The Keys to Embracing Anxiety

Embark on a transformative quest to conquer anxiety with my enlightening conversation about John Delony's book, Building a non-anxious life, a sage in the realms of trauma and healing. Your journey through this episode will equip you with a map to navigate the often treacherous landscape of stress and depression, pointing you towards a life of fulfillment and peace. I dissect how anxiety can escalate in today's fast-paced world and reveal strategies to reclaim your calm. No more shall you be at the mercy of social media scrolls or the false sanctuary of substances; instead, I'll guide you in building robust connections with yourself, loved ones, and a higher power, laying the groundwork for a life of true contentment.

As I discuss his book, I unbox the daily choices that can soothe the alarms of anxiety and invite happiness into your life. Discover the freedom that comes from better managing life's constraints, whether it's the bonds of marriage or the shackles of finances. Through mindfulness that transcends meditation, and a focus on internal well-being, I chart a course towards reducing anxiety's grip. And I highlight the profound impact of beliefs and values, I encourage you to realign with what matters most. So join me as I share with you John Delony's book, as I journey toward embracing anxiety, finding joy in the present, and ultimately, stepping into our 'happily even after'.

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My website is www.lifecoachjen.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

Hi friends, welcome to Happily. Even After I'm Life Coach Jen, a certified life coach that specializes in relationships. I'm a mom of four awesome kids and one amazing senora. A home decorator, a remodeler, a shopper, a scrabler and a snuggler. I want to help you with your relationships, mainly the relationship you have with yourself and your family and God. Thanks for listening and letting me share the tools I have learned that can help you live happily even after some of life's greatest challenges. Hey friends, welcome to today's podcast episode. I'm so excited you're here.

Speaker 1: 0:46

So a few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to be sitting in a room with one of my new-found favorite people, john Deloni. He is amazing. If you don't follow him, if you don't know who he is, immediately start following him. He has a podcast it's called the John Deloni Show, where people call in, bear their souls and he helps them. He has a book. He has actually several books, but the one I'm going to talk about today is Building a Non-Anxious Life, and he's just this amazing guy, and so I had the opportunity. It's totally fangirling, not in an embarrassing way, but just. You know, I bought front row tickets and was very intent on all of the things he said, and I've just learned so much from him and I love thought work. But he does a lot in trauma and healing, because also I believe in that too. We have to feel our feelings to heal them, and so I just I love everything that he says and I think it really goes along with the other things that also I like to talk about, which is our thoughts and feelings, and so I think they go great together.

Speaker 1: 2:04

So I want to talk about anxiety. So one of my goals this year is that I'm going to read and I've always liked reading. Like when I was in high school you could find me in my room reading books, and I liked reading books like Danielle Steele right, I don't know if she even writes books anymore, but I liked reading those type of books. Now I like to read books that are that I'm going to learn something and my daughter's like mom, you should read some other books too. So maybe once I get in that habit again of reading, I will, but I really love to read books. So my goal was to read a book a month, and I started with building a non-anxious life by John Deloni.

Speaker 1: 2:50

And anxiety, I think, is a buzzword in our society right now. A lot of our kids are dealing with anxiety, like heavy anxiety and depression, as well as ourselves, right and I think there's a lot of things that are kind of the answer of why we're dealing with this, and so I just want to explore we're kind of going to do a book report today on this book, so go get the book and read it. I'm just going to give you an overview and some different thoughts that I had about this book. And I don't know, I feel like anxiety could be a few episodes, so I might continue on next week. But the thing that I loved that he teaches and says and it makes so much sense is that anxiety is our fire alarm for our body. And I just want you to think about this because if you've ever had anxiety before, it fills at least for me. I feel like a heaviness in my chest, a pit in my stomach. I feel like kind of I'm on fire, like I'm getting hot and just like nervous energy, and so I would challenge you to close your eyes, not while you're driving right now, but close your eyes when you're at home. Kind of think about something that has made you anxious, a recent event or someone said something or did something that you felt anxiety and kind of describe it, write it down. How does it feel in your body? Because that is your internal fire alarm. It's warning you. It's more severe than any warning is off. Maybe you're too busy, maybe you haven't had enough sleep there could be a million things that your anxiety alarms are going off for. So I would just get curious and pay attention to why that is, and I think we're really good at doing this and I think our kids are really good.

