Discover Your Inner Strength and Dominate Your Anxiety

I’ve always believed that in order to win your fight against severe anxiety you have to count on one person, and that person is you. You’ll simply be better served accepting the fact that you are your best hope for change.

This is because although you’ll need help along the way, ultimately you’re the gatekeeper to final success and freedom from anxious thoughts, anxiety symptoms, low self-esteem, and all the other baggage that’s been piling up on you. Only you can make the necessary corrections to your thinking, so that you can finally escape morbid anxiety.

So, to help you do that, today I want to present to you two mini-shovels that you can use to dig inside yourself to solve one of your most puzzling problems, namely, how to focus your mind and direct it into a state of calmness.

Of course, these two methods aren’t curealls, but they will at least give you yet another set of tools to stuff into your anti-anxiety tool box for ready use.

The two methods are called autosuggestion and autogenic training. Both of these ideas have been around for some time, but you may have heard of them more recently because of books like The Secret. Although The Secret doesn’t mention autosuggestion or autogenic training by their names, it is very much based on these two ideas.

The Secret relies on something called the Law of Attraction to get what you want out of life, whatever that might be. And despite the fact that the book and film are somewhat childish in sophistication, there’s been a long history of people using similar techniques to master their minds to heal disease or succeed in the business world.

The idea that you can get what you want out of life by simply thinking about it was first introduced by French psychologist and pharmacist Emile Coue. He even developed a mantra (The Coue method) that called for people to repeat, everyday, the autosuggestion, “Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.”

“Our actions spring not from our will, but from our imagination. Whatever idea we put in our mind, never mind what idea maybe, becomes true for us, even if it be untrue. Further, every idea that we put into the mind becomes reality in so far as it is within the realms of possibility.” — Emile Coue 1923

Coue thought that if you repeated this mantra every morning and evening that you would literally heal yourself of all the physical or mental ailments you had. The hope is that when you tell yourself positive things on a daily basis, then those things will come true.

Let me briefly point-out some highlights of the autosuggestion method.

• Autosuggestion is thought to “reprogram” the subconscious mind, where the vast majority of our automatic thoughts originate.
• Any idea that occupies the mind can turn into reality, as long as the the goal is within reason. So, no instant billions here.
• In order for autosuggestion to work you have to withhold judgment and accept the idea completely.
• The ideas of self-talk, positive affirmation, and mantras, are all forms of autosuggestion.
• Doesn’t require visualization, but does require a vivid imagination.
• Autosuggestion is best done while you’re in a comfortable position, have your eyes closed, and have a clear mind.
• Coue thought that by talking to yourself in a low, confident voice, you could implant new ideas that would later become automatic and therefore be more likely to influence you in positive ways.

Is autosuggestion just trickery? I’m not so sure about that, although I do think it’s power can be exaggerated somewhat. That exaggeration comes from people thinking that they can trick themselves into becoming rich, or something along those lines, without doing the work.

However, I think you can use this method for much more modest things, like giving yourself more self-confidence and, to some extent, tricking your own brain into thinking positively. I mean, I think it is possible to tell yourself something so much that it becomes true, whether it’s actually true or not.

Autosuggestion is also a subtle way of changing thoughts because it doesn’t depend on sheer willpower.  In fact, autosuggestion is not about shoving new ideas into your mind with brute force, it relies instead on a form of passive self-hypnosis that, day by day, slowly but surely, allows you to replace fearful thoughts with positive ones.

On the other side of the fence is autogenic training. This technique came about around the 1930’s and was developed first by German psychiatrist Johannes Heinrich Schultz.

Autogenic traning is also supposed to be done daily, but instead of mantras and self-talk, it relies on visualization and relaxation to meet it’s goals. Autogenic training is very similar to a more recent form of therapy called progressive relaxation in that it focuses on relaxing not just your mind, but your entire body.

Here is what an autogenic session would be like.

First, you’d sit or lye down somewhere comfortable and proceed down the following list of self guided relaxation techniques.

• “my arms are heavy”
• “my arms and legs are heavy and warm” (repeat 3 times)
• “my stomach is warm” (repeat 3 times)
• “my neck and shoulders are heavy (repeat three times)
• “my heart beat is calm and normal”
• “my forehead is cool and relaxed”
• “I am at peace” (repeat 3 times)

This is all meant to get you in a deep state of conscious relaxation that doesn’t just feel good, but is also meant to affect your autonomic nervous system – that’s the thing that controls your anxiety symptom’s, like palpitations – and causes it to be calm and “reset” itself.

These autogenic sessions should last anywhere from 10-15 minutes and can be done with a therapist or alone.

I decided to introduce both of these methods because I think that together they offer a lot of benefits. They do this by addressing both your mind and body.

Autosuggestion has the power to focus your mind and keep you locked in on your goal of reaching peace of mind, while autogenic training has the very real (clinically proven) ability to relax your body, thereby reducing your physical symptoms over time.

These two methods are also great because they allow you to harness something that you may have felt you lost, and that’s your inner strength, or strength of any kind for that matter. You might feel weak in your legs and your mind because of everything you’re going through but, I have to tell you, you have what it takes to get better.

I know this because I’ve been where you are now, in that place where everything seems dark and where hope is in short supply. But if you decide, with conviction, that you want to reclaim your life, then you can do just that.

For a more detailed explanation of how this works check out the podcast below.