#79 Relaxation Hypnosis for Stress, Anxiety & Panic Attacks - (Jason Newland) (25th January 2020)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland and this is Relaxation Hypnosis for Stress, Anxiety and Panic Attacks. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes. All of my recordings are on my website.

If you like what I do, please leave a review and if you'd like to support this free service, cover the running costs or help to cover those, you can go to paypal.me forward slash Jason Newland and the links on my website. Now, I've got an email or a Facebook message from Kerry and I'm going to read it to you and then I'm going to, that's what I'm going to talk about.

So it says, Hi Jason, I've been listening to your podcast for about a year due to stress and anxiety.

They've helped a lot, helped me a lot. Quick question, I've been following the law of attraction and so by, I fear that my negative thoughts will become reality. Well, I fear, you know, the negative thoughts become reality.

From a medical perspective, that isn't possible, right? So, just read that last bit. I've been following the law of attraction and I fear my negative thoughts become a reality. And from a medical perspective, that isn't possible, right? Well, the first thing I need to do, I thought if you, if Kerry's listening to this, which I'm sure she is, I'm not a doctor.

So the reason I'm saying that is I can't offer like medical advice or diagnosis or anything like that. I can tell you what I know or what I believe probably is more to the point. And so I'll do that.

But as far as if you have any, if there's any kind of mental health issues and you're worried about it, get in touch with a mental health specialist, go see your GP, your doctor. If you're under the mental health team, see the psychiatrist, psychologist, whoever. Or if you've got counsellor, speak to your counsellor.

And that's not just to Kerry, that's to anyone who's concerned about stuff, you know. This podcast is a support, like an additional support for people that are already also getting help in other places. And I did a recording recently about ask for help.

So this is an additional thing. Maybe while you're waiting for help, maybe you've had the help that's available. Perhaps you've had all the counselling that you can get, that you're allowed to have on the NHS or with your health service provider.

So my understanding, I just want to make sure I understand the question correctly. The first part, you've been following the law of attraction. So I understand that part and I can talk about my understanding of it.

The fear of negative thoughts becoming reality. So it depends, I don't have enough information on this particular situation to give my opinion, because that's all it's going to be, would be an opinion. But not from a, as I'm not a doctor, I don't have a PhD, I don't have a medical, you know, license or anything like that to practice as a medical person.

I'm a qualified counsellor, I've got a degree in that, and I'm a hypnotist. I've also, you could say, I've kind of got a degree in anxiety in the sense of the amount that I experienced over the years, depression, anxiety, panic, stress, all that kind of stuff, which I've also talked about in previous recordings. But that was through life experience of having gone through it, and also being bipolar, and having, also being diagnosed with an emotionally unstable personality disorder, which I didn't even find out until two years after the bipolar diagnosis.

So all I can do, I need to be careful in these situations, because Kerry and anyone else that's listening, go always get professional advice, professional help. There's lots of stuff on the internet that you can find out about. It's not always going to be positive.

I mean, you could literally, if you've got a sore throat, and you go online, you can end up thinking you've got the worst disease in the world, when actually, it might just be a sore throat. In fact, it probably more than likely is just a sore throat. But if you're concerned, go to the doctors.

Get it checked out. So I'm going to do this backwards. I'm going to start from the last question about whether thinking about a negative thing would cause that negative thing to happen.

Now, I understand the reason for that question, I think, because the idea of the law of attraction is what you think about, what you focus on. For example, you focus on positive things, you focus on what you do want, in order to get what you do want. So the logical thing is when you flip it on its side, is if you focus on what you don't want, then you're going to get what you don't want.

That's the logical, that would be, for me, that would be the logical kind of conclusion to that idea of what you focus on, you get. However, the law of attraction, my understanding, and I have studied it to quite some depth. I'm not quite sure why, but I got really into it recently.

The last, probably the last three or four months of last year, I was listening to a lot of audios, watching everything on YouTube I could find, reading books. And it wasn't just a case of watching The Secret, you know, the video, The Secret, the movie. And I watched that probably 10 years ago.

