so many fundamental ways that these tips are worthless.

Using these basic tips to cure your sleeping problems when you have extreme anxiety is like putting a band aid on a bullet wound.

It’s just not enough.

To cure fundamental sleeping problems like the kind you have when you have extreme anxiety, you need to make fundamental changes to the way you sleep.

Before you can make these changes, you need to know what your options are. You need to know the different types of sleep you can get so that you can find out what’s best for you.

So let me show you the different types of sleep you can get.

Traditional Sleep

This is how most people sleep. It’s probably how you sleep right now.

Here’s traditional sleep in a nutshell:

• you go to bed at roughly the same time each night
• you sleep between 7 and 9 hours
• you wake up at roughly the same time each morning

Is there anything wrong with this approach to sleep? For most people, maybe not.

And if you’re using this approach right now and getting high-quality sleep that leaves you feeling great every morning, stick with it.

But as I keep saying – there’s an undeniable link between anxiety and sleep, and I’m sure that if you currently have anxiety problems that you’re not getting great sleep.

And something I want to point out here before I move on from traditional sleep: even though most people without anxiety get by fine on traditional sleep, I believe that it’s not the best way for them to sleep either.

From everything I’ve learned about sleep over the past several years, I don’t think this traditional approach to sleep is ideal for anyone.

Biphasic Sleep

Biphasic sleep means separating your sleep into 2 separate chunks in each 24 hour period.

Here’s biphasic sleep in a nutshell:

• you get your sleep in 2 separate chunks
• you get a total of 5 to 7 hours sleep in any 24 hour period
• you sleep at roughly the same times each day

Biphasic sleep is very flexible, and you can create a biphasic sleep schedule that suits almost any commitments you might have.

Most people who sleep biphasically have the majority of their sleep during the night and get the rest of their sleep with an afternoon nap.

An example of a biphasic sleep schedule would be something like this:

• sleep from 1 a.m. until 5:30 a.m.
• sleep from 2 p.m. until 3:30 p.m.

That’s a total of 6 hours sleep, and that might not sound like much to you if you’re used to the idea of getting 8 hours a night.

But most people find that they need less sleep when they stick to a biphasic sleep schedule, and many biphasic sleepers feel like they have more energy and better health than traditional sleepers who get 8 hours a night.

The majority of biphasic sleepers stick to a sleeping schedule like the example I gave above – with a “core” sleep during the night and a 90 minute nap in the afternoon.

But as I said a moment ago, biphasic sleeping is very flexible, and some people who sleep this way choose to split their sleep into two 3 hour sleeps, while others will use a 4 and 2 hour split.

And still others reverse my original example and sleep for 90 minutes during the night and have their longer core sleep in the afternoon.

Most of the time this is decided by each person’s own work and family schedules, but sometimes the choice is made purely on what produces the higher quality sleep and the better health.

Polyphasic Sleep

As you might guess from the name, polyphasic sleep is similar to biphasic sleep. The difference is that instead of separating your sleep into 2 chunks, you separate your sleep into 3 or more chunks.

Polyphasic sleep in a nutshell:

• you separate your day’s sleep into 3 or more chunks
• you get roughly 4 to 7 hours sleep in each 24 hour period
• you sleep at roughly the same times each day

You might think that 4 to 7 hours sounds like not enough sleep, but most people who sleep polyphasically discover that they need less sleep than when they sleep traditionally.

As with biphasic sleep, polyphasic sleep is very flexible and you can split up your sleep to suit your schedule.

Most people who sleep polyphasically split their sleep into several equal chunks. An example might be someone who has four 90 minute naps throughout a 24 hour period.

If you’re coming from a schedule of traditional sleep, I realise that this kind of polyphasic schedule sounds weird and extreme, but many people who adopt this kind of sleeping schedule do incredibly well on it.

Naps

Naps aren’t a type of sleep in the sense of the others I’ve discussed here, but if you adopt one of these new types of sleep then naps will almost certainly be something that you need to incorporate.

And if that’s the case, there are a couple of things you need to know about naps and how they relate to sleep cycles.

A sleep cycle is one complete series of the 4 stages of sleep. These stages are made up of light sleep, deep sleep, and REM sleep (REM sleep is where you have your dreams).

For most people, one entire sleep cycle lasts for 90 minutes. Some people’s will be slightly shorter or longer, but everyone’s is around the 90 minute mark.

