Feeling anxious is not a problem, letting it ruin your life is
It feels like a churning in my stomach,
a quickening of my heart,
a slight sweat on my brow,
and a prickling sensation – raising an army of hairs on my arms.
I didn't know I was anxious.
I never realised my eyes darted around seeking safety in the form of validation from everyone around me.
I thought this was a normal way of being.
I thought truthfully, I'd hidden this part of me really well.
I thought this was all safely hidden in my head, away from prying eyes that could judge me.
I thought I had perfected my exterior shell, to guard the feeble feelings I felt inside.
And yet, my anxious nature was revealed, as I sat in the middle of a group, all eyes trained on me because I had volunteered to have my identity observed and quickly regretted this decision.
In 2018, I attended a personal development workshop in South Africa, aptly named 'Soul Safari'.
We were there to be amongst the animals in the wilds of nature but more importantly, we were there to discover the truth of our being.
The workshop facilitator, William Whitecloud, had prefaced the trip with the words:
"In Africa, no one cares about your problems"
Here, they were so attuned to nature that our western city-born problems don't mean much to them.
And I believe it's because of our lack of connection to nature that our city-born anxieties stand out in Africa – like a cheetah wandering the streets of London or a solo red balloon against a clear blue sky.
Sat in the group workshop this new awareness of my all-pervasive anxiety felt like a fish learning all this time it has been wet.
At first, there was a sense of denial, as years of my carefully crafted cool and calm facade crumbled.
I was not actually cool and calm.
I was highly alert, anxious, and afraid.
I awoke to the fact that I had been pouring years of my life and energy into masking anxiety.
Hiding it from the world and myself.
Believing that the most important thing in life was to be seen as confident and therefore all opposing emotions were forbidden.
And... so what – what's wrong with that?
After all, I was raised in Britain, in the land of 'grow a pair', stiff upper lips, and amongst generations of men who believed being cool like James Bond was the pinnacle of 'manning up'.
Looking confident was surely a win?
The problem was wasting energy and time
I wasted energy on keeping up appearances instead of embracing myself, my talents, and my skills.
I constantly sought approval for my ideas but never had the faith to execute them.
I talked big and did little.
I looked the part but my substance was missing like an avocado you slice open to find nothing edible within.
What's worse, is I wasn't aware of any of this.
I was happily in my la-la head, believing by looking good I was doing good and would someday, one day, obtain my goals – when my time came, in the magical moment, where all fell into place and I looked confident, acted confident, and thus was successful.
But the confidence never came.
Instead, I avoided taking on responsibility, for fear of being unable to produce the goods.
Inside my head, I felt inferior, and that failure for me was how life goes.
As time ticked on I felt more stuck.
My vision and dreams vs. reality were growing farther apart, and I had no clue how to get myself out of this hole.
Anyone who's faced the sheer panic of having an addiction and not knowing how to get out of it will relate to the feelings of powerlessness that enveloped me.
Anxiety was ruining my life
When my mother died, I was 28, at the time I had begun tentatively putting out an event and charging a nominal price for the tickets.
I didn't believe I had something I could charge good money for – and yet people loved the events.
I was teaching men the power of authentic emotional expression as the secret to sparking attraction in dating and the key to being confident.
At the time, I still felt doubtful & shook but I had progressed enough in my journey that I could help others.
However, my shook-ness was strong enough that I believed I was only worthy of being the event's host - but not a speaker!
Instead, I invited people I perceived as having 'real' knowledge and authority to speak because I thought I didn't - but I digress.
As I was saying, the events were loved, by men and women too. They would thank me at each event and ask when the next one would be. Some even asked if I would speak next time.
But… when my mother passed – I let it all go.
My uncle, a short, stocky man with strong opinions commanded, "Stop whatever you're doing and focus on watering the tree your mother grew".
The tree he referred to was the family care home business, my mother & father started in 1995.
I had worked in the care home part-time since I was 16 and despite all I had gained and experienced, and everyone telling me what a noble job I was doing, I'd always wanted to get out and do my own thing – something exciting!
