When you're highly anxious, I mean, it's a known fact that

you can get so stuck in your head that you

can only see 6 inches in front of you. I mean, that happens on the

battlefield. People get so anxious they can't see

anything except what's like right basically in front of them. Their body's

shutting down, fight or flight mode, and they're trained

to look beyond look further,

and even look slightly up so they can get some more

perspective. They get tunnel vision.

And, you know, when we're highly anxious, we're not creative, we

don't solve problems, we have more conflict, we lose our

sense of humor. Life just kind of gets small. Not a good place

to be. Anxiety is about

control. We're trying to control, so we get fixated on what

is right in our midst. And we can get out of

that, and we want to get out of that, and we want to find ways

to get out of that, because your job ain't going to be fun, your co-workers

aren't going to get along with you very well when we're highly anxious. So

today's podcast episode is on 3 daily decisions that you can

make that will reduce the anxiety in your life fast.

And, and these are simple decisions. I'm going to give you tools, things you

can apply and work on And as I go through this

content, one of my goals when I started this podcast over 5 years ago is

to explain things in a way that you could share it with your 6-year-old

and they would understand the concepts. I don't know if I always do

that and speak that clearly, but that's my goal today.

Practical, simple tools.

So welcome to the Decide Your Legacy podcast. I'm your host, Adam

Gragg. I'm a coach and a family therapist. I founded Decide Your

Legacy in 2012, and what we do is so we help leaders

and their teams face the issues that are holding

them back and that they're avoiding so they can take productive

action to make progress in their lives, progress that

sticks. And from my point of view, everybody's a leader.

And anxiety is one of the core issues people often do not

wanna face, especially the root of their anxiety. And

that's what keeps 'em stuck. I like to share a risk that I've taken recently

every episode because nothing is more important to your mental health

than taking action, and nothing is more damaging than playing it

safe. I had a hard conversation, a meeting that I was

involved in setting up with my parents and my dad's 87,

almost 87. My mom's 78. And it was talking about what they

want in their future if they had a health crisis,

if they had an unfortunate situation. Just not that

they're unhealthy, they are very healthy for their ages. But it was a conversation

we had, and I'm glad we had it. You know, you make

your anxiety worse by feeding it. I see this with

clients and friends and in myself, that we do things

unintentionally that create a great deal of anxiety in our lives.

There's 3 ways primarily that we feed our anxiety. One is through

ambiguity. That means that we keep the problem fuzzy.

We don't even know what the issue actually is because we're not stepping back from

our lives and looking and seeing like, this is really the core problem in my

life. And so we're anxious. If we define the problem, if we get at the

root of the problem, our anxiety is no longer fed. It starts

to decrease. So the The other thing is we are negative, we're

seeing the worst possible outcome. That's how we feed our

anxiety rather than what a potential

best outcome is or a most likely outcome. And we're going to tackle that in

the episode today, those first two ambiguity, worst outcome, and we're also going to

tackle the worst thing you can do with anxiety, and that is avoidance.

So if you have social anxiety, and you may have a tendency to want to

make excuses to not engage with people. And you, you

can biologically make excuses. I mean, if you're afraid of some conversation,

your body can kick in and say, I'm going to tell you that I'm sick.

I don't feel good. You see this with kids frequently, kids that don't want to

go to school. They can biologically— they can really

be sick, I get it, but they can also make things up. And you as

a parent, that's your intuition and your gut. That's why you take their temperature.

That's why you look at patterns. You look at what they're not facing in their

life so you can get at the core issue. And it may not be that

they're actually sick. It may be that they're wanting to avoid something in their lives.

People that deal well with anxiety, they do these 3 things

every day. Well, I would not say every day, but they strive to do—

in practice, implement tools that help them reduce the anxiety in their

lives. Because we want to have fun, we want to be creative, we want

to enjoy our lives, right? We don't want a negative future, we want a positive

future. And that's what we're going to talk about today, the what these people that

you can see in your life that do well with anxiety, what they're actually doing.

