Writing a Book

  Controlling your Response On a planet of 8 billion people, there are only 2 things you can control: your thoughts and your actions. We are overwhelmed with people in our lives each day. It is easy to get caught up in blaming the person in the white house, or the big man in the corner office, or your aging parents. That is the easiest way out. But that is the reason for all the madness we experience every day is people giving power to others in the form of blame. This chapter we are going to focus on the only thing you can control when it comes to interactions with the other humans on this earth: your response. Emotions are what make us human, controlling them makes you superhuman. A common phrase you hear in nearly every single place of human interaction is they made me feel this way. They made. Making someone feel a way insinuates that you have control over their mind. You have the ability to hypnotize them. We are quite literally admitting that others have control over our mi...

  Embrace Uncertainty A common root of anxiety is a lack of control. Control gives stability, stability calms anxiety. The one factor that we cannot control is what will happen. Although it seems like the future can be predicted, it is impossible to know what will happen. Trying to become certain about what will happen will only lead to cynicism and negativity when it doesn’t happen. To learn to embrace uncertainty, we must reframe a common theme in our mind: Not knowing gives you the ability to be surprised. Seeing the unknown as a potential to be surprised will give you a more positive view on the future. What I ran into by trying to always control the future is that I was never surprised, and almost exclusively let down. I would attempt to paint a vivid image in my mind about what the future may look like and end up experiencing something completely different. In a scenario where I could just as easily see the actual events as something unexpected, but in a positive way, I saw i...

It is a human thing to fear letting people down, especially those you love. As humans, we find happiness when we make others happy. It encourages us to do it more. That is why when we do the exact opposite of what people want for us, it is hard because we don’t feel that joy, but rather the pain of admonishment and disapproval. A lot of anxiety is centered around the opinion of others but we will break that down later. For now, let’s stay on the topic of let down. But what happens when it’s your own expectations that you don’t fulfill?  Personally, I believe there are a couple different ways of looking at it. The first, and more obsessive, cynical way, would be to let a broken expectation begin to define who you are and lead to demotivation and disappointment. I believe that our opinion of ourselves is simply made up of the things we do and don’t do. If you tell yourself you will do something and break that promise, it is more likely you will believe that you are not somebody who k...

  The Origin of Expectation Expectations are required in accountability. In the mind of an anxious individual, accountability and habits are required to give some structure. Structure provides control. Control provides comfort. Anxiety is the overwhelm when faced with too many options. Much different from sadness which is derived from a lack of options.  The anxious being uses expectations as a guide, a crutch, to avoid being misguided by the addition of too many options. When expectations are in place, it makes it much easier to feel like you have some sort of direction and focus. But the downside of expectations, is when they are strong, and they go awry, it leads to complete mental derailment. A lot of expectation-forming in your adult life comes from the disappointment you felt in your primary years when you did not fulfill someone else’s expectations. Anxious individuals will commonly see that during their younger years they faced a lot of feelings of disappointment from ...

  Just Start I want you to go back in time and enter the mind of your five-year-old self. What is your life like at your current age? What are you doing? Where do you live? What do you look like? What have you accomplished? Have you done the things you dreamt of doing? Gone to the places you dreamt of going? Are you with the person you dreamt of being with?  Think of every single thing you wanted to do as a child. How many of those things have you actually done? I know for myself, it’s not many. But why? Why was it so easy for me to imagine doing these things as a kid, but now, with all the resources at my fingertips, does it seem impossible? Now ask yourself, have you tried? Have you actually started? Have you put in more than a half-hearted, ten minutes of thought into your dreams?  If you’re anything like me. You’re probably feeling a lot of regret. Disappointment. Hopelessness. Maybe even anxiety.  That’s exactly why we’re here. Now I want you to think about why ...