And you can watch that, and it gives you no information at all, pretty much. It's just a bunch of famous people telling you how brilliant The Secret is. But it doesn't really give you, I watched it for about an hour and a half.

It's like, okay, but what do I have to do? And then it became all this, it was almost very mystical. You know, it's like dialing a telephone number and directly to the universe and asking the universe for something and it will just give it to you. Well, some books will say that.

But if you go for breadth, and you look at the different things that people are saying, and the people that teach this for a living, the conclusion I come with from this is, it's not about just thinking about something and just, you know, and it comes true. Actions needs to be taken as well. So I can think all I want about being rich.

You know, I can think about having 10 million pounds in my bank account. I can focus on it, I can visualize it. I can think about it.

Every waking day, I can meditate on it. If I don't get out of bed, I don't actually do something. And if I don't leave my house, how is that 10 million pounds going to arrive in my bank account? Well, it isn't.

You know, it's not going to happen. So it isn't a case of just what you think about happening is going to happen. There's more to it.

There's more, it's kind of like, there's more chance of what you want to happen, happening if you think positively. If you walk up to someone that you don't know, and you say hello to them, if you expect them, and in your mind, you're thinking that they're going to be friendly to you, or if you go into a job interview, and you're expecting that they're going to like you, and you assume that they're going to like you, and you've rehearsed it in your mind for the last couple of days, that when you get into the interview, you're going to come across really well, you're going to feel confident.

And they're going to like you and they're going to want to employ you.

There's more chance that that's going to go really well than if you did nothing. So if you made no preparations, just turned up and just went to the interview and just went through the motions. I'd say that there's a much higher probability that you will come across way better, you will feel a lot more confident.

And you're probably going to like them better, and they're probably going to enjoy your company more than they perhaps would have done. And they're more likely to want to offer you the job. But then if you go a little bit further back, and you imagine it going terrible, and you rehearse all the worst case scenarios, are they going to hate me, I'm going to come across crap, and the negativity, which can happen, as we're humans.

Then when you go into that room, the energy, your energy, the way you're holding yourself, your confidence level, I'm guessing wouldn't be particularly high in that moment. And you may not actually come across very well. You may not like them, and they might not like you, because of your energy, your attitude, or whatever it is.

I'm saying you, but you know I'm being general there, whoever it was. So those things make a difference. And it's kind of basic psychology, really, from that aspect.

So what we think about does affect how we behave, it affects our experience of life, our attitude. There's Zig Ziglar, he's a speaker, he was a speaker, very famous. He always used to be talking about getting rid of your stinking thinking.

And I was like, yeah, if you think, if you're thinking crappy thoughts all day, then you're going to have a crappy day. But the reality is, we're not thinking anything all the time. Our thoughts are always changing, aren't they? Because we're fluid.

So without having more information from Kerry's message, fearing that negative thoughts become a reality, that seems to fit into the anxiety part, you know, expecting the worst. And expecting the worst doesn't mean the worst is going to happen. So, you know, going back to the job interview analogy, I might go for a job interview, and I might go in feeling positive, confident, expecting them to like me.

Doesn't mean they're going to love me, but they might, they might like me. But the chance is more, you know, it's very more likely that they will like me if I go in with that attitude, and I'm friendly and all that stuff. If I go in thinking the absolute worst, like I'm going to sit down and they're going to shout at me, and they're going to kick me out and, you know, escort me out by security out of the building, because I was such a bad interviewee.

That's not going to happen, but you're probably not going to have the greatest interview experience, just emotionally. So, having negative thoughts doesn't mean that exactly what you're thinking is going to happen, but it definitely can affect your experience. Experience of what happens.

It's like if you're on a bus, and you're thinking the whole time that the bus is going to crash, you're not going to enjoy that bus ride. Or you, well, it's completely opposite, you're going to have a horrible time. Regardless of whether the bus crashes or not, you're going to have a horrible time.

And the chances of that bus crashing, there's more chance probably of winning the lottery than a bus crashing. It's probably even less chance than winning the lottery. So, you're thinking, you know, if you're thinking the worst, thinking something really bad is going to happen, you're going to have a horrible time of it.