So first decision that they make is they decide to be

optimistic. And optimism is a word people don't often

understand because in my profession as a therapist for

20, 25+ years, there's this one

tool and it's— there's a lot of good evidence on it. Something called

cognitive behavioral therapy. And so if you have gone to a

therapist for depression or anxiety, there's a very good chance that that

therapist utilized cognitive behavioral therapy.

And cognitive behavioral therapy is, is a, is, was

started by Aaron Beck. And there is good evidence that it does

help with depression and anxiety. The military

utilizes it when people have PTSD. I mean, it's

a common modality of therapeutic treatment, but I've been

frustrated with it. And one of the reasons I'm frustrated with cognitive

behavioral therapy is because there is a

tendency for people to have a bad situation in their life and

then to use positive thinking to overcome that

bad situation in their life. So let's say they don't have the

career that they want and they're really negative on themselves professionally. I

haven't made enough money, I'm never going to make enough money. And so a cognitive

behavioral therapist might— and it really, there's, there's differences to how

people approach this— they might tell them to focus on things like,

when are you going to get a new job? And

what qualities do you have that you can focus on that are

really positive in your life? And what are the things that you have going

that are good in your life? So it's more of a, I'm going to replace

it with something else rather than replacing it necessarily

with action. So, and visualization actually fits in that category. Let's visualize

yourself getting a job. And doing really well in the interview

and impressing people by your resume, and visualize yourself

getting some— getting handed a job offer that's at a— that is

really a great job offer. So, but the problem with that is, yes, it

will decrease your depression when you visualize those things, but it's not going to change

your life unless you take some action. So instead, optimism

means that things can go bad in your future and

circumstances can be bad in your life, yet you have hope that you're

going to learn from those and you're going to grow. And even if you

don't get the job offer, you're still going to realize that maybe leading you— and

hopefully will be leading you in the direction of getting that job that is going

to be the great career fit for you. Optimism looks at your past and has

bad situations that have occurred, and you're telling yourself that I can

learn something and make sense of this, and it doesn't mean it's going to actually

happen in the future. Option— optimism is an intentional choice

to have hope for the future, even if it doesn't go well,

because you're realizing you can handle it. And you can train yourselves

to be optimistic. So with all the clients that I— with the clients that

I've met with over the years, and over

thousands of clients I've met with, I've done this activity where

I help them identify negative core beliefs about

themselves. And it's something that I will always continue

to do. I find that people often have 3 major

negative beliefs about themselves that harm

them, that sometimes they're aware of and oftentimes they are not aware of.

And so one of those common beliefs, and I'll just share my own,

I, I have a perfectionistic mentality. I gotta do it perfectly. And

it's more of my value comes from my performance. And how I

achieve things and the results that I get. So whether people like me

or whether I close the deal or whether I get the client or whether the

client does well or whether the speaking evaluations are

positive, I look at metrics and I have historically until

the last month looked at metrics too much because I've delegated that to

two other people. But

you know, that, that is a perfectionistic mentality. My value doesn't come— I know that

cognitively, you know, I know like in reality, like my value doesn't come from my

performance or my checking account or my, success level or whatever.

But what I have to end up doing that actually helps me become

optimistic is not to just tell myself and visualize myself not being

perfectionistic and letting go, although that can actually be helpful for

me, but it's only helpful if it's added to

situations, if it's— if I add action to it, and

if I reflect on situations in the past where I wasn't

perfect and things actually went well.

Because those situations show me that it's really worth

putting myself out there and making mistakes and getting embarrassed, because I have

situations where those things led to really good

outcomes. And that gives me optimism that I can do things in the future that

are going to lead to good outcomes as well. That's cultivating

a hopeful— a hopeful mentality about your future, because you can feed your fears, and

that's anxiety, or you can fear your— feed your hope. And so if I was

going to challenge somebody to take one small step here, is if they're

going to be able to tell themselves, what do I tell myself that harms me?

Like, you know, I'm never going to get good things in my life.

