THE LONG READ: How to Stop Fear and Anxiety from Controlling Your Life
And You Can Start Today, for Free!
Have you ever felt paralysed by fear or overwhelmed by anxiety, only to realise later that it stopped you from enjoying the moment or pursuing something meaningful? You’re not alone. Fear and resistance often creep in when we care deeply about the outcome of something, whether it’s a career move, a creative project, or even a relationship. But what if the key to breaking free from these feelings was simpler than you thought? What if, by making one small mindset shift, you could not only overcome those anxieties but also stay grounded in the present moment—the only place where real change happens?
If you’ve read many of my articles, you’ll know a lot of things about me already. But just in case you’re new around these parts, here are a couple of the most relevant things it’d be useful to know:
I’ve always been a very fear-based, anxious kind of a person. Due in large part to my upbringing, and I know that I’m not alone in that. It’s been a major focus of my life to find ways to work around those tendencies, because I know full-well how limiting they can be.
I’ve spent much of my working life as a software engineer/in the information technology field. This means I’m the kind of person who’s always looking for a system which’ll help to solve a problem, whether it’s how a market gardener predicts his yearly crop yield (that’s a story from another time, right from the start of my programming career in 1997) or how we can rid ourselves permanently of our bad habits (my 2019 book The Bad Habit Kicker).
I like to call myself a behavioural engineer, these days. Half a lifetime (25 years) spent learning about self-help, psychology, brain-based learning (as a secondary school teacher in the 2000s) and latterly neuroscience as more and more has become known about how our wonderful, sometimes effed up, and often confusing brains actually work, has meant that I’ve spent a lot of time analysing myself, experimenting with ways of doing things, and Reboot & Rise was born out of my desire to share the fruits of those labours with other people, in the hopes that if they work for me, then they’ll work for some others. Or, if they don’t, then I hope the stories I share will make folks to feel more normal, and less alone.
This latest foray into the world of self-help hacks is another way I’ve found that’s helped to keep peeling back the many, many, onion-like layers of my fear and anxiety.
I talk about it a lot, but I know not all of my issues come down to my upbringing. Bless her, my mum was doing her best, but she was sowing those seeds on the already incredibly fertile ground of hundreds of thousands of years of selective breeding, after all. Generation after generation, the people who’ve been the most afraid, the most anxious, cautious and risk averse, have tended to be the ones who’ve lived long enough to actually pass their nervy genes on to the next generation.
Life in the 21st century has not helped one bit. Now, instead of fearing judgement and censure from our small community (maximum size of a village), we face noisy and braying judgement from potentially thousands of people on the internet. People who we’ll never meet, will never know, and who’re all just lashing out against their own fears.
Wait, Lou, I hear you say. Cyberbullies and trolls online are afraid? They don’t seem very afraid when they’re bashing away on their keyboard, pouring vitriol on our heads, telling us all the ways we’re doing things wrong and how utterly horrible we are as human beings.
They are. Sometimes they’re afraid of their own inadequacies. They see you doing things they don’t dare to do and they bristle because you’re shining a light on the things they can’t or won’t do themselves. Or you’re voicing an opinion which is contrary to their beliefs, and they feel their worldview is threatened. Egos don’t like that kind of thing, not one bit.
So, we shouldn’t blame ourselves for feeling this way. Not for a moment. We could all do a lot worse than just accepting that and moving on.
Another important facet of my decades-long learning journey has been learning about Buddhism. I was a baptist when I was a kid (the story of my deciding at 9 years old to join the local church, when not a single member of my family was (overtly at the time, we had some closet Jehovah’s Witnesses no one knew about) religious is yet another story for another time) but I found it hard to feel as devout as my fellow parishioners, so stopped going after a year or two. But I was always interested in the spiritual side of life.
Most Buddhists follow something called the Noble Eightfold Path. This consists of:
Right View
Right Resolve
Right Speech
Right Action
Right Livelihood
Right Effort
Right Mindfulness
Right Concentration
Most of the above have been things I’ve gradually worked to incorporate into my life.
Right livelihood is something I’m currently working on as I establish a life/career coaching business and as I continue to grow the audience on this platform and share my ideas with as many people as I can.
Anyway, I really gelled with the ideas of the Buddhist way of life, and for a long time I’ve been telling myself that I live very mindfully.
I meditate every day (part of my Miracle Morning routine) and I spend time every day sitting and thinking and listening to my thoughts and emotions. I also journal a heck of a lot. I thought I had that part of Buddhist practices very firmly in the bag.
You probably won’t be shocked when I say this:
Folks, I was absolutely lying to myself. Of course I was, but of course I didn’t know it.
We’re often the last people to know when we’re telling ourselves fibs, after all…
I have no idea where this little motto came from, but it sprang fully formed into my mind about a week ago:
If you feel the fear, you are NOT here
🤯
Whaaaa?
I had a sudden burst of clarity, out of the blue, which was: my fears/anxieties are 100% related to my worrying about the past or the future. And if I’m thinking about the past or the future, then I’m absolutely not right here, right now, in the present moment, which after all is all we really have, in this life. It made me cringe to think about how much of my life—how many opportunities—I’d missed, because my mind was literally somewhere else.