It doesn't mean that the bad thing is going to happen, though. But you just have a crappy, crappy time, and you'll feel shitty. That's the truth, isn't it? If every time you leave the house, you think a car is going to drive onto the pavement or something horrible like that, you're never going to want to leave the house.

And I've known people like that. I've helped people like that, actually. There was someone years ago that witnessed a terrible accident where a car did go onto the pavement and killed her friend, and she wouldn't leave the house.

And I helped her get to the point where she could walk on the pavement again. Because that kind of situation, the chances of her ever witnessing or even seeing another car on the pavement is practically non-existent. So, it's getting the brain to change.

It's kind of getting the brain to start thinking the way it did before. That temporary fear, which is obvious it's going to be there, that temporary, temporary fear of the pavement's a dangerous place. Because in that moment, it was.

That spot where the car went onto the pavement was the most dangerous place in the world to be, back then. But since that happened, guaranteed hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people have walked past and stood on that spot on that pavement, and nothing's happened to them. And it was an absolute tragedy that it happened that day.

I remember it, because I just walked around the corner from there. And it was horrible. But the pavement is no longer dangerous.

It was dangerous for that 10 minutes or 20 minutes, however long the car was on the pavement. But after that, the pavement's not dangerous anymore. And the pavement never was dangerous.

It was the car, not the pavement. And it was an accident. It was a freak accident.

So I think if I was going to walk to town every day, and I'm not because it's way too far to walk. But if I'm thinking the whole time, and I do this journey every day for the next three months, and I repeat, I'm not going to do it. But if I did, there's a lot of traffic, lorries, the traffic's very close to the pavement.

And I'm thinking the whole time, car's going to hit me. Or it's going to come close to the pavement, hit my arm, you know, whatever. If I'm thinking that the whole time, I'll still be here in three months.

I probably would have lost a bit of weight, to be fair. But what a crappy time I would have had. Imagine, and it's a good two hour walk.

That's four hours a day, times by 90 days. All that time, focusing on a negative thing that's never going to happen, or the chances is really, there's more chance of me marrying a supermodel. Not going to happen.

By the way, if there are any supermodels out there that have very low standards, give me a call. So you got the feeling, you got the feeling of, do you need to have that feeling? You know, I'd rather have 89 days of walking, feeling completely relaxed and calm. And one day, maybe you're feeling stressed and worried.

Or maybe deal with it, if it happens. Because we are quite good at dealing with stuff. In fact, in some ways, it's the idea of something happening can sometimes feel worse than the event itself.

I'm not talking about getting run over. I'm not talking about something extreme. But just witnessing something or, you know, it's actually like driving and having a crash.

But being okay, but the experience, it's not nice. But if you're driving and that's all you're thinking about, you might as well get out of that car and get yourself a bus pass. Because it's going to be a horrible experience.

So I think my answer, kind of, to the question, fear and negative thoughts becoming reality. No. And that's, that's how the mind tricks you with anxiety and stress and panic attacks.

Is that what 99.9.9.9.9, whatever percentage of what we worry about doesn't happen. The things that we fear don't happen. Most people's fears do not happen.

Doesn't mean that crappy things don't happen. Of course they do. I mean, everyone listening to this is old enough to have had quite a few rubbishy experiences.

It's just part of being alive, isn't it? Some are worse than others. We've also had wonderful experiences. So thinking about something positively can have a huge effect on how you feel.

It can help to drive you. So if you really are driven by, let's say money, let's say you do want to have $10 million in the bank. It drives you.

See, if you're negative, you're not going to have $10 million in the bank, unless you've already got it. Negativity does not create wealth within a person that has negativity. Unless perhaps you write books, I suppose Stephen King, some of his books are not the most positive.

Those horror books are very negative, aren't they? I suppose. But forgetting that, it's what you do with that energy, with that positive energy, with those positive thoughts, because that's what drives people. So if someone's feeling positive and they're saying, they might literally be saying to you, diverse, you know, give me that money.

But at the same time, they're doing something to create that wealth. Or if someone is wanting a healthier body, laying in bed saying, I want to have a slimmer waist. No matter how positive you are, you know, we all know that it needs action.