And it's a— it's not unhelpful to say, well, where does that thought actually come

from? But what is most helpful is to actually reflect on, well, what

are times where I have gotten good things in my life and

people have come into my life where they've helped me? And the

situations I'm in now where good things are coming that are opportunities in the

future that can be better than the ones— or even, you know, bigger and

brighter than the ones I've had in the past. And you start to actually feed

those thoughts and realize that I have this hopeful future

ahead that I can cultivate. And I mean, I have other

negative thoughts about myself, like I'm not good enough and I'm broken, I made too

many mistakes. But then I have evidence clearly for me, for Adam, of

situations where I have been good enough for people that do care about me. And

where even though I'm broken, I can help other people, the chances of me

helping other people actually go up quite a bit as I

utilize my challenging life situations to

help them. And I have sit— sat with just

countless clients who have had situations where they're very depressed about what has happened

in, in their life, and then now they can say, I'm grateful for it, because

they're using it to help other people. I mean, it becomes their greatest

asset. Our past and our brokenness and our challenges become

our greatest asset. So I look at specific examples, specific

people that would be evidence that I am good enough, that I

do have what it takes, that I have performed in the past, that I have

had an impact in the past, and that energizes me to face the

day with courage. And another core belief I have is that

avoiding hard conversations is actually the best path

to take. It gets worse when I address things. It gets worse when I face

things. But yet, if I focus on situations in my life, there's

evidence that when I've actually faced things in my life, it's gone really well. And

it's led to breakthroughs in clients' lives and breakthroughs in my life. So why

do I not want to have these hard conversations? So what I'm doing here is

I'm putting myself in a hopeful mental— a hopeful space

where I'm almost at times, and I say almost, but I mean,

almost, and sometimes I am at times excited to

go and face those things in my life. So,

you know, I can look back at, at my divorce, which

was devastating for me, and I can look back at relationships

in my life that, you know, friendships and

even business relationships that I feel

like were ended and were devastating at the time.

And I can look back and say now, like, with an optimistic mentality,

wow, you know, I didn't wish that would have happened, but The lessons that I

learned have been so powerful that I wouldn't be the person that I am

today had I not gone through that situation. Like, and that's

very encouraging. It's still painful at times, but it's much

less painful than it was. And it gives me

an incredible amount of hope. It gives me the kind of hope that

will propel me away from safety because I hate to tell you, but

if you're listening to this episode, you do have— in

parts of your life, a— an orientation towards safety. You

do have that impacting your life every day. I just don't want you to hold

it back. So if you want to practice this, well, do this activity. If

you can, just think about one thing that you believe about yourself

that harms you, and think about outliers to that

situation, evidence that's contrary to that actually happening.

And put some specific examples down that you can reflect

on. And that will start to make a shift for you. So the

second decision that people make who help— who deal with anxiety really

well is they find a way to see that

they have multiple options in the situation that

they're facing, in their, in their life, in the challenges that they

have, in the areas where they feel like they want to grow but aren't growing

and are stuck. They have multiple options. So One example

is expanding your time horizon. So if I told you, hey,

tell me right now what your biggest goals are in your

life, and I don't give you a specific time horizon, I just say, well, what

do you really want to achieve at a high level right now? And you list

some things off. Maybe it's revenue growth, maybe it's certain level of clients, maybe

it's relationships, maybe it's some kind of health goal, maybe it's some kind of a

social goal. And then you give me— and you share those results, and then I

tell you, well, Hey, how long will it take you to get there? And you

throw out some kind of number, you know, say 5 years. And, and

then what I do is I say, well, what if I gave you 25 years

to achieve that? And what would they say? I mean, most people would say,

well, yeah, I can do that. Like, they would— their eyes would get bright, they

would start to have a different hopeful orientation because now they have more time. What

they did is they expanded their time horizon to achieve their goals,

and what that did is actually decrease their anxiety. It freed them up because now

they can be creative. They don't have this, this time pressure that they

were putting on themselves, and it actually helps them become

more efficient and enjoy their work even more because they have

more time. So it's like if you were a wedding photographer

and you were all getting ready for this wedding you're going to record and film

on Saturday, but then they called you and said, you know

what, um, we postponed the wedding for a week

because my grandfather got sick, and you know, it's a small wedding, there's only 20

people there, it's in town, they all live in town, everybody has said that they

can come next weekend. You, as the person getting ready for that wedding,

might feel a sense of relief because now you have more time.