Speaker 1: 4:58

I'm feeling anxiety, so let me go on social media, let me go on my phone and start scrolling, because I want my anxiety to go away. I don't want to listen to that alarm going off in my body. Or let me have a glass of wine, let me go numb out on Netflix. And when I say glass of wine, that's just the world, I'm not saying I drink a glass of wine, I'm just I drink Diet Dr Pepper a lot, but the world, that's what the world does Our kids. Let me go vape or smoke pot, because I have this alarm going off in my body and I don't want to feel it. So I'm going to go numb out with some sort of substance Right. And so let me go look at porn. Not looking at porn, but a lot of people are looking at porn Because they're numbing out, they don't want to feel the anxiety in their body, so they need a quick dopamine hit. Let me go shopping online. I do love shopping. I'm not an online shopper, but let me do all these other things to get rid of that alarm, to maybe not make it so loud.

Speaker 1: 6:07

So I think it's really interesting, the correlation. I love that analogy that it's the fire alarm, because I never thought about it like that and we almost view anxiety as something's wrong with us. No, god made this emotion feeling in our body to warn us of something, to let us know something's going on. And as I look back in my life, at moments when I felt like I had crippling anxiety, I realized what I now know what was going on in my marriage was my husband was having an affair or something else was off, and so there was lying or deceit. Not that when you have anxiety, that means your husband's having an affair, but for me I think my alarms were going off so loud and I just was fumbling, could not figure out what was going on. And then the gaslighting, manipulation, all of those things just make it worse. So I'm like what's wrong with me? Something terrible must be wrong with me. Oh then the first thing everyone says go to the doctor and get on medication. Now, I'm not saying medication is bad. I think definitely anxiety medication helps people. But there are other things that we also need to be looking at, which is what I'm gonna talk about today, other tools that can help you deal with your anxiety.

Speaker 1: 7:44

The thought of we need to get rid of our anxiety is the wrong thought. We need to learn how to manage it. But what if we learned how to? Instead of run away from it, is to embrace it and be like you know what? I feel a little anxious today and I'm just gonna bring anxiety. If you're a woman, put it in your purse. If you're a guy, put it in your backpack. I'm bringing anxiety with me today and I'm not exactly sure why it's with me. Maybe I'm gonna figure it out, maybe I won't, but I'm not gonna try to push it away, I'm not gonna try to numb out, I'm just gonna bring it and I promise it's not gonna get louder, it's gonna calm down in your brain because we're not trying to get rid of it. We're not trying to avoid it, we're not trying to resist it, because when we resist it it persists and gets louder and wants to warn us of some sort of danger. Anyways, so these are just some of my thoughts.

Speaker 1: 8:40

So I'm gonna go now to John's book, and he has six things to help us with our anxiety. He calls them the six daily choices. Sometimes that feels overwhelming to have. Oh my gosh, I have to think of these daily choices. But I think as I talk about them some of them it's just like you can implement them into your life. And the first one is reality. And people are like of course I embrace my reality. But I'm gonna just tell you right now, most of us do not embrace reality. We think we do but we don't. And sometimes reality is painful, right, and so we want to pretend that isn't our reality.

Speaker 1: 9:24

But instead of, let's say, looking at our credit card bill and just ignoring it, you hear people all the time. They don't even open their bills, they just like pay the minimum or they don't even want to know. I watched some woman on TikTok and she's like I never looked at my credit card bills. My husband just took care of that. But then something triggered her to decide to look at him and she realized for the past 10 months it was very obvious her husband had been having an affair. Had she looked at them she would have found it out a lot sooner, right, but she just was in denial. She didn't want to, she didn't want to deal with that, she didn't want to deal with their many situations. So let me just let my husband handle it.