But what the positive thoughts, the whatever you want to call it, you know, maybe asking the universe or whatever. What is it called? Let's have a look. The Law of Attraction is we attract, we attract things that are attracted to us.

So we become attractive to those things. But on the same side, if you're, if you unattract things that kind of maybe you don't want, you don't really want it. Maybe you think you want a job, but actually, you don't want that particular job.

And you might come across a bit negative, maybe a bit cocky, maybe whatever. And you don't get offered the job and you might be pissed off. And then you may get offered another job next week that you really want.

So you know, sometimes we, we let off that energy, we give it out. And we're not always maybe aware of what we do want. So that's part of the Law of Attraction is finding out what you actually want, and focusing on what you do want, not on what you don't want.

And taking action to get those things. And when you're focusing most of your time on what you do want, it means you'll be in a positive mode. You'll have a lot more energy.

To do the things necessary to get the things you want. So for me, it's a practical thing. It's not a spiritual thing.

It's not a universe thing for me. It's, it's about, you know, you get what you focus on. You get what you think about.

So, that doesn't mean in a negative way. It doesn't mean if you think, you know, an extreme situation, if you think there's going to be a volcano, it doesn't mean a volcano is going to erupt. But if you think there's going to be a good day, if you really believe that, you know, what you do is going to be successful.

And somebody is going to enjoy it. Whatever it is you're doing, maybe you've made a painting, you've painted something. Or you've created something new.

Because creativity comes out of positivity. Generally, I know, even you could say, what about vaccines for pox and polio and stuff like that? That wasn't a, that wasn't a positive thing. Or maybe the person that created the vaccine for that stuff was a very positive person.

Especially after, you know, it was successful. So positivity is not, for me, I used to think it was like walking around with a big smile on your face and being pretend, you know, pretending to be happy. But it's not.

I don't think it is. Some people might think that. But my understanding is not.

It's about, first of all, noticing when you're being negative. Getting in touch with how you feel. You know, realizing that that, your head and your body is connected with that little thing called a neck.

It's not a separate thing. You know, your brain and your body are very much connected. You try disconnecting it.

You'll see, you know, what happens then. It's all connected. So what you think about affects your body.

So if you're focusing the whole time, someone's got chronic pain, and all they're doing is focusing on the pain the whole time, which some people do. And understandably so, to be fair. If someone's in a lot of pain, I can understand why they would be focusing on it.

They can be miserable. Because that's all they're focusing on. And it's very hard to get someone who's going through chronic pain, to get them to focus on something different.

Because almost, almost feels like, you know, you're dismissing what they're going through, and you're not. So can focusing on chronic pain make it worse? Yes. 100%.

Can focusing on failing driving exam, you know, focusing on failing it, visualizing failing it before you get there, can that affect the results of the driving exam? Yes, 100%. Can expecting to pass the driving exam affect it? Yes. Can imagining passing it and doing everything correctly and feeling positive, can that affect it? Yes.

But doesn't mean it's going to happen. But it can affect it. So if you imagine failing a driving lesson, or driving test, rather, doesn't mean you're going to fail the driving test.

But it's a hell of a lot more chance you're going to pass it, if you trust and believe that you're going to pass it. But even believing you're going to pass it doesn't mean you're necessarily going to pass. Because you also need the knowledge, you need to know what you're doing.

You need competency as well, as self belief. So there's different variables at play. So imagining something happening, you know, the anxiety, the panic, the dread of something terrible happening, isn't going to make it happen.

But focusing on it and imagining it, I guarantee you're going to feel crappy. That's the one guarantee. You're not going to feel good, are you? You're not going to feel happy, not going to feel positive if you're focusing on negative stuff.

And you could say, well, I can't control it. That's how I feel. And that's, you know, we've always got an option to change how we feel, to do something different, to think differently, which is part of why I make these recordings.

Because I also need to be reminded of that myself as well. We're always changing. We're all different now, before I started talking in this recording, before you press the play button.