Maybe you were crash-preparing to get ready to film that wedding. That's

what I'm talking about here. So you can do that in your own life. You

can expand your time horizon. If you're anxious about something, well, maybe

you're anxious because you procrastinated, but you can still expand your

horizon, meaning that if, if

you take some time to prepare now, you

have multiple— potentially you have

multiple outcomes. I mean, maybe you aren't as prepared, but expanding

your horizon gives yourself options to learn from the mistakes that you

make, options to learn from the people that you're going to meet. Even saying to

yourself, it doesn't have to be perfect. I know how to do this, and I

can do my best based on the conditions. And maybe next time That's one of

your options is to learn so you're prepared more in advance. You know, I've

read this great book recently. It's called Primal

Intelligence, and we'll go ahead and link to that in the show notes as well.

And it's been very impactful. One of the things that he notes is that

fear, and this is articulated in a way that I really believe. So fear is

your, is your brain telling yourself to have a better

plan, to create a better plan. And when you are anxious or afraid,

ask yourself, Is this connected to my past, or is this connected to

my future? If it's connected to your future, there's a very good

chance it's cur— it's connected to not having a very good plan, and you need

to put more energy into your plan.

So if you want to start working on something

like expanding your time horizon, well, what I'd encourage you to do

is, is determine other alternatives to your path.

Forward. And it's going to probably take you going to somebody, and I would encourage

you to go to somebody that you trust. And if there's

something causing you stress, like a parenting issue, and you don't

know how to actually handle this— and you probably actually do this, and you're actually

doing your own— yeah, I can almost guarantee you've

applied this to situations in your life. But you are stressed about

parenting, and you go to one of your friends who's a good trusted role model

for you. Maybe they're a parent, maybe they're not. And you share your plan, and

then you ask them for feedback. And in

that feedback, they're going to give you alternative plans that you

can face. So they could say, well, you could do this, you could do that,

you could do this, you know, and you'll leave that conversation when you

thought you just had Plan A, and now you have Plan

B, C, and D. And some of those plans might be what you can implement

if it doesn't go the way that you had hoped. Which

is really encouraging. And some of their plans you might not wanna

implement, implement at all, but you had a person that you trusted to give

you different alternatives, different paths you can take. Even maybe it's

just reading a good book on parenting that's been helpful to them, but they're sharing

that with you in the process. So if you found this helpful, I have this

link in the show notes to this, to this lead. It's a, it's a PDF

and it's called 5— it's an article. Called 3 Ways to Overcome Anxiety,

which explains so much of this content that you're listening to today. So you want

to look at that article, check it out. And then there's actually a link

to a PDF called 5 Days to

Overpowering Anxiety. And I give you tools that you can employ.

They're exercises that you can, you can use, it takes about 15

minutes to do each exercise, and each one's going to help you deal with anxiety,

really for the rest of your life. And so this is some content that I

put this thing together probably 5 years ago, and I'm— I've redone it and freshened

it up some. So you want to check that out and send it to people,

super helpful. There's no cost to that. I mean, just go through this thing, check

it out, hit the link, 5 Days to Overpowering Anxiety. So the

third decision I've already hinted at here,

and that is to— that people that cope with anxiety well,

they do implement a plan in their life. So they

have a health plan, they have a diet plan, they have a business plan, not

a complicated plan. This is the problem, is when people think of having a plan,

they make it so complicated and they make it perfectionistic, like

they have to go step by step to implement this plan. Well, a plan is

driven by a vision. A vision is idealistic, but the vision is not your plan,

and the plan is not idealistic either. The plan is something that is flexible and

