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Phase 1
Stress Makes You Stupid – And How You Need To Be Smarter Than That.
I am a true expert on the topic, and the daughter of another expert.
Only, my mother never really noticed how BADLY her stress and fear levels influenced her, what TERRIBLE business and life decisions she made, and how her constant stress and fear of money and survival issues COMPLETELY RUINED HER LIFE.
It very nearly ruined mine, into the bargain.
Here’s just a single grandiose example of hundreds. She was offered a field to buy as a courtesy by a farmer for just $50,000. She could have easily raised a mortgage but was too afraid to take the opportunity. Just one year later, a new road was built and that same field sold for 1 ¾ MILLION Dollars.
Did she cry?
You bet she did.
Did she ever forgive herself for that decision?
Of course she didn’t.
I still haven’t!
But it never changed anything. All her bad experiences taught her no lesson because when you are as stressed as she was, you just can’t think straight.
Here’s why. Fear causes adrenaline to be released into our bodies and systems. That in turn causes tunnel vision – you can’t see the bigger picture anymore. That in turn makes you to make decisions which aren’t based on the full facts, but only on a small part – just what’s right in front of your nose.
No matter how clever you are normally, or how high your IQ is, when you are stressed, you get more and more stupid.
Intelligent people who can’t seem to make good decisions are virtually guaranteed to suffer from that completely systemic tunnel vision problem. And of course, it gets worse.
The more bad decisions you make, the more fire fighting you have to do as a direct result to deal with the problems that your last lot of bad decisions have caused. You have to work harder and harder, and even whilst you are trying to solve the problems that came directly from your last lot of bad decisions, whatever solutions you come up with are bound to be flawed, wrong, nonsensical AGAIN – and will cause even FURTHER problems, and even further stress.
Until you die of a heart attack.
My mother was a highly intelligent woman but she was very stressed as a matter of fact, and always fearful about not having enough money or what the future might hold. As soon as any bill came in, she would literally freak out and start wailing, and then go and do some mad random thing from that STATE to better the situation.
Frankly, it was a hopeless struggle and it was painful to have to live that, experience that for a role model.
It taught me the value of such things however and so the first thing we must do in order to put ourselves in a place where we can much more rationally assess what we want to do, and what we NEED TO DO in order to get what we want, is to cure ourselves of fear and stress over money.
Here’s the action plan.
>> The Stress Action Plan
For one day, simply observe just when you are stressing so much that you are going into the red on the stress meter. When does that happen? When you look at bills, your credit cards, your credit card statements? When you go shopping or think about going shopping? When you think about your tax affairs, your overdraft?
Make a mental note when it happens that you get fear/stress responses of backing away from something, grimacing, feeling worried, stomach sinking, flipping or churning, breath becoming shorter.
Also look for THOUGHTS that cause what is known as “procrastination”.
- Procrastination is an adrenaline spike caused not by a real lion in your room but instead, by a thought – something that isn’t actually REAL.
So, someone might KNOW that they need to phone the bank because their overdraft has been exceeded, but when they THINK ABOUT THAT, they experience an instant fear spike or adrenaline spike – and that’s like putting your hands on a hot oven, you can’t help but must flinch back and get AWAY from that which caused the fear and stress.
That’s a completely natural response and even the CORRECT response to REDUCE ANXIETY and practically, to reduce the amount of adrenaline that’s coursing round your body, creating havoc and precipitating ill health.
Instead of phoning the bank manager, our person who is instantly in the red on the stress meter at even thinking about it (and never mind really actually going towards the phone, finding the number, picking up the phone, dialling, waiting for the ringing ...!) will now do something else – ANYTHING ELSE, anything BUT that scary thing.
- For an empire builder, this kind of thing is a CRIPPLING DISADVANTAGE.
We don’t have a bunch of servants who run rings round us and who can take “unpleasant or frightening” tasks off of our hands. We don’t have the staff yet or the private assistants to whom we can relegate such things.
- We need to be able to do FRIGHTENING THINGS easily and as and when they simply NEED TO BE DONE.
Just for a moment, take a deep breath and think about what your progress towards your goals would be like if you didn’t have these stress responses anymore and you could do all the things you are stressed about or which you “procrastinate” over instantly, immediately, and without it even causing your feathers to become ruffled in the slightest.
Just for a moment, allow yourself to think about a list of things which, if you were no longer afraid or unsure of doing them, would make all the difference to your plans.
What is it in your case?
Financial advisors, banks, clerics and how to deal with those?
Cold calling users, doing house to house, cold calling potential prospects?
Is there something you might need to learn but the thought just turns your stomach and without it, you’re stuck?