We're all different. We've, in the last 38 minutes, we've changed. Our blood has pumped through our body, our digestive system has moved further, you know, if we're eating something, it's more digested.

We've got new parts of our bodies grown, you know, like the cells and stuff. I don't mean new fingers and stuff, but you know, we've got cells that have regrown, hairs that have perhaps fallen out, new hairs that started to grow. Who knows? It's constantly changing.

How many times has the world spun in the last 38 minutes? How many times have you breathed in and out? How many times have you blinked or changed your body? You know, maybe moved a hand or moved your shoulder or maybe moved the way your head is from one side to the other. Maybe you've scratched yourself. Maybe you've wiggled your toes, whatever.

It's always changed. We're not statues. We're not made of stone.

So we do actually have an effect. We can have an effect and we do have an effect on what happens. And there are those instances that are just so random that you could not prepare for it.

And we can't be prepared for everything. It's a simple fact. Nobody can ever be prepared for everything, because we don't know what's going to happen in life.

But we can have a good idea, because generally, things are quite often very similar, aren't they? If you've got a job you go to regularly, the job will change, there'll be different things happening, but there'll be a familiarity. When you go home, you know, your house will very much look the same as it did when you left for work and you got home, unless you've got a ferret running around, knocking stuff off shelves, like me.

You know, whatever I think about, at work, if I was at work, on the bus, on the train, walking home, whatever I think about in my mind, the Andre, my little boy, ferret, whatever, if I imagine that he's trashed the place, I say trashed, but sometimes he does make a mess.

Or if I imagine that he's asleep, or if I imagine that he's died, yeah, extreme, or that he's escaped through the window. It doesn't matter what I imagine. It makes no difference to the reality.

The reality of what's happening in here has got no connection to what I'm thinking as I'm walking down the road. It's a different reality. That's his reality.

What's happening here, I'm not controlling it. I can't control it just by thinking it. Otherwise, I would be the richest person on the planet.

I'd probably get burnt at the stake as well for being a witch or something. But for that journey, if I'm thinking the worst, oh, he's escaped, he's got through the window, or something bad's happened, I'm going to feel crappy. I'm perhaps going to run or walk quickly and maybe trip over because I'm running too quickly, or slip on the ice, because whatever, something that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't had that negativity in my mind.

But at the very least, I'm going to feel crappy. And then I get home, and I see everything's fine, and he's there, he's asleep, happy as anything. So I put myself through that for nothing.

And you know what? If I'm thinking to myself as I'm walking back, maybe I'm walking from town, two hours, or a two-hour journey, thinking that Andre's fine, and he's happy, and he's asleep. And I get back, and he has got out of the window, and he's escaped. I can feel crappy then.

At least I had two hours where I didn't feel crappy. Instead of feeling crappy, and then getting back and feeling okay. I'd rather feel that, to be fair, because I wanted to be here.

But why put yourself through something you don't need to until it's time? In the same way, I wash my hands after I've been to the toilet. Not before, not during, after. I eat the food after it's cooked.

I don't take it out of the oven when it's half-cooked, and start eating it, or try and eat it raw. I do things in the order that they're kind of supposed to be. Because worrying, I mean, there's songs about it, there's poems about it, and there's famous songs.

What's the use in worrying? It never was worthwhile. It doesn't get you anywhere, at all. Unless it's a real thing that's happening.

You know, if someone's got, let's say if you've got debts, and you've got credit card debts, and the only way to actually get yourself out of bed, and to open the letters, and face it, and make the phone calls that need to be made, if the only way that gets you to do that is by worrying, then that's the way some people function. And if not worrying about it means you let all the debts build up, and you end up with bailiffs, and losing your home, then it'd be better to worry, short term, but about real things.

It's like telling someone, like my niece was in hospital last year.

She's very, very ill, and she's only little. Like, no way in the world would I ever tell my brother, don't worry. It would be the most stupid thing to say to him.

Don't worry, you know, worst things could happen. Well, no, there's only one worst thing that could happen, and that's the thing he was worrying about. And luckily, she's recovering.

So, there's situations where it's natural to worry, but worry about something that is happening. You know, save it for the big stuff. That's kind of what I would say, is what I'm coming to.