you can adjust based on good new

information, but a plan is very helpful. So once— when I have a plan,

then I have at least something that I can focus on that takes my attention

away from from all these distractions that I can use as

excuses, because I can say, I can justify them and say, that's a good

thing. And it's related possibly to where I want to go, but it's not going

to be the best next step towards where I want to go. So yesterday, for

example, we were talking about, we had two main topics with my parents. I

mean, one was to talk about what they want if there was an emergency, like,

where would you want to live? And I was joking, like, I asked my parents,

I said, well, if mom died, dad, what would you want to do? And I,

I listed some things out from our last conversation and said, He wants to

be independent and live in a social environment. Then I added to that list, I

said, and be around a bunch of hot women. And my dad laughed. And then

my mom chimed in and said, exactly, you know, I guarantee he's going to

get married right after I die. She's always— she said that for like the last

20 years. It's so funny. Um, he's 87, you know, but he's a

very active 87-year-old. But you know what they wanted? My mom

especially wanted to resist even answering that, the question, but they

did.. And we got it in writing in some minutes and I sent it out

to them. And then they, my mom thanked me for it today. Said that was

really helpful, but it was creation of a plan. At least they have some way,

some next step if some emergency actually

occurred. But you do, you do something, you get something written down. You

know, recently my business coach, Dan, with Circle Consulting, he's

been very helpful for me. He encouraged me to create a 10-year plan for

the business, which I have, but I need to put, and I want, I

want Again, want— actually, want is an anxiety-decreasing word. Need

is an anxiety-increasing word.

Want implies you have options, and need implies

that you have pressure. You have like one— I need to do that. I need

to make this amount of money. I need it. But then

again, need, it— if it creates anxiety, it actually doesn't make you more money. It

doesn't make you a better business leader or more creative. Want does. Want

is a desire. I want this. That's exciting. I

want to go on that date. You know, I want to spend that time with

my wife. I wanna spend that time with my kids. I want to launch

that new product. I wanna start a business. I don't need to, you know, I

don't need to get the sale. I wanna get the sale cuz I can help

them. That's very different. So we commit to a plan and it could be

a plan for your day. It could be a plan for your weekend. It could

be a plan for your evening, but you're committing to something.

And you know, this weekend I, I ran it this last

weekend. I ran a 10K trail race in

Oklahoma, and my running partner was a very, very good runner. He's

one of my best friends. His name's Dave, and he was a very good runner

in college. And he's, he's a good athlete. He's in very good shape right now.

He's probably 56, 57. No,

maybe 55. Um, he listens to almost every episode, I think so, or a lot

of them. So he's going to correct me on this if he— I don't get

it right. But but just having him as my running partner is part of my

plan. It decreases my anxiety because he knows more about running than me because he

was a distance runner in college at Kansas State, and he's run a lot of

different races, and he's very into running, and he's very into nutrition and all the

things that go into running. So I can ask him questions. I can just use

him as my pacer because I know that if I run

with Dave, I'm probably going to be at a good pace. If I don't and

I get ahead of Dave, he's pacing based on the knowledge that

he has of racing. And this one was a race that had a lot

of elevation to it, and it actually had a lot of downhill, and it's on

a trail, it's on rock. And so that's part of my plan, just knowing I'm

going to run with Dave. Very cool. So

you can create a plan, and that's one of the things that we do at

Decide Your Legacy is we help people create a plan for their future. We ask

you the questions that you're not going to be asking yourself most likely. In fact,

most people say, well, why didn't I ever want to Why didn't I create this

on my own? Well, you're not gonna ask these questions. They're, they're questions that

get you thinking in a, in a new unique way.

They're mindset perspective shifting type questions, but it's creating a plan that

you can get excited about and look at and focus on every day. So it's

one of the things I do every day. I focus on my legacy plan

and we help clients, all of our clients, you know, it's part of the process

is they're creating a plan for their future and it's a plan

that we co-create. I mean, they create, but I give them and we

give them some feedback by asking questions. I mean, the feedback is not direct

feedback. It's asking them questions so they can clarify it more and more. And it

can become more and more exciting because they see that it's filled with hope. And

it's filled with this bright future that they didn't even know was possible.

Super exciting, but it is a plan, just like your financial planner, they're giving you

a plan that's going to decrease your anxiety. Just like your health coach, they're giving

you a plan that's going to decrease your anxiety, just like your travel agent. When

you go on a trip, they're not overbooking your schedule. They're

listening to you. They're figuring out what would

be most enjoyable for you, what you want to achieve on your trip, what kind

of activities you want to engage in. And then they're giving you a plan that's

realistic with your feedback based on what they know about

that area of the country. So my sister's a travel agent, escape artist travel. So

she does that. She's done that for me. And it's been so helpful because I

would overbook my agenda. Instead, she gives me one kind of cool thing in

the morning, one kind of cool thing in the evening, and we can fill

in the rest. But those things are planned. And it depends on where we are.