So, where does a lot of fear and resistance come from? Often it’s from wanting to control the outcomes of the things we do. Because we desperately want it to go well, for people to love it, to tell us we’re great, to buy our book or product, to admire our artwork, to give us money.
Whatever it might be.
Resistance rears its ugly head when we push ourselves out of our comfort zone. And as the wonderful author of The Legend of Bagger Vance, (and several books on resistance/writing) Steven Pressfield, said in last week’s Writing Wednesdays column/newsletter:
“The degree of Resistance we feel will be EQUAL AND OPPOSITE to the power and importance of our dream.
Little Dream = Little Resistance.
Big Dream = Big Resistance.”
So, once we start to care about the outcome, we feel fear and resistance, because we’re trying to control what’ll happen.
Let me tell you this hard to accept truth.
There is VERY LITTLE in this world that we can actually control…
We can’t change the past (although we can certainly get stuck in it, if we’re not careful) and beyond doing our research/groundwork/putting in the work, we cannot control the future results that come from our actions.
And while we can choose what we’re going to do today, select carefully from the thousands and thousands of potential options, do our due diligence and our research to see what’s most likely to bring us the results we desire, we absolutely cannot predict whether that’s what’s going to be what’ll happen.
You might follow all of the books and videos you can get your hands on, to try to ensure that your business venture will be a success. But you can’t guarantee it. There might be a sudden economic downturn, or your chosen social media platform might change its algorithm and you wind up fading into obscurity and unable to make sales or talk to people who might gel with your messaging.
We all have to just do what feels like the right thing to do at the time and let go of our desire to cling to what’ll happen.
The results of our actions are just data, information which we can analyse and decide whether they’re something we can/should repeat in the future. We can hopefully work out what went wrong, if something did, or use that as a springboard for further success if it did actually go our way.
Let’s face it, if you just keep doing what you think is the right thing, then one way or another, you’ll not go far wrong, and you’ll certainly learn a lot.
This approach has proved its value several times for me already in the last week.
I’ve already written about how much worrying is a waste of time, and also how positivity is the logical choice, but a couple of times just recently I’ve had something land on my plate which has triggered feelings of fear and anxiety, something challenging that’s forced me to step out of my comfort zone, which is when those feelings tend to raise their ugly twin hydra-like heads for me.
By focusing on this motto, I’ve been able to steady myself and continue to focus on doing positive, constructive things in the here and now, rather than sliding into a quagmire of anxiety and the paralysis which often comes with that, for me.
Which has got to be a more positive thing, both for my mental health and in terms of moving me towards my goals/ambitions, hasn’t it?
Hopefully this is enough to convince you that this approach is helpful and certainly worth a try.
Finally, I want to discuss the practical ways I’ve brought this motto into my daily life. 🤓
Being watchful for feelings of fear & anxiety coming up
Once I’d realised the issues that this was causing, I started to become even more aware when I felt the familiar twinges of fear and anxiety.
It’s worth spending some time thinking about how those feelings manifest in you.
They often come hand-in-hand with some kind of physical sensation.
For me, it’s a swirling feeling in the pit of my stomach. For some it might come up as a feeling of constriction in their throats. You might break out into a cold sweat, or feel ill.
When you start to feel these emotions, there’s a good chance you’ll also start to itch to carry out some behaviour which you’ve tended to use in the past which has allowed you to distract yourself from those feelings.
For me, in the past, that was binge eating or drinking alcohol. More recently it’s been playing iOS games or having the TV on from morning to nighttime.
So this is when I’ve chosen to refocus my mind on the motto/mantra above, which has helped me to bring my focus very firmly back into the present moment.
Meditation
I know. I joke sometimes to people I know in real life that they must think that my answer to everything is meditation…
That’s not quite true, but it does tend to help when it comes to dealing with a lot of stuff, including difficult emotions.
By putting a regular meditation practice in place, it allows us to open up a space between an emotion and our reaction. Being able to observe our thoughts, rather than reacting to them immediately. Buddhists call this The Inner Witness.
And no, the goal isn’t to have no thoughts. Our minds are built to generate thoughts and to help us to make sense of the world.
And this can even be helpful (even if it’s not easy) for folks with neurodiversity. I was chatting to a coaching client last week who has an AuDHD diagnosis, and they told me that regularly meditating helped them to be less distracted, which helped with their task paralysis, so it really can help everyone.
It doesn’t have to be complicated, just sitting and counting your breath, counting each one and trying to get up to a count of 10, restarting (without berating or judging yourself) if a thought crops up and derails you can be a wonderful way to start. Do that for 5-10 minutes a day, and you should start to see that gap increase, giving you more of an opportunity to head fear/anxiety off at the pass and focus on this motto.
For more information, have a look here.
Journalling
I’m a big fan of writing things down. This doesn’t have to be a big deal, you don’t need an expensive fountain pen and the most luxurious paper or a beautiful notebook. The back of an envelope and an old biro will do the trick, whatever works for you/your budget.
