Hypnosis Tools to Overcome Performance Stress & Anxiety
You have the ability to live and thrive. Knowing how to invest your time, attention, intention and energy to manifest a stress free life is easier than you think. It takes trust, having an open mind, patience and the ability to play with the world like a child.
It’s time for you to learn a new level of respect for the power of your intentions to create the world surrounding and within you.
You have the innate right and responsibility to design and create your life.
It is important to celebrate life and it is essential to understand that the events unfolding in your life are not a result of random, meaningless acts. Count your blessings and have a sense of purpose, perspective and meaning. Learning to recognize and tap into your levels of consciousness offers you an insightful new form of freedom.
When reading and learning about stress, anxiety, fear and panic many articles, teachers, gurus and books focus on managing your response to events. However, I believe that stress management is most powerful when we manage both our internal and external worlds with awareness. Often times when life can appear to be tough we can transform the journey to a more fulfilling, happy and exciting experience if we exercise courage, compassion and trust with the choices we make.
They physical, mental and biological changes that occur at our time of creation to the time we are born influence our experience and perception of life from adolescence to adulthood. Our cognitive, social and environmental development have a significant effect on our physical, intellectual and social world. It is our environment coupled with our biology that shapes our development. It is our nature and our nurture that effect our life. The mind influences the body as much as the body influences the mind.
Remember that you can create a place of peace, power and control in your mind whenever you wish. Your imagination is always there for you when you need it.
Stress, Anxiety, Overwhelmed… Once you see a bigger picture of reality it is easy to release the feelings of having no power that hold you back from experience an exquisite life.
We are all affected by stress at some time and have to make choices in life every day. But don’t be mistaken, you do not have to endure distress. In every moment of every day there are always opportunities, even when facing hardship.
Most likely you continue to experience stress, anxiety and maybe even panic attacks because you were never taught the skills and ways of thinking necessary to overcome the overwhelming feelings.
With the tools and strategies of hypnosis you can relax and stand tall and confident in the face of difficult challenges. Hypnosis will give you the resources to be resilient and step forward with a sense of inner peace when called to action.
What is stress?
Stress is a feeling experienced when a person perceives that the demands in his life exceed the resources the he is able to mobilize. You are more likely to feel at ease and relaxed if you have the time, resources, and experience necessary to manage your situations. It is all too easy to feel stressed when you feel that you are unable to handle the demands put on you. Stress does not have to be inevitable. Stress is merely a matter of perception, the stories you tell yourself and how you have been programmed to cope with those feelings and perceptions.
Early on mankind often found themselves at risk facing daily life-threatening situations. These situations would put the mind and body into heightened states of awareness. Stress hormones and sugar would pump through the veins producing a fight or flight response meaning stand and fight the saber tooth tiger or run like hell. In today’s society our need for survival is the same, but we face different circumstances, which is at times in odds with our primal instinct. The saber tooth tiger is often perceived as public speaking, rush hour, bills, family, work, school, health, relationships and so on. The need for a perfect 4.0 GPA, the rush to the last parking spot, constantly pleasing others are all examples of how we strain ourselves and experience fight or flight in non-life-threatening situations. It is then when the “trigger” is being pressed that we must be emotionally mature, detach and just avoid stressful feelings all together.
What happens when we get stressed?
- Stress is triggered in the body.
- Running late, overslept, public speaking
- Mind perceives trigger as a threat.
- A message is sent to the amygdala where emotional processing is carried out.
- The message is directed to the cerebral cortex and then to the hypothalamus, which is the brains command center.
- Fight or Flight response kicks in
- The ANS (autonomic nervous system) is activated
- ANS controls the heart, lungs, stomach blood vessels and glands
- ANS has two different systems
- PNS (parasympathetic nervous system) (REST/DIGEST)
- SNS (sympathetic nervous system) (TAKE ACTION = FIGHT/FLIGHT)
- SNS is the system that is active during stress.
- Brain goes on alert and prepares the body for action.
- Pupils dilate and the mouth dries up.
- The body begins to react:
- Sweating
- Muscle tension
- Rapid breathing
- Rapid heart rate
- Blood pressure rises
- Digestion slows down
- Liver releases glucose
- Adrenalin released
- The body becomes unbalanced
- Health both long term and short term is affected.
- Stress, depression, anxiety, panic attacks begin to take over the body.
Why you feel stressed
Be aware of your thinking habits. Be aware of the stories you tell yourself. What you believe is what you manifest. Your thoughts influence how you feel, act, and physically respond. If you pay attention to your emotions, you can regulate your moods. With hypnosis you can begin to understand why you feel a certain way in certain situations. Often times past events have programmed us for the beliefs we hold today about similar situations. For example; you may feel frightened and have a panic attack every time you even think about public speaking. This could be happening because you were humiliated as a child reading in front of the class. The children may have laughed at you and called you stupid. Because of this incident or events similar you mind programmed all public speaking events to bring you similar feelings of humiliation and the belief that you are stupid. Being open to exploring your past with hypnosis will allow you to create a brighter, healthier, less stressful life.
Visualization for performance anxiety
A great self-hypnosis exercise for performance anxiety and public speaking is visualization.
Try this…
- Describe your goal – what are you wanting to accomplish.
- Define your anchor – Choose an object or form of touch (like thumb to index finger) that you can use immediately after you recollect a positive situation.
- Past Success – Pick a time when you had a positive and successful experience with a similar goal or situation.
- Close your eyes and reflect – What are you thinking?
- What are you doing?
- What are you sensing (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting)?
- How are your efforts received by others?
- How do you feel?
- Now, anchor that good feeling with an object or touch. Breath in through your nose, relax, smile and enjoy that feeling for 30 seconds.
- When you are ready, open your eyes.
- Future – Now fast forward in time to your new goal, situation or event. With the positive feelings you have imagine, sense and feel yourself successful… just close your eyes and imagine.
- What are you thinking?
- What are you doing?
- What are you sensing?
- How is your input or the results of your efforts received?
- How do you feel?
- Anchor that good feeling, relax and smile.
- Open your eyes and release the anchor.
In my Dubai and Abu Dhabi workshops at UAE Hypnosis I teach the tools of hypnosis and show people how to tap into the natural power of their subconscious mind. Once achieved, people can start to feel hopeful of the future and transcend circumstances they find themselves in.
Your future success depends on you using your inner wisdom. You have the choice to let go of feelings, people and situations that do not serve you. You have the ability to make choices about what you let go of from the past and what you will take with you moving forward. You live in an amazing, abundant world of health, happiness and opportunity. You just have to stop to notice them. Embrace life, step forward with courage, and an open mind and heart. Success and peace of mind can be yours whenever you want. The power to do, overcome and achieve exists in all of us. Just close your eyes, relax and breathe.