And... I had started my own exciting thing.
My events were novel and had potential.
I had also begun investing in education around marketing to improve ticket sales - I was committed to growth.
But that moment my uncle spoke, I believed he knew best and had authority over me – I told myself whatever I was doing was unimportant.
I closed down the events, deleted the mailing list, and let the website fall into the digital abyss.
I took on a senior role in the care home and naively thought I would quickly automate things and within a year I'd get back to my own jolly life, doing my own jolly things.
And, then four years flew by and I found myself stuck in the small care home office, drowning in endless mounds of paperwork, staff rotas, and care policies.
Panicking, I was struck by the old cliched:
"How did my life turn out like this?"
Back then all I knew was I felt I had no control over what was happening to me.
No matter what I did, life appeared to turn against me.
I wanted to get out of the family care home business, then Mum died and now I was stuck, feeling ill-equipped to manage the job let alone excel at it.
6 Ways Anxiety Kept Me Stuck
I was afraid... afraid of following my path, afraid of standing on my own, of standing by my decisions and following my initiatives.
My failure to grasp life by the bullhorns resulted in me becoming a follower and not a leader.
I acted like a child, not an adult. This meant others' opinions had more weight than mine as I never trusted my own.
I believed my ideas were worthless - so naturally, I was at the behest of others and felt like my life was out of my control.
And no matter how much I attempted to better myself I kept getting snapped back to a place of inferiority, stuck in an endless cycle of failure.
Not realising that my anxiety was silently killing all possibilities of living in accordance with my true nature and joy.
So how did I get unstuck? What changed?
Me! … I had to change! I had to transform from boy to man.
I had to overcome what was keeping me stuck and ruining my life.
I will share with you what changed in my life but first I will share how I got unstuck.
How I got unstuck and how you can too
1. Rules for navigating change
Patience - Real change takes time. Change is always a gradual evolution and never an overnight success. Change comes step by step and goes in a cycle as shown above.
Change is an inside job. External results follow your internal growth. Without becoming self-aware, you will find yourself in similar situations again and again, like I was, stuck in a cycle of failure.
The ideas/ tools are not magic potions but are instruments to navigate the challenges you face in pursuit of change.
The biggest factor in your transformation will always be the depth of your desires and the strength of your willingness to change. Half-hearted attempts and lackluster effort will only result in resignation and become the perfect excuse for why things never work out for you.
Frustration, anger, and pain are powerful drivers of change and will help motivate you to act. Pay attention if you numb or avoid pain - as doing so you are depleting yourself of the desire to change and without desire, there's no need for you to change.
2. Write down your thoughts
”A quiet mind is free and agile. A busy mind is overwhelmed and anxious” ~ Ahmad
Writing your thoughts and ideas is a powerful and underrated tool for change.
Many people believe they can work all their problems in their head but this is never true.
At most, you can hold 7 things in your mind at one time. Hence UK vehicle Number plates are no more than 7 digits.
Keeping things in your head creates overwhelm. Your ideas and thoughts bounce around inside your mind with nowhere to go. If you feel like there is too much to handle I guarantee – once you start writing down what's bothering you - you will marvel at how small and manageable your “overwhelming” problems are.
So, to better understand yourself and develop self-awareness start writing down your thoughts.
With things written down, you can make sense of what to do, how to organise, and prioritise what to act on next.
Any plans or strategies are also best figured out by writing them down and not just thinking about them.
And you don’t have to stick to writing words - doodling mind mapping and sketching out plans help to visual what's going on.
Turning your thoughts into reality through writing is key to keeping you mentally free.
Many times, amid great mental stress or overwhelming challenges – I will sketch out a mind map or plan to help me figure out what to do next. I will discard these plans and lists once they are redundant. It’s all in service to keep my mind free and agile.
Summary:
Keeping things in your head creates the feeling of being overwhelmed
Write your challenges down - don't keep them inside your head
Make writing things down a habit
Don't just stick to words, sketching, mind mapping, and doodling help to visualise solutions to your problems.
