Got Success Anxiety? This Will Help

[mikecarlooch]

This thread is going to bore some people, and some people are going to really relate to it. For me, I bring a lot of personal vulnerability into this. And there will be 0 chatgpt writing here.

It is based on the work of Dr David R Hawkins from the book "Healing/Recovery" and a lot of us who are trying to become successful financially in this world really need to take a piece of advice from this book.

One thing I've noticed being an ambitious person is that your desire to succeed can be so much that it actually creates fear and anxiety inside you and holds you back from ever taking steps forward, and if you do take steps forward, you feel pessimistic about the actions that you're taking.

Examples of feelings I've had that some of you may relate to:

Whenever you think about how you're not on a path to succeeding in life or getting to the next level, you get a sharp anxiety in your chest and feel down about it. As soon as the thought pops up into your mind reminding you that you're not living up to what you believe you need to do to succeed, you immediately are taken out of the present moment, you immediately become disinterested in talking to the people you're surrounded with and feel depressed and anxious. Your brain then starts trying to figure out a clear path, an action to take right now to deal with the anxiety and start you getting where you want to go. The more your brain tries to figure out what to do, the more anxious you get, the less connected to reality you are. Then when you try to go do what your brain thinks is the solution, you don't do it with a clear mind. You do it with an anxious mind, and end up making little or no progress on where you actually want to go.

And keep in mind, all of this mental chatter and anxiety could be happening while you're in the middle of a conversation with someone or at a dinner, completely taking you out of the moment.

You are constantly tense, fearing the future, scared that you're not doing the right thing in the present.

After going through these thoughts for years, trying to muscle my brain into becoming successful, creating tons of stress and anxiety, amidst all of the chaos I suddenly for the first time looked at myself in the mirror and decided to let go of the desire for money, status, etc for the first time.

And for the first time in a long time, I felt free from the chains of my mind. All of a sudden, I found people interesting again, and wanted to spark conversations with others purely for the sake of it. Not just for some transactional reason like to sell to them which is what I've usually done the past years, because I felt if I was talking to people for no reason, it was a waste of time and I should go back to only building transactional relationships.

What I am getting at here is not that we do not chase our dreams and become mega successful. It is simply that we don't need all of the mental chatter and anxiety that comes from desiring in order to do it. As a matter of fact, if you experience desire the way I've experienced it (pure anxiety), it will likely be downright harmful to your future. Not only to your professional career but also your ability to enjoy life just for the sake of enjoying it.

Don't put freedom off for the hope of a better tomorrow. We can all have freedom if we put peace of mind before any single thing, including our business careers.

You don't need all of the extra mental chatter or anxious thoughts in order to take action. You just need your physical body to do the actions that make you successful. The anxiety and all the feelings we feel are just a bunch of distractions, keeping us from enjoying our lives.

If you relate to this post, please understand that it is okay to take some time away from trying to build your business to get your mental state into one of peace, where you still work extremely hard but are indifferent. Where you make a choice that whether your business works or not, whether you become a rich fastlaner or not, you are still okay mentally.

Dr David R Hawkins book Healing/Recovery can be very beneficial for those of us who go through these things.

He basically says that any negative feeling you feel is not truth. When we're feeling negative feelings, we are essentially being clouded by negativity and the truth (positive feelings, our natural state) is underneath those negative feelings.

His solution to getting rid of the negative feelings is simply to be with them. To not resist them, constantly. Whenever a feeling comes up that you don't want, simply keep the feeling there and stare at it in the face until it disappears or lessens, and keep doing it as the feeling pops up over and over until eventually it doesn't come up at all again.

Notice how useful this can be - here is an example:

You're young, have huge goals of being financially free by 35 years old.

You've booked a trip to Hawaii with some friends for a week and everyone's excited! Except for you..

"I'm going to lose all of my skills. I'm giving up my entire future for this vacation. If I go on this vacation I'll never become rich and achieve my dreams"

All of these toxic feelings pop up and you suddenly feel anxious and depressed about the one week trip instead of happy and excited.

Notice what you're doing with your body and mind in this situation. Resisting, tensing, trying to argue with your thoughts. Becoming a total anxious wreck trying to sort out if you'll be okay or not going on this trip or if it will destroy your financial future.

Now imagine if you just looked at those feelings that popped up, and completely ignored your thoughts (they're not controllable. stop trying to control them), and looked the feelings in the face and became indifferent to them. No resistance. Just acceptance that you will have that one week trip and the decision to let any feeling go that makes you feel bad about doing it.

As young ambitious people, we need to sort out our psychology before we try to sort out our goals of financial freedom (If you're having these hardcore anxious feelings).

To give a personal story, a year and a half ago I was making almost $0 a month and had nothing going on for me, trying and failing a bunch of gigs. And a year later hitting $20,000 months of profit for myself in my sales job, I felt MORE anxious than I did when i was making $0. That's when I knew I needed to take a step back and calm down. What makes me think that having $20 million will make me happy if I'm more anxious making $20,000 a month than I am making almost nothing?

The bottom line is this-

Let's chase our dreams. But let's chase them with a calm mind, and enjoy every piece of life that we possibly can. No more anxiety, no more resisting. Put peace of mind over every other desire that you have. That's the #1 priority. Nothing else.

Hopefully this is helpful to one or two people.

 

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