The reason why this is so powerful is because there’s a different part of your mind which gets activated/used when you think things, say them out loud (e.g. to a friend, colleague or coach) or write them down.
It’s not helpful to have all of your thoughts just swirling around and around on an endless loop in your brain. Plus, you can only think about one thing at a time (don’t believe me? Just try it. Think about the Statue of Liberty, and then think about an elephant. Are you still thinking about the Statue of Liberty, or are you just switching really quickly between thinking about that and the elephant? Spoiler alert: you’re just switching, multitasking is a myth) and it’s hard to make sense of it all when you’re just moving from thought to thought to thought, like your brain is a washing machine on a spin cycle.
When it comes to journalling to do with fear and anxiety, sit down and ask yourself the following questions:
What is it that’s on my mind/what’s bothering or scaring me?
Am I stuck in the past or the future?
If it’s the past, remember you can’t change it - but what can I learn from the experience?
If it’s the future, what can I do now to do my best (remember nothing’s ever 100% in your control) to bring about the outcome I’m looking for? What actionable steps can I take today?
How can I work to be more in the present moment, right here and now?
Once you’ve finished answering these questions, read your answers back. This should give you some clarity about what’s troubling you and you should have a plan for your next steps, or at least a better sense of perspective.
You’re also now very firmly in the present moment, analysing how you feel about it all and what you can do now, not in some imagined future time.
Doesn’t that feel better?
Hand reminders
I love this idea so much that I wrote a whole article about it. In short, get a pen or even a sharpie (the ink does wear off after a day or so, I promise!) and write down an acronym of the thing you’re trying to focus on.
For today’s motto/mantra, that’d be:
IYFTF, YANH!
This means it’s always front and centre, and every time you use your hands for something you’ll spot it - which trust me, is a heck of a lot every day.
You won’t realise how much you look at your own hands until you try this!
Phone wallpaper
We all check our phones more often during a day than you might think. While statistics vary, according to Google’s AI helper when I just checked, people look at them 58-144 times a day(!) 😳
Here’re some more surprising and potentially shocking phone addiction statistics: Time Spent Using Smartphones (2024 Statistics)
So, why not take advantage of that and change your phone wallpaper out, adding this motto/mantra, so you remind yourself of it an extra (at least) 58 times a day (on average)? Repetition helps enormously, which is why affirmations work.
Here’s a whole article I wrote about this tactic: Unlocking Motivation: A Simple Hack to Keep You Moving Forward
And here’s my current (subtly Xmas-themed) wallpaper, which you can download and use yourself. Or you can use a free account on Canva to create your own, to your own taste.
Tracking
For me, having a physical yearly wall planner or monthly calendar (you can print them for free off the internet or draw one out on a piece of paper), somewhere I see it all the time is really helpful. The fridge door, by my bed, at the top of the stairs or the back of the front door are my favourites.
As an ex-software engineer, I’m also a bit of a nerd 🤓 and I do love data!
You could use this tactic to help you to put this motto/mantra in place in a number of different ways, go with whatever speaks to you.
Mark a | on your calendar every time you catch yourself off in the past or the future and you successfully bring the motto to bear, helping you to be in the present moment and knocking your fear/anxiety on its head. See how the data tracks over a month. Do you see the numbers increase as you remember to focus more? Or are you actually needing to use it less as time goes by, as you’re naturally training your mind to be right here, right now?
Mark a | on your calendar every time you don’t use the motto and realise you’ve spent time in a quagmire of fear/anxiety. As you become more aware, and bring the motto to bear, hopefully these instances will get fewer and fewer.
Mark an X on your calendar for any day you successfully deployed this technique and DIDN’T spend any time paralysed by fear and anxiety - see how many days you can do with an unbroken run!
Write down on the calendar every day all the things you achieved because you were being more present, challenging things which take you out of your comfort zone. Look back on it after a month and celebrate all the progress you’ve made!
Accountability
Finally, it can be enormously helpful to have a buddy along for the ride when you’re seeking to change your behaviour. Hooking into the fact that we’re social animals can really help.
Ideally, they’re someone who’s looking to do the same kind of work you are. Perhaps you have a friend or a colleague who’s also trying to do hard things but keeps finding themselves paralysed by fear and resistance?
Share this article with them, and then agree a way of checking in with one another as well as how often/when that’ll happen.
Perhaps you’ll send one another a message in the morning, outlining the hard things you’re looking to achieve that day, stuff you’d often find yourself unable to do, and then you could check in with one another at the end of the day, to discuss what worked and what didn’t, to share what you’ve both achieved and to celebrate your wins!
The truth is, fear and anxiety don’t have to run the show. By focusing on the present and embracing simple tools like meditation, journaling, and mindful reminders, you can reclaim your peace of mind and make steady progress toward your goals. If this article resonated with you, I’d love for you to join our community of like-minded thinkers and doers on Reboot & Rise. Subscribe now for more practical strategies and mindset shifts that empower you to live fully and fearlessly. Let’s rise together!
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