3. Get curious about what you think
“How can I tell you what I think until I’ve heard what I’m going to say?”
~ Stephen Fry
Now you understand the power of writing – how & what do you write?
At first, it's useful to write out all your thoughts without needing to make sense. Write whatever thoughts come to mind - write everything bouncing around your head. This empties your mind.
The longer you write, the deeper your ideas and thoughts will go. New ideas or more meaningful problems that were previously hidden will be revealed. You will make new connections and experience new ideas that previously were not visible as they were hidden beneath all the noise.
Be curious - like an explorer of your mind. Write to discover what's already there and avoid trying to figure things out or fix a problem. Trying to fix right away is similar to a junkie trying to get a hit - you will only feel a false bliss but underneath you will feel unsatisfied when the cheap high wears off and realise you were running away from the problem.
By being curious you will have many new realisations about who you are and more importantly begin to understand why you do what you do and think the way you do.
For best results, keep an open mind and treat yourself, your thoughts, and what you write with compassion - treat yourself as you would a good friend or a small child who is revealing their heart.
Watch out for self-judgment and criticism - i.e. Thinking “I shouldn't think these things” as this will cut off your flow of thoughts. In fact when these thoughts come up - write them down too!
Spend a generous amount of time a few times a week (anywhere from 20 minutes to 1 hour is good), writing down your thoughts and you will begin to feel different about yourself!
If you have never done this kind of exercise before - you will be surprised at how much you discover.
Summary & Actions:
Action: Write down all your thoughts - empty your mind. Schedule a few times this week to complete this exercise.
The longer you write, the deeper and more meaningful thoughts will be revealed that were previously hidden under all the noise
Avoid trying to fix yourself - instead, write to understand yourself
Treat what you discover with compassion and kindness like you would when listening to a friend.
Avoid criticising your thoughts , instead be curious about them
Being curious and exploring your thoughts will change how you feel about yourself
4. Weed out what is blocking you & develop self–awareness
If you took action on the advice above, it's time to bring intention and direction to your writing.
A swift way to learn what's blocking you is to start by identifying something you’d love to have or experience and for whatever reason you believe it's impossible to achieve.
What if you have nothing you’d love to have/ achieve? It’s easy to think there’s nothing you want out of life, especially if you've grown up believing you're not allowed to have it or only others, the lucky few can have desires.
We all have desires - every human is wired with needs and desires (Google Maslow's hierarchy of needs). Our desires can be material objects, physical pursuits, or emotional states of feeling.
If you still believe you don't have any desires, then good news, this is one of those pesky ideas keeping you stuck.
Exercise:
Write one thing you'd love to have. It can be anything you want - there's no limit
E.g. to sit on the rings of Saturn/ to save a million animals/ to experience inter-dimensional travel/ or to have infinite money.
(These are examples from 10-year-old students in my school workshops. I also have included a real example from my life below.)
When you have your thing, write what negative thoughts pop up about not being able to have/achieve that thing.
E.g. I am not good enough, it’s unrealistic, I don’t have enough time/money,
Now write a few feelings to describe how it feels to not be able to have what you want.
E.g. Sad, frustrated, angry.
Ahmad’s example:
A goal that I would love but have doubts about achieving is the rollout of my Shook Man Workshops in schools, across the country.
My negative thoughts: I am not strong enough, I am not realistic, life is hard, this is not possible, others can do it but I can't.
My negative feelings: I feel sad, incapable, weak, inferior, and overwhelmed.
This exercise develops your awareness of the thoughts and feelings that pop up every time you have an idea you're excited.
These are the negative thoughts, feelings, and beliefs blocking you – deflating your enthusiasm, and stopping you from going for what you want.
Summary & Actions:
Action: To weed out what's blocking you, identify what you'd love to achieve then observe and write down the negative thoughts and feelings that pop up to stop you.