Speaker 1: 10:15

So I think getting really clear on what the reality is, having those hard conversations with your kids, with your spouse, with yourself and maybe your parents or whoever you know what are you not dealing with? What part of your reality are you not dealing with? Maybe with your health? I know people avoid their health all the time and it's like, oh, I don't really need to do a colonoscopy. They tell you about 50, but you know I'm 55. I feel great, well, that just prolonging something that could be cured. What if you did have it? You might not, you probably don't. Or a woman getting a mammogram, pushing it off, pushing it off, I don't want to deal with it, because what if they find something? So instead I'm just going to not deal with that reality. So reality is really important, and I get it because I've struggled with the reality of my own situation and it's painful sometimes to think about the reality, but reality if you can deal with reality, you're going to have less anxiety.

Speaker 1: 11:26

The next one is connection, and we all, in theory, know this is a great idea, but what are you doing? A lot of us it's like, well, I'm going to wait for someone to invite me to do something and then I'll feel connected and we wait for the world to come to us. But instead, what are you doing in your life to stay connected with other people, and I don't mean online. Online is a way to connect with people, but we need face to face interaction. We need to be around people and finding every day how to connect, even if it's someone at the grocery store, saying hi to them, seeing them, asking how their day is, finding ways to connect can alleviate our anxiety. The next one that he talks about and honestly, every chapter there's so much good tools and how to's and what you can do, not just like the how and the why and all the things. So I would encourage you to buy the book, but this is just like an overview.

Speaker 1: 12:35

Freedom is the next one and I'm like, oh, we live in America, of course we're free, but many of us are not free in our marriages, with our money, in certain situations, with our jobs, like the feeling of freedom. If we feel locked and stressed and we're just working to pay off our bills every month, that feeling can create a lot of anxiety inside of us. And so how can we create more freedom in our life, freedom of our choices, right, if we are married to someone, that, whatever they say, goes. So just finding ways to have more freedom in your life, whatever you feel like, is blocking that. For you to look at that and find a way to maybe change that situation.

Speaker 1: 13:31

Mindfulness Now, I know a lot of people are like, oh, mindfulness, that's meditation, I don't wanna be mindful. That's not necessarily what mindfulness is. Mindfulness is paying attention to what you're thinking, being aware, so that you can be more creative and change something. We talked about this in our thoughts what we're thinking, being more mindful of your surroundings. Have you ever like driven somewhere and you arrive and you're like I don't even know how I got here? It's because we're so caught up in something else that we literally went from here to there without even really recognizing how we got there. That's kind of scary, especially because we were driving the car right. And so just getting yourself to be more mindful of other people, of yourself that might mean doing yoga or taking three minutes every morning when you wake up or as you're brushing your teeth, just to reset and set an intention for your day. I'm just being more mindful, more intentional. That's what that means and it's super easy, it's super doable and that can give you less anxiety in your life.

Speaker 1: 14:54

Health and healing. I think this is huge and people are like oh, I don't wanna be on a diet. You don't have to be on a diet, but just pay attention. What are you putting into your body? Is it good? Are you drinking water? Are you sleeping seven to nine hours? If you're not, why not? Because all those things sleeping and eating, healthy eating, good nutrition, doing all those things going on a 20 minute walk, a five minute walk If you're like 20 minutes, I can't do but walk around your office or get creative and finding ways to move your body is going to reduce the anxiety inside of your body. So if you find yourself having a lot of anxiety and maybe at certain times of the day, pay attention and look at what you're doing with exercise or what you're eating. Do you eat something that kind of triggers a bit more anxiety in your life?

Speaker 1: 15:53

The healing I actually recently I just did a reel and I said what if we spend as much time and energy and money on healing our insides as we do on looking good on our outward appearance? I think we get so caught up in the diet culture, right, looking a certain way, wearing certain outfits, you know, having the right purse, whatever it is, and I am all for that. I embrace all of that quite well. However, I also focus on my insights. How am I healing? What am I doing? Do I have a therapist? Do I have a coach? What am I doing to heal the wounds from my childhood, from my marriage, just from life? And honestly, doing that can reduce your anxiety by so much.

Speaker 1: 16:52

If you understand your nervous system, that's where your anxiety lives, that's where your smoke alarm is, is inside your nervous system. So when you understand your nervous system, you're gonna know oh, these things trigger it, I'm getting into hyper, I'm getting super on fire about something. You're gonna create a lot of anxiety for yourself. So, healing yourself and we all have wounds that need to be healed. So don't think you're the exception to the rule because you aren't, or don't think everyone else needs healing but me. No, we all have healing to do and that's gonna look different for everyone, but that is so important, especially if you find yourself super anxious.