To get all the benefits of sleep when you nap, you need to sleep for long enough to have a complete sleep cycle. That’ll mean that you get all the types of sleep you need.

So the first rule with naps is that you want to try to nap for at least 90 minutes.

A shorter nap won’t kill you, but if you want to wake up feeling truly great, 90 minutes is what you should aim for.

If you’ve ever fallen asleep in the daytime for a short time, perhaps 10 or 20 minutes, you’ll know it can make you feel awful.

That’s because you didn’t sleep for an entire cycle.

Another reason that you may sometimes wake up from a nap feeling awful is that you woke up during one of the deep stages of sleep.

When that happens, it can take a long time to fully wake up, and you may never feel truly awake until you get more sleep.

The way to avoid this is to make sure you wake up during REM sleep.

REM sleep, where most of your dreams happen, is a light sleep, so when you wake up during REM sleep you won’t experience that horrible grogginess you might be familiar with.

REM Sleep happens at the end of your sleep cycle, so if you set an alarm for 90 minutes when you take a nap, you should wake up during a light sleep.

That means you’ll wake up feeling great.

Because everyone’s sleep cycles last for slightly different lengths of time, you might need to experiment with your nap lengths to ensure you wake up during REM sleep.

So if your naps leave you feeling groggy for hours, try an 80 minute nap instead. Experiment until you find your own sweet spot.

What Type Of Sleep Is Right For You?

So far, the point of this post has been to show you that there’s more than one approach to sleep than the traditional approach you already know about.

My belief is that traditional sleep isn’t the best option for anybody.

But most people get away with traditional sleep because they don’t have the problems with anxiety that you and I have.

When you have anxiety, I passionately believe that sleep is one of the keys to ending your problems, and that a different kind of sleep is what’s needed.

I’ve talked about biphasic sleep, polyphasic sleep, and naps, but what’s best? What way should you sleep to eliminate as much of your anxiety as possible, and to be as happy and healthy as possible?

There’s only one way for you to find out what kind of sleep is best for you.

You need to experiment.

You need to try different types of sleep until you discover the one that works for you.

And finding the kind of sleep that’s right for you will be much easier now that you know about the various types of sleep that are available to you.

Since I’ve had a lot of experience with these different types of sleep, and because I’ve tried them all myself, I’d like to give you a good starting point for your experimentation.

This is the way I discovered my own ideal sleeping habits, and I think this process that I’m about to share with you will help you to find your own ideal sleeping habits.

The 2 Factors That Are Essential To High-Quality, Healthy Sleep

Whatever type of sleep you end up using, there will be 2 things that you need to get right.

• how many hours of sleep you get
• when you get those hours of sleep

How Many Hours Should You Sleep?

I’ve talked about traditional sleep, biphasic sleep, and polyphasic sleep in this post, and for each of them I’ve mentioned a different number of hours you should be sleeping.

That’s because these types of sleep are very different from each other, and they each have their own requirements.

But if you decide to try one of these different approaches to sleep, I think a good starting point is 7 hours of sleep in each 24 hour period.

Why 7 hours?

Simply because 7 is the average number of hours you should sleep each day based on all the studies I’ve looked at that proved most beneficial.

You may ultimately decide you need slightly more or less than 7 hours, but it’s a great place to start.

When Should You Get Your 7 Hours Sleep?

My belief is that human beings naturally need to sleep in 2 chunks in each 24 hour period, and that most of the sleep should take place during the night.

I believe this because it’s natural for humans to do most of their sleeping when it’s dark, so it makes sense to have most of your sleep at some point between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.

But it’s also natural for humans to experience a big dip in energy during the afternoon, so it makes sense to get some of your sleep in the afternoon.

Taking both of these things into consideration, my advice to you on how to sleep at the start of your experimentation period is as follows:

• get 7 hours of sleep each day
• split those 7 hours into 2 separate chunks
• sleep for around 5 and a half hours at some point between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. for the first chunk
• sleep for 90 minutes between 12 p.m. and 3 p.m. for the second chunk

If you follow those guidelines, you’ll be sleeping 7 hours a day in a biphasic sleeping pattern.

Biphasic sleep, by the way, is what I believe is best for most people. It’s a totally natural fit for human beings.

If you decide to follow this sleep schedule, you may need to adjust it to fit your work and family life. That’s fine.

Just stick to the fundamentals as best you can.

So what should you expect when you start using this sleep schedule?