It's common to think we don't have desires, but we do - desires are natural human trait
5. Overcoming your blocks
The good news is you do not need to do anything about your blocks. You do not need to change your negative thoughts or chant opposing ideas.
You can't change these ideas - because they are ingrained in your identity.
Bringing them to your conscious awareness is enough because your mind is smart enough to know these are not the thoughts and feelings you wish to experience when pursuing your goals.
Before they were hidden beneath your conscious psyche, deep within your mind and now you're looking at them on a page outside of your mind. Doing this takes the power out of these thoughts and gives you the power to choose how you want to act and I'll share with you how you can do that now.
Exercise:
Write what obtaining your desire would do for you and what feelings you would feel.
Finally, how do these feelings inspire you to act?
Choosing to act from these feelings over your negative emotions – will help you get unstuck.
My example:
What I'd love to achieve is the rollout of Shook Man workshops in schools across the country. Obtaining this goal would be monumental, and would make me feel an immense sense of pride and joy.
Feelings of pride and joy, make me want to share my message with the world and express the joy I get seeing students transformed by Shook Man workshops.
Now I can choose, will I allow my focus to fall on the thoughts and feelings that made me feel sad and powerless or the ones that bring me joy?
Summary & Actions:
You do not need to change your negative thoughts, and you can't!
Action: Instead, change your focus. Ask what feelings would you have if you obtained what you desired. How do those feelings inspire you to act?
If you choose to act from these feelings over the negative emotions, you can take back your power from fear, doubt, and anxiety.
So, what changed for me?
”Feeling anxious is not a problem, letting it ruin your life is” ~ Ahmad
Looking back I see the huge turnaround I achieved since I sat in the little care home office with mountains of paperwork, rotas, and endless policy updates.
Back then I could see no way to break out of that life.
That daily feeling of being inept at my job, stuck, believing one false move would bring the whole care home down like a house of cards, and needing to keep up appearances and look like I know what I am doing.
Now, I can see with clarity that the biggest problem I faced wasn't the physical situation that I was in, but the inner emotional experience I was having.
My lack of self-direction made me depressed and I didn't even know it.
I was operating against my natural abilities, gifts, and talents.
I was following others, afraid of trusting myself and this made me shrink a little more each day and sink deeper into a hole of insecurity, my self-fabricated mental prison.
Breaking out of that hell hole in my mind took waking up to the fact that the ideas I held about myself were not real.
I was telling myself I couldn't – when I could.
Developing my self-awareness allowed me to take note of these incorrect ideas and rewire my brain to work in flow with my true self.
I began focusing on working in ways that suited me.
I dropped my role as manager in the care home and appointed someone else to run day-to-day activities.
I didn't know how this would work and my father advised against it - but I knew it was what I would enjoy best.
In doing this I learned that the care work was never really a problem - my approach to how I was working before was the problem.
I was not working in my way.
Today, I am free to come and go - to take on jobs I want, and to work the way I want.
With this significant change, my energy increased.
I no longer felt trapped and stuck in the business. I can now focus on problem-solving from the outside - again, something I prefer doing.
I gained extra head space to focus on other pursuits, like creating Shook Man, writing the ebook, and developing the concept - a progression of my events from years ago.
This has led to a coaching program in schools for young students, being invited and paid to speak, and being a guest on several podcasts to share my work.
I am working on my purpose again - I am happier and feel in alignment with my true self this way.
Change is a constant game of trial and adjustment, learning and paying attention to when my old ways creep in - though I find, that once you develop a good sense of who you are, going backward is rarely the case.
More likely, getting stuck at a new plateau and not evolving when the opportunities arise is a new challenge. A topic for a future article most likely.
In the meantime, I am learning to ride the waves of responsibility of running the care homes building a brand of Shook Man, and taking each day as it comes.
Change is possible with awareness, focus, and patience.
Ps. If you seek support in uncovering your inner blocks, try my Shook Story Tool here.
(It will guide you through insightful questions, and you can book an optional quick call with me to delve deeper into what might be holding you back from achieving your goals.)