Speaker 1: 17:40

And the last one is belief, and whether you have a belief in God, which I definitely do. That belief can help you in your anxiety. You have your faith. You're going to church reading scriptures or whatever that can help you with your anxiety. So pay attention what do you believe, what are your beliefs? And figuring those out, figuring out what are your values. Maybe it's possible that you are living. You're not aligned with your values. I know I experienced that I was very unaligned in my marriage and in my values. I didn't know that until I got out and realized that and that was creating a lot of anxiety for me and fear of the unknown right. It creates a lot of different emotions, and so those are the six daily choices, but I think maybe, even if you just start with one, I think could be so powerful, especially if you have anxiety.

Speaker 1: 18:47

Now, for me, I also have kids with anxiety. Sometimes it's hard as a mom to be like, hey, I read this book and this is what John Delaney says that you should do. That doesn't go well, right, what I've been trying to do, because I do have kids with anxiety and so I've offered hey, would you like to read the book? No, I don't, mom, okay. So I've just been thinking how can I be creative? Maybe in conversation I'm just gonna mention something that's helped me in my life, maybe they'll think about it, I don't know, but figuring out ways for them to get tools, having them go to therapy because having the therapist say something is gonna land on different ears than having your mom or dad say something. And so, if you know your child struggles with anxiety, yes, maybe they need to be on medication. Definitely that helps. But also being creative and I think taking a more holistic approach is kind of the direction I'm going, because I've realized like, okay, maybe medication isn't the only thing that needs to be happening.

Speaker 1: 19:59

Especially after I read this book, I'm like, okay, there are a lot of other tools that can alleviate anxiety, and I think what we've been in the past, at least for me it's like okay, let's figure out a way to get rid of the anxiety. No, we don't wanna get rid of the anxiety, because our anxiety warns us that something's going on. So next time you feel anxiety, think like, okay, what is this about? Like try to figure it out. And if you can't figure it out, go and say like, oh, what am I eating? Am I sleeping good? Am I exercising? Am I connecting with other people? Kind of go down the list and see what part of the equation is missing and add that and see if your anxiety doesn't diminish a little bit.

Speaker 1: 20:46

But instead of leaving it at home with you, it's possible you might have to bring it along with you in this journey, because the idea isn't to get rid of it, it's just to not have it going off like a five alarm fire every single day in your life and preventing you from living your life. Because anxiety does. It becomes crippling, it becomes unbearable, and I know if you've experienced someone that has had this crippling anxiety. It's very hard to watch and it is something that we need to be familiar with because, for whatever reason, how our society's going, the world we live in, this is an issue. This is something that we are just more aware of. I don't know if people, if my grandparents had anxiety. I have no idea. I never even heard of the word until more recently, right Like I didn't even. No one ever talked about anxiety until like the past like 20 years or so, and now you hear about it all the time.

Speaker 1: 21:55

People are writing books about it. There's lots of books about it, but I just personally really like John Deloni's take. He's super smart, he has two PhDs Plus. He's just a very down to earth Christian guy which I really like and can relate to. He makes things relatable. He's not judgy or he's not too scientific, because that's I don't really like reading two scientific things so he makes it where you can relate to it, anyways. So if this is an issue in your life and I'm guessing it is for all of us then I recommend the book for sure.

Speaker 1: 22:32

But realize that your anxiety isn't a problem until you make it a problem and it's okay that you have anxiety. Nothing is wrong with you, you're not broken. This was a God-given thing that is gonna warn us of things that are off in our life, and then we can just get you know, regroup and try to dampen our anxiety. Thanks so much for listening today and I'd love for you to let your friends and family know about my podcast. Share it with them, leave a review, rate my podcast and that's how people will find me. I'm so excited that you listened and I'd love to hear your feedback if you enjoyed the episode or your thoughts and feelings about anxiety. Anyways, have a beautiful day. If you want to learn how to live happily even after sign up for my email at hello at lifecoachjen with one n dot com. Follow me on Instagram and Facebook at happily even after coach. Let's work together to create your happily even after.