The first thing you’ll notice is that you feel a bit groggy for a few days. It’ll feel a bit like jetlag. This happens whenever you make a change to the way you sleep.

For this reason, it’s important that you stick to this new schedule for at least a week before you decide if it’s right for you.

Once you’ve been sleeping this new way for a week, you’ll be past the “jetlag” phase and you’ll be able to ask yourself how you feel and if you want to stick to this new schedule.

If after a week you feel good, stick with your new schedule. If you feel the same or worse, you need to try something else, and you can make adjustments based on what you’ve learned in this post about the various types of sleep that are available to you.

The important thing is that when you make a change, you always give it a week so that you get past that “jetlag” phase.

A week is enough time for you to determine if the kind of sleep you’re getting is working for you and helping you feel happier, healthier, and free from your anxiety.

The Takeaway

This has been a long post, I know, but it’s long for a good reason: sleep is a vital area of your life, and sleep will play a huge part in your recovery from anxiety.

When you have severe anxiety for long periods of time, it’s very easy to end up with terrible sleeping patterns and habits that leave you tossing, turning, and worrying all through the night.

That needs to stop for you to feel better.

To make massive progress with your anxiety, I strongly believe you need to make massive progress with your sleep.

And that’s why I’ve shared everything I know about sleep at such length.

My reason for this post is to show you that there are other ways to sleep, that the traditional sleep that most people get isn’t the only way, and that it may not be the best way for you and your anxiety.

I hope you’ll use what I’ve shared with you to completely overhaul your sleeping habits. If you do, and you experiment until you find what’s right for you, I believe you’ll make massive progress in ending your anxiety for good.

A huge amount of anxiety is caused by constant worrying, so I put together a 17 minute podcast for you that shows you one of the ways I helped to stop my constant worrying.

To listen to it here, simply hit the play button below:

To download this podcast to keep, right-click on the link below then click on “Save Target As” or “Save Link As.” Then pick where on your computer you’d like to save it (your desktop might be easiest), and then go and open it up. Once it’s downloaded, feel free to put it on your MP3 player or copy it onto a CD.

Right-Click Here To Download This 17 Minute Audio

If you’d like a brand new effective way to reduce your anxiety and to feel calm in any situation, check out my Micro Meditations.

I’ve put 3 of my best micro meditations into a free 17 minute audio book, and you can download it to keep or simply listen to it right here on my blog.

To listen to it here, simply hit the play button:

To download this audio book to keep, right-click on the link below then click on “Save Target As” or “Save Link As.” Then pick where on your computer you’d like to save the micro meditations (your desktop might be easiest), and then go and open it up. Once it’s downloaded, feel free to put it on your MP3 player or copy it onto a CD.

Right-Click Here To Download The Micro Meditations

I’ve realised that almost all severe anxiety starts out small and then gradually builds up until it’s unbearable or until it causes a panic attack.

But there’s a way to stop that original small anxiety while it’s still small, and when you can do that it never has to become unbearable and it never has to cause panic attacks.

I’m going to show how to stop your anxiety while it’s still small by using a technique that interrupts some bad habits you’ve developed that are causing a lot of your anxiety.

When you learn this technique and you use it regularly, you’ll find that you have the power to control your anxiety well enough that it never has to get out of hand or lead to severe anxiety or panic attacks.

The technique is simple and it’s all about getting you to stop the small, physical habits you automatically perform when you’re anxious. These habits cause the small anxiety to become big anxiety, so when you know how to stop these habits, you’ll also know how to stop the anxiety getting out of hand.

Your Body Controls Your Mind

You’re probably already aware that your mind and body are linked in some very basic ways. Your emotions and your physical self are very closely linked.

If you’re incredibly happy, for example, you’ll automatically smile, stand tall, your head will be up, and you’ll do all that without thinking about it. It’s just what you do when you’re happy.

If you’re very anxious, your head will sink, you’ll fidget, your mouth will tighten, you’ll bite your lip, and again, all this will happen automatically without you doing anything.

As you may already know, you can reverse this process.

Instead of you feeling an emotion first and your body reacting second, you can intentionally change your body first and the emotion will change second.

One of the reasons this works is that your mind has become trained to feel a certain way when your body is in certain positions or performing certain movements. It’s kind of like an emotional reflex.

All your life, when you feel happy you smile and stand tall. The emotion becomes so linked to the physical actions of smiling and standing tall that if you smile and stand tall anytime you can often make yourself feel happy.