Save it for the big stuff, because when the big stuff happens, it's going to be, it's naturally a crappy time. If a loved one's ill, or you're ill, whatever, it's not supposed to be nice. I remember a friend, my nan died, and I was going up there for the funeral, and she took me out for lunch, and she said, oh, I'm just trying to cheer you up.

I said, I don't want cheering up. That's not applicable in this situation. You don't cheer someone up that's bereaved.

You don't cheer someone up that's worried about a loved one. It's not about that. Maybe a distraction, it can be, but it's natural to feel worried and to feel upset.

It's okay. This podcast isn't for people that are going through stress because of a really traumatic situation happening in their life. Maybe to reduce that stress and to cope with it, but also to realize it's natural to have that stress levels and the anxiety in really extreme situations.

But my experience of things like panic attacks, anxiety, stress, is a lot of it happens when seemingly nothing is really triggering it. That's obvious. Nothing that would be classed as maybe huge.

Maybe something in the past, it could be post-traumatic stress, or worrying about something in the future that hasn't happened, that may never happen. I suppose the question would be, how much are any of us willing to put up with that? How long are you willing to worry about something that may not happen? Moreover, what would you say to a child, someone that you really cared about? Maybe not a child, maybe a mother, grandparent, whoever, someone that you really, really love, and they were worried about something that you knew, well, you figured realistically is not going to happen.

Or if it does happen, there's nothing you can do about it at this point.

And if it happens in the future, you kind of need to do it then. But it's a good chance it won't happen. You'd want to find a way to tell them, or to reassure them, that things are going to be okay.

Because that is actually the reality in most cases. In most cases, in most scenarios, things are okay. But if you watch the news, and you read newspapers, unfortunately, it's full of negativity, or maybe too much reality, or maybe too much of the negative reality.

And I can't even remember the last time I saw a nice story on the news. Because no one wants to watch that stuff. Apparently, I would.

But maybe it would be boring. Oh, great, another cat that can do somersaults. You know, that's nice.

It was great the first 700 times to, I want to watch another animal saving their owner in an emergency. So, those stories, even the happy stories, the press, they always like to talk about a horrible experience. Like a dog wakes up someone that stopped breathing, or manages to press the alarm button because their owners had a seizure, or something like that.

There's always an underlying fear connected to the stories. So, it's kind of, for me, the asking the universe, or positive thinking, or what's it called, the law of attraction. And that's about taking control of the steering wheel, you know, not letting someone else drive your car, being the driver of your own car, which means you can stop whenever you want.

You can go wherever you want. You can drive whatever speed you want. Obviously, there's laws for, you know, different speed levels, but I'm just talking metaphorically.

You can listen to whatever music you want to listen to. And if you want to sing, you can sing. And you know, you haven't got someone else dictating what you do.

And sometimes it feels, I think it can feel like someone else is telling us how we should feel, even though it might not be another person. It might just be us, almost like on some kind of automatic drive. But the automatic driver is the negative part of us.

And because there's so much negativity around, if we just leave it on automatic, we're going to be affected by that. And Andre has decided to come and walk around on the newspaper to make lots of noise. Thank you, Andre.

That's why positivity requires conscious effort. Oh, that's it, Andre, you walk over to the other side now. What do you want? Sorry, I don't normally get this interrupted by him.

He was just staring at me. So conscious attention on positivity is required, is needed. It's because basically, if you don't put effort into positivity, the negativity will just automatically just sink in.

And that's partly, probably a lot to do about society. Depends on what society you live in. If you live in a very, very positive society, and maybe you live in a household where everyone's really positive and optimistic, and expects good things to happen and expects to be physically well, and has a very optimistic attitude, then you might naturally have more of that, because that's what you've experienced maybe throughout your life for the first few years of your life.

But I think for probably the majority of people, perhaps listening to this maybe, you, including myself, need to focus and give some energy to the positivity, to cultivate it, to get in touch with it, to remind yourself of what you're grateful for, to remind yourself of what you do have, instead of focusing on what you don't have. But then you can focus on what you don't have in a sense of what you'd like to have with an optimism that you will have that.