Maths, accounting? Marketing? Networking?
What frightens YOU about business and building your own empire the most, right now?
Let’s make a list and when we have that, we can move on to Step 2, which is to DEAL with those fears and make them disappear.
My List:
These things frighten me:
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2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
I don’t think I’m frightened of these but I don’t seem to “get around to doing them” somehow:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
These things frighten me so much that I will NEVER be able to do them:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Eradicating Stress Responses
Luckily for all of us, we have a new set of techniques which can IMMEDIATELY and NOTICEABLY reduce your fear responses in the moment, in the field, and as soon as you have become aware of them.
These are the new psycho-energetic self help remedies, based on ancient martial arts principles, and they work a treat.
How nicely this works must be personally experienced.
So now, find yourself something that is a symbol of stress for you, something you only need to look at and you just want to run away, hide from it, or would give your right arm to never have to deal with this, ever again.
It could be a credit card statement or a bank statement, a project you’ve been working on that’s got stuck and is now going nowhere or perhaps a symbol of a past failure – an ashtray from a company you’ve run into the ground with bad decisions or a photograph of a business you used to own but it all went horribly wrong.
It matters not, just so we have something you can look at and which will cause you to get very stressed for this first exercise in taking charge of our stress and fear responses.
>> Exercise – Calm Down BEFORE You Make A Decision!
Now, look at the object you have chosen and which stresses you out. Allow yourself to look at it and get the usual thoughts come up of how awful it all is, what it means, yada yada.
Now, put both your hands in the centre of your chest, sit or stand up straight and take a deep breath. By all means keep your eyes on the stress trigger, but become aware now of where you have tense, uncomfortable, even painful feelings in your body.
- Those places are where your own “stress accumulation” is happening (and where you will get sick in old age if it keeps going on like this!).
Now keep your hands on your chest (centre point of your entire energy system, the “heart of energy”) and say out aloud, “Relax. Soften and flow,” three times slowly, and in between each one, breathe in and breathe out.
Even on a first attempt, you will feel a NOTICEABLE DECREASE in tension and stress, immediately and right there and then – and EVEN ALTHOUGH the stress trigger is still right there, in front of you.
If you want to, you can repeat this basic stress reduction exercise a few more times and until you are beginning to feel really good, really relaxed and quite happy.
- Important Note: The more you do this, the more PROFOUND the effects of relaxation and fear reduction becomes. You can really begin to feel your field of vision becoming wider and your thoughts becoming calmer, and clearer.
- Most importantly, you can feel YOUR BODY being less painful. uncomfortable and tense. That is the key to this system and your feedback device to tell you how good you are doing.
Now, go to the list you’ve made of things that frighten you and simply go down one line at a time to practise that basic relaxation technique and begin to “soften up” your personal blockages.
Do it quite quickly, one after the other, and repeat as often as you need to feel really relaxed and LOGICAL about these things.
Also look out for how this exercise is CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK and feel in general.
Practice with your own list as many times as you want, and until your mind, your thoughts and your feelings FLOW CLEANLY and bright.
Using Centering Every Day
With practice, this becomes not just better but also faster, and after just a couple of days doing this exercise ROUTINELY AND AS SOON AS YOU NOTICE ANY signs of stress whatsoever, you will notice that often, you don’t have to put your hands on your chest anymore – just thinking about it will do the trick and a wave of general relaxation washes through your system.
The vocal command of “Soften and flow!” can also then be used by itself to calm you down before you do anything that is important and needs you to think big, think clearly and think SMART.
USE this profound, ancient and extremely powerful mind/body centring technique EVERY time for one whole week before:
- Making any decisions
- Opening any mail or email
- Making any financial investments
- Making any decisions about goals or plans
Also USE this technique:
- Before you go to bed at night
- To stop yourself from going into endless mind loops
- When you are angry or depressed (this is also stress!)
- When you are thinking about past disappointments and failures
- When you are thinking about future fears and worries.
I can’t stress enough just how important GENERAL STRESS REDUCTION is for being able to have enough energy, will and focus to make our lives work.
EVERY little straw you take of our stress camel’s back helps to make it a little bit easier all around and for everything you do – not just money and business, at that.
If you get routinely very stressed about anything else, your health, your relationships, the state of the world or whatever, USE the basic centring technique to REDUCE YOUR ANXIETY AND STRESS right there and then.
The longer adrenaline is allowed to course through our systems, the more it builds up and the worse our feelings, thoughts, actions and decisions become.
The sooner you get rid of it, the healthier you are in every way, and the more chance you have for healthy decisions and practical, working strategies all around.
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