There’s a good chance you know all this already, because a lot of people teach the technique of changing your posture to make yourself feel better. And it works, so I’d suggest you try it if you never have.

But here’s where I took this in another direction.

Shut Off Bad Habits, Shut Off Anxiety

I realised that I had a handful of “physical anxiety habits” I would perform whenever I was feeling worried or anxious. I was completely unaware of most of these habits until I started looking for them.

It suddenly dawned on me that these habits were linked to my anxiety the same way a smile was linked to being happy.

I started to wonder if I could stop my anxiety by stopping the physical anxiety habits I’d developed over the years.

So I tried it. I did my best to immediately stop all the habits I would perform when I got anxious. And after I’d tried doing this for a few days, it suddenly started working. And it worked incredibly well.

The moment I felt worried or anxious I immediately forced myself not to perform any of the habits that I’d normally perform when I was feeling like that.

To begin with, it felt awkward when I did this, because my mind was too jumbled with trying to deal with all the anxiety, plus all this new stuff going on in my head about stopping these habits.

It only started working really well when I simplified the technique, and broke it down into some very basic steps. And it’s those steps that I’m going to share with you now so you can start using this technique right away.

Step 1: Identify Your Habits

To do this, just wait until the next time you’re feeling anxious or worried. Now that you’re paying attention to your body at times of increased anxiety, you’ll find that there are certain movements that you instinctively want to make.

They’re instinctive because for years you’ve been making them when you feel anxiety or worry.

At this stage, don’t try to stop them. Let them happen as naturally as possible so you can see them in full, and see which other physical anxiety habits they lead to.

You’re looking for any movement at all that you make instinctively or automatically when you feel your anxiety increase.

It could be something as small as biting your lip, or something as big as pacing around your living room.

Over the next day or two, take a few notes of the physical anxiety habits you spot. If you have lots, then just make a list of the top 10 biggest ones.

Step 2: Stop Your Worst Habit

It’s very important that you only try stopping one habit at a time. When I tried stopping all mine at once it was too much to think about and the technique didn’t really work.

So start with the habit you felt most compelled to perform when you had increased anxiety.

The next time you feel increased anxiety, you’re not going to let yourself perform this habit. Absolutely refuse to let yourself do it.

If your physical anxiety habit is biting your lip, make it impossible to bite your lip by putting your finger between your teeth. If your habit is pacing around your home, make it impossible to pace around by sitting or lying down. If your habit is biting your nails when you have increased anxiety, make it impossible to bite your nails by sitting on your hands.

There’s no physical anxiety habit that you can’t stop. You can find a way to make anything impossible.

So make it impossible for you to perform your physical anxiety habit, and don’t give in until your anxiety passes or decreases. You’ll find it decreases faster than normal too, because you’re denying yourself of your strongest habit, and your mind is distracted by this new technique.

Step 3: Stop All Your Habits

Stop the rest of your physical anxiety habits one at a time, in exactly the same way you stopped the first one. But don’t move on until you feel in full control of the ones you’ve already stopped.

You’ll find that after a week or two you can stop yourself performing every single physical anxiety habit on your list. And when you can achieve that, you’ve completely removed one of your anxiety’s biggest fuels and you just might end up as relaxed as that lovely little kitten above!

The Takeaway

I’ve shown this technique to lots of people, and every single one of them has said it’s helped. For some people, it can completely prevent panic attacks. For others, it dramatically reduces their general day-to-day anxiety.

Until you try this for yourself, you won’t know how helpful it can be, so make sure you actually use this technique. It takes almost no effort, but the results it can give you are potentially huge.

The chance of stopping your panic attacks and your general anxiety has to be worth the 10 minutes it will take you to make your list of physical anxiety habits, so start making that list the moment you next experience any anxiety at all.

That’s what the video below is about, and I really hope you enjoy it and find it useful. Please comment after you watch it!

Here’s the audio-only version in case you have any problems playing the video. Just hit the play button to start!

Here’s the audio-only version in case you have any problems playing the video. Just hit the play button to start!

Here’s the audio-only version in case you have any problems playing the video. Just hit the play button to start!

And don’t forget to leave me a comment!

Here’s the audio-only version in case you have any problems playing the video. Just hit the play button to start!

By the way, if you choose to set up a Blogger account as I show you in the video, make sure you go to “settings,” then “permissions,” and change “Blog Readers” to “Only people I choose.” I forgot to mention that in the video, but you should do this because it means your blog will be completely private and no one else can read it.