So it takes some energy energy to be positive.

Negativity is easy. It's just a case of not doing anything, and that stuff just seeps in. Just watch the news, watch television, listen to other people's problems, and it just sinks in.

Unless you say, no, actually, no, I don't want that stuff in there. And you start to focus on positive stuff. You start to focus on what you can do.

Maybe you read positive books, listen to positive audios, start to plan feeling good. Start to plan feeling happy. Start to focus on what you do have.

Maybe focusing on happy memories, focusing on what you do want for the future, and actually doing something to get those things, which then increases the positivity, increases the likelihood of you getting those things because you're actually doing something towards it. But on the same side, you could lay in your bed, and you could feel positive because you could imagine it, and you could feel positive. You're not going to have that money in a bank, you're not going to, it's not going to necessarily improve your physical health as much as if you are physically active, but you feel better.

And it may one improve your physical health. But when I'm thinking, I'm thinking more like exercise, losing weight, slimming down, laying in bed, and generally doesn't do that. You know, I'm not a nutritional expert.

So thinking positively, that's what I learned about the law of attraction is actually you get what you think about. In a sense of, you get the feelings. If you think about good stuff, you're going to feel good.

If you think positively, you're going to feel positive. You're going to feel physically better. You're going to feel physically healthier.

You're going to have a brighter outlook towards, you know, your future, you're going to perhaps look around at your present and notice things and see, perceive things in a much different way to how you would if you was looking through the goggles of negativity. And I said this in a recent or previous recording, no matter how crappy you feel, if you suddenly won the lottery, the way you felt would change instantly.

Even if you was physically ill, your mental state would change instantly.

So how we think changes how we feel, and how we feel changes, you know, how we emotionally feel changes how we physically feel. And then it affects what we do, affects how we think. So it's like a continuous rolling machine of positivity.

But without the fakeness of, you know, always feeling you have to look on the bright side of everything, because you don't have to do anything. You can choose to do it. You can choose to actually look at things in a way that's more useful.

Because you can think of any really like negative generalization. And if you break it down, it isn't what you think it is. It doesn't hold as much truth.

And in fact, it may not hold any reality or truth at all. It's just a thought. It's just a belief that you used to have.

Maybe it's been passed on to you by family, or by society. Yeah, it might be a prejudice. It might be a self-limiting belief.

Because you know, the most physically attractive person, you know, no matter how physically attractive they are, and everyone that they meet as an adult, you know, they meet everyone at 18, they go out into the world and every single man or woman tells them that they're the most beautiful person that any have ever seen physically. If they've spent 18 years in a house being told that they were ugly, that they were no good, and they were horrible and disgusting, which some people are unfortunately raised like that, they're not going to believe that they're beautiful.

Eventually, they might.

Eventually, I hope they will. But they're not seeing the world, they're not seeing themselves the way other people are seeing them. They're not perceiving themselves the way other people perceive them.

And that's quite an extreme situation. But at the same side, you know, it's, someone might have a mole on their chin, or their cheek, or a scar, you know, on the bridge of their nose, or maybe on their forehead, that nobody will ever even notice. But that person knows it's there.

And they think everyone notices it. When in reality, probably no one hardly notices it. And those that do don't care.

And that person may hold themselves back, not apply for jobs they want to apply for, not go to university, not, you know, just limit their whole life because of that one thing that they feel is almost disabling them. They don't realize that they're disabling themselves. And that's just such a waste.

So coming back to the original question, I do eventually come back to something I started, is, can thinking about something make it happen? No, I don't think so. But thinking about something horrible happening feels crappy. That's pretty much a guarantee.

Expecting something nice to happen feels nice. Or at the very least feels neutral. Definitely doesn't feel crappy.

But more likely going to feel nice. It might not give you an all over body orgasm. You know, you might not be exploding with pleasure.

But you're going to feel nice. It's going to be like, oh, I'm going to go out today. And it's a nice weather.

It's going to be okay. I'm going to have a nice day. Or it might just be, I'll go to the shops, get some food.

