July 14

Today I worked with someone that has been hired to continue the work that I have developed for new employees with a client. During our meeting there was a coaching moment that enabled me to explain in a simple manner what actually happens when anxiety occurs. You know if you have been reading this blog that I have been plagued with anxiety for many years. I am just mastering life without anxiety so it was exciting to describe what happens in a way that made sense to her and me.

She was a basketball players in high school, so we were using a basketball analogy. We were preparing for a meeting that she was to have with the owner of the company this afternoon. He is a great guy and the project that I have been working on is very important to the future of the company, so I wanted her to be comfortable and confident when she went into the meeting.

We were role playing numerous times. She would get stuck or started rambling and go blank. This happened numerous times. At one point, I realized that there was some anxiety underneath that was creating the blockage. I thought about a descriptor that was at least helpful for her and created some clarity for me.

Anxiety and fear create chatter in our mind. If we are not anxious or fearful, we tend to think clear and know what we need to do. When this happens, the wiring tells our body to do certain things and we do it. This person is a driven individual and applied her driverness during basketball. My guess is that she was a pretty good guard. I asked her what happened when she found herself being guarded by someone who she discovered was better than she was. It obviously created frustration and then anxiety.

In the discussion, I used this analogy. As long as you are confident in your ability and you have practiced things to the point of mastery, when you go in the game your instincts take over. You don't think about what you have to do, you just do it. But if someone is better than you, then it can shake your confident. When that happens, if we get anxious, then we get chatter in our mind. We are no longer thinking clear. The wiring that told our body to do certain things no longer works. When this happens we then start doing something different. We push too hard or we change our rhythm or something else. What has actually happened is that we have changed wires in our brain.

When we are not anxious we have trained our brain to do certain things without thinking. when anxiety happens, though, it is like we move from one wiring which tells our body to do something to another wiring that tells it to do something else. This other thing usually leads to actions that reinforce some negative belief. This is why anxiety leads to less than desirable results. Our wiring is sending signals for us to do something that will not help us achieve success.