Welcome back. In this video I'd like to give you a better understanding of what anxiety is so you can really get to know this monster that you're dealing with. See, anxiety is a disease caused by the longing for inspiration, presence and purpose drowning in the flood of fear, need and distraction. It is the mind and the body in constant battle, living danger with the fear buttons stuck in the on position. It is the master practice of feeling dis ease, angsty and discomfort it becomes ingrained in our being like roots in the earth. It pulls from every direction fueling the body with everything negative poisoning our very being to the core.

It is the minds favorite multi tool and like an awful infomercial, the mind starts using anxiety to cut through copper pipes and pick out groceries. The mind will eventually use it for everything and like a virus spreading into every aspect of our lives infecting our drive are love our closest relationships and every bit of our happiness. It doesn't stop or drift By itself, it becomes you. But lucky for you, you're already well on your way to understanding how to get rid of this thing. I wrote this and I wanted to share it with you because it's very important to understand how painful it's going to be to let go of anxiety. It's going to feel like removing a tumor, but once you do let it go, life is going to be much more beautiful.

But to give you a more practical understanding, let's rewind back thousands of years ago, before modern technology to a small village with our star character, Bob, the caveman. This is a very important lesson I assure you that everything that you're finding in these videos is very useful, so stick with me. So Bob, he's walking along through the forest when a tiger attacks his subconscious mind signals to the body flight, which releases adrenaline and translates into agility. Bob's perception for every little detail drastically heightens barely escaping with his life. He Sprint's back to the village is instantly compelled to share his story with the other villagers. But how did Bob know how to survive this attack?

Why did Bob tell his fellow villagers about the tiger simple, the brain and nervous system are wired for survival and to ensure Bob's survival, the subconscious mind took care of the tricky work. But as any athlete will tell you, breathing becomes a conscious effort once we think about it. You see, breathing is funny that way, it is something that you don't have to think about at all until you do. And then you have to do you see what I mean? You think about breathing and it becomes a conscious effort. And when we exercise or when you're running for our lives, it takes a little bit of attention to breathe efficiently.

It's important to note the breathing as you might notice how poor your breathing is when anxiety strikes, but hopefully since learning the pause, breath, you're realizing how poor your breathing is on a regular basis. I used to hold my breath all the time. Next important lesson in this story, is that to ensure our species survival, we need to have Have a natural yearning to spread fear because knowledge is power, right? The species survival depends on this shared knowledge, at least in that place in history it did. And now there have been countless studies on the release of oxytocin when humans bond. And what are we bonding about today?

Our problems, the weather, our crappy bosses, our fears and our struggles? I mean, how many support groups are you in right now for anxiety? How many couches Have you laid back on event? How much of your conversations with friends is purely for complaining? This is just food for thought, so that you can understand why we do this. It's a very primitive reaction.

For now. Let's bring it all together. Because anxiety is like an ancient tool for survival that just goes haywire with anything negative. When you complain or event. Know that it's your primitive mind talking. When you're being overwhelmed by symptoms know that the body is just confused.

It's your fight or flight response. And a side note here you may have heard about this freeze response, which I don't believe in at all. You see, we wouldn't have gotten this far as a species. If freeze was a real thing for us. The reason why we freeze now is because fighting is dangerous, or completely uncalled for and running whenever we feel anxious would be pretty awkward. I mean, imagine people doing laps at a grocery store because they are met with decision fatigue in the cereal aisle or lashing out at a cashier because you feel threatened by his lack of patience.

Hmm, it sounds a little excessive, doesn't it? You see, we are playing society with this ancient technology, releasing adrenaline every time we become uncomfortable, the body gets very confused. The body gets very used to this process and becomes more efficient at it. And you know what? Your body doesn't like that very much, but it can't help itself just like it hiccups in it sneezes, anxiety becomes a very practiced behavior. So your heart pumps like crazy to channel those fighter flight chemicals to the muscles that could use them and your muscles Don't, so you get shaky, then where you would normally be breathing very deeply mid flight response, you're standing still.

Or you're walking casually breathing shallow and keeping your body tense while your mind races and then your mind gets foggy and you get dizzy due to lack of oxygen. And oftentimes you hyperventilate, which doesn't give your lungs enough time to absorb oxygen, and you feel like you're going to pass out. Now, that increase in perception is very important point from Bob the caveman story. This is the part where ancient Bob could see all around the forest understand his best chances for escape, and think quickly. We all have this amazing ability, but it often gets used in a very negative and inappropriate way. Now you're looking at the man behind the register and judging his every glance every subtle facial expression, as if he is counting the milliseconds that it takes you to count your money or take your card out.

You can literally feel the breath of the woman's three carts behind you, and you're imagining that the entire store Screaming let's go but they're not. And this ancient technology up here It might seem like it's against you. But once I define how the mind actually works, you'll get a real sense of how this whole rewiring process is going to take place. I'll see you in the next video and until then don't take life too seriously.