Be good to get out, get a bit of fresh air and just get out. And yeah, everything's going to be fine. Just a little bit, just expecting things to be okay.

Not even to be all dramatic. You know, like overly, you know, that kind of dramatically positive. Well, I'm going to get out and I'm going to get there and I'm going to go to the bus.

But suddenly all the neighbours are going to run towards me and say, don't worry about the bus. We'll carry you on our shoulders. We'll carry you all the way to town.

And we'll buy you food and we'll give you money for the rest of the year. So you never have to buy food again. And we'll cook it.

We'll take turns cooking your food for you. Yeah, that's, it's a pretty lovely scenario, possibly. It's pretty quite comical as well.

But it's unrealistic. So it can be funny to think about stuff like that. I mean, you might get to the position if he was a superstar, you know, I suppose if he was, if George Clooney moved in next door to me, I imagine there'd be a lot of people wanting to buy him dinner.

I'll be one of them. I'll put, yeah. Hi, Georgie.

How you doing mate? You're paying? Yeah. Well, let's go for dinner then. As long as you pay.

Got a nice McDonald's out the road. So thinking the things are going to work out okay. Definitely can't harm.

That's the bottom line. It can't do no harm. It can only do good.

The worst case scenario is it's neutral. Yeah. On the other side, flip it over.

If you're thinking that something's going to be rubbish, and it's going to be something bad's going to happen, you're going to feel crappy. So it's a choice. Do you want to feel relaxed and calm? Or do you want to feel crappy? It really is that simple.

That's the choice. And it doesn't feel that simple sometimes, but actually when you break it down, it is that simple. Because how we feel changes constantly.

And you choose what you do next. Always. Every second of the day, you choose what you do next.

Like right now, I can choose. I can raise my right arm. I can turn my body to the left.

You know, I can breathe in, hold the breath for a couple of seconds, breathe out. I can yawn. I didn't have to yawn.

That was a natural yawn, but I could have held it in. I could have pressed the mute button and yawned so you didn't hear it. I could do a little tap dance.

I could chuck something at Andre to stop him from scratching the carpet, but I'm not going to. Get one of these little teddy bears. Chuck it in.

So we choose what we do next. So how we feel, we can feel positive. Because we choose to.

Instead of waiting for it to happen naturally. And I think that's one of those things that, let's face it, we all want it to happen naturally. I think there's part of us, and I know I definitely, I feel it should happen naturally.

I should naturally feel good. I should naturally feel positive and good things should happen. Kind of, I don't really want to do any work.

It's not work, but I don't want to have to do anything. But actually, it involves doing something. Because there's washing up in the sink that needs to be washed up.

It's not going to get washed up unless I actually go and do it. And no amount of positive thinking is going to make a damn bit of difference. Apart from maybe giving me the energy to get up and wash up.

And then I will feel better afterwards. And also I'll have cleaner hands, which is good. Because I use Fairy washing up liquid.

And now Andre's followed me into the bedroom, so I'm gonna... Now he's following me into the living room again. I don't normally talk about Andre on these podcasts, but he's literally followed me around I'm trying to escape him, but he's following me. So I'll bring this recording to an end.

I thought I'd actually give, I'd talk about something that was asked, you know, that message that was sent to me probably a couple of hours ago on Facebook from Kerry. So I hope I've answered that question, firstly. I'll send a, when I've uploaded this, I'll send a link or just send a message saying that I've talked about it on my latest recording.

But it has got me thinking, it's been a subject that I'm interested in. You know, the how we think affects how we feel. And it does.

And I don't think anyone can really deny that. I think it's a factual, it's a factual thing. Right, I'm just gonna walk out here and get away from him, but he's following me into the bedroom again.

I'm gonna go because he's just, I don't know, it's like I've got a bit of string attached to his, to him and he's just being dragged along by it, but he's not, a visible bit of string. So thank you for listening. I hope that this is resonated a bit.

And I've tried to talk about it in the context of anxiety, stress and panic and from that kind of angle. And I'll speak to you next time. Remember to be kind to yourself, because you deserve to be happy.

Lots of love. Bye.