We're in Rome, we do as the Romans do, you know, we go to

certain places in Rome that are cool. We— we've been in France, we've done certain

things that are cool to do in Paris. And I've done a lot of these

trips with my daughter Emerson. So she can attest to the fact that having a

plan decreases anxiety. And part of that plan— and not having a plan at times

gives me the freedom to sleep in, or gives me the freedom to just

walk around. But it gives me the margin I want to— and I need to

enjoy my life. So you create a plan for your future. So

in summary, if you want to decrease your anxiety in your life, and there's a

huge benefit to doing so, we'll do these 3 things, because this is what the

non-anxious people do. They

cultivate optimism. They expand their options. They look at

numerous options. They commit to some kind of a plan. A sloppy plan is better

than no plan. Get feedback on it, commit to it, and

follow through. And that's what you do. So I wanted to

share and wrap up with this situation with my parents. We had

this anxiety-producing situation. I knew it was— it produced anxiety in me. It was a

brave thing for us to do. All of me and my siblings, we sat down.

Brandon and Erica did a great job.

And my— the first time we had a meeting like this, which was back in

December, my mom did not want to engage. In fact, she wanted to leave. She

didn't want to be there. And now she's actually

saying it's beneficial. Interesting. And this happens a lot when I

work with business leadership teams in a— in business ownership teams. When we do that

at Decide Your Legacy, is at first there's a lot of anxiety

because we're talking about core issues, and sometimes

people say negative things and they don't want to do it, and I can just

see them squirm. And I used to get really anxious about that, but I don't

get nearly as anxious because I know what how important

it is for us to talk about this stuff, and then how impactful it is

when we finish this coaching session. And so

at the meeting I had, which I didn't call it a coaching session with my

parents, but at the very end I have people

express at some level how useful it was to have this meeting. And everybody expressed

that it was highly useful in my family. My mom, dad, in their own way—

I didn't have them rate it. I often have business teams rate it on a

scale of 1 to 10. 10 is very is like extremely useful, one

is not very useful at all.

And oftentimes when I ask them afterwards to express, well, what was

most useful— because they give it a 9, let's say— well, what was most useful

about it that led to you giving it a 9? And it's those

most anxiety— generally anxiety-provoking conversations initially

that we had that got to a core issue is why, and what they reference

as being the most useful thing. So we did that yesterday with

my parents. We had— and we applied all three

of these tools. We cultivated optimism. What's exciting about

your future? What's exciting about the opportunities that you have, even

if these bad situations actually occurred? Okay, we

expanded the time horizon with them. We expanded

the options available. We looked at different living options if something bad

happened, different business options, what they could do with their business if something bad happened.

That is a— I put that in quotes. So if something unfortunate or

unexpected happened, and then we created some kind of a plan. And the situation yesterday

was we're going to meet again in 6 weeks. And I gave them the notes

from the actual meeting. That was a plan. And they had action items they

were committing to based on that conversation. That was

a plan. So what insight have you gained today? And what actions are you going

to commit to taking? What are you going to apply?

There's probably One thing that stuck out to you today, was it your own anxiety?

Was it your own limiting beliefs? Was your own mindset? Was it your avoidance? Was

it the ambiguity in your life? Are you not looking at the options

that you have to succeed in your business, to succeed in

your relationships personally? Do something and commit and teach it to somebody else. Teach

it to your 6-year-old. And I believe, and I hope, and I

know actually that you can communicate this kind of stuff in a way that's

gonna make it stick. For them. So apply something you learned

today, because 80% of transformational change is action. Only 20%

is insight. You gained insight today. Now it's time

for action. To decide means that you're eliminating other options.

You're committing. And your legacy is the impact that your life— that you want

your life to have on other people. You decide your legacy. There's no

positive change until you decide your legacy. And you must

decide— and not must, but I want you to decide today

to make a decision because your legacy does depend on— I'm going to close

the way I always do today. So live the

life today that you want to be remembered for 10 years

after you're gone. You decide your legacy, nobody else.

I appreciate you greatly, and I'll see you next time. [MUSIC]