Worry-free Parenting. 5 Steps to Emotional Freedom

0:00 let's become anxiety free parents I don't know about you but what I've noticed is that it's become the norm for people to talk about high levels of anxiety so people to move through their lives feeling worried feeling self-conscious feeling completely inhibited and feeling really anxious all the time it's become normal for us as parents it's become normal for our kids it's just become this Baseline expectation that everyone's walking around with heavy doses with you know a

0:29 big burden on their shoulders of anxiety of fear and worry about the future but I don't think this is a way to live and I think anxiety is actually not compulsory I think there are things we can do to overcome it and to move around in our lives with a lighter feel with a smile on our face with more confidence even and perhaps especially in the face of real world troubles real challenges of real issues that we face of really bad

0:56 news of downturns of disease of finan struggles of War of political upheaval of polarization of all sorts of things that really are happening out there and really are scary and really do provoke and produce anxiety and yet because or despite this reality we need to be able to move through our life with confidence with a sense of ease with a sense of Competency and capacity to handle what life throws at us I don't know about you

1:27 but for me one of my big kind of goals in my life life is to achieve emotional stability and also to be able to handle what I have on my plate to feel like I've got this to be okay and I think it's fallen out of fashion to just be okay like being okay is now some sort of taboo but I want to bring back okayness I don't think you have to always feel like you're on top of the world or to

1:50 always Thrive or to always be manifesting but I think just being okay being comfortable in our own skin feeling strong feeling capable feeling we've got this that I think is a really good and attainable and achievable goal today I'm going to give you five steps to get there welcome back to higham I'm OB tell if you are not yet subscribed what are you waiting for I know a high percentage of our viewers are watching but not subscribing please hit that

2:15 subscribe button it really helps us with the algorithms and hit the like button if you want more content like this now as I'm going through this I want to ask you is anxiety something you struggle with do you think of yourself as an anxious person and are you even aware that this is something you can overcome and if so are you ready to overcome it this video is by no means exhaustive there are many more things that I could

2:37 have put on this list but I am starting with some lwh hanging fruit with some real life changes that I've made in my own life and that I make with my students inside of the studio and that I know is possible to do so there's more where that came from but let's start with these number one get off social media this is an easy one or quote unquote easy one I know it's hard for many many of us cuz social media might

3:00 be part of our work because it's very addictive because it's very interesting because it fills our time because it's how we connect with friends and family and all of that kind of thing but the truth is that social media has been proven to spike anxiety right it's the comparison to other people it's the feeling that we're behind in our lives that we don't measure up that our body image isn't as good uh that we're not having as much fun in our lives there is

3:24 research after research to show that people feel perfectly happy and fine in their life until they start scrolling and comparing themselves to other people they say that comparison is the thief of joy and indeed social media is the place for comparison now you might be thinking V tell that's a bit hypocritical here you are on YouTube or on Instagram or wherever you're watching this and you know you're using social media and it's true I think that there is a time and a

3:48 place to use it and especially if it's part of your job as it is part of mine then you're going to have to use it but then we have to use it really wisely a little bit like alcohol or drugs or other things there is a time and a place and I have really strict boundaries on my social media usage outside of my work I don't have the apps on my phone I don't spend time scrolling there are

4:09 certain platforms I'm just not on at all and so there are ways right of kind of loosening or minimizing your social media exposure in order to protect your mental state look just being aware that social media has been proven again this is totally evidence-based we scientifically know it to be true has been proven to spike anxiety get us into a Jitter worried concerned mood it's a lot to do with the fact that a lot of the content is about outrage is about

4:36 spiking our fear right content has to kind of grab you emotionally to keep you watching and one of the most powerful emotions that we have is fit right which is what sparks that anxious feeling and so much of the content that we're using is capitalizing on that and is actually there to increase our fear because that's how they keep the eyeballs and that's how they get the ratings and the clicks and the views the point is to

4:58 just be aware social media has that impact and to put some guardrails on it now one of the things that I did because I didn't like the way social media operated on my own brain and on my own psyche was that I created my own social media right it's a place where I still get all the benefits of connecting with other people of pulling wisdom of asking questions in a more Anonymous way of connecting with like-minded individuals

5:21 from all over the globe but it isn't on a place that actually capitalizes my attention and sells my interest and my attention ion to third party advertisers so that's why I started the studio the studio is my membership and it's where I teach and coach and help people from all over the world create a family culture that they love right to stack good habits and to keep on their goals and to take on great projects but also it has a

5:47 social media right it has a scrolling feature it has the ability to direct message and to interact and to post and to like and to share and to go live and to all these different things that we can do on social media but the difference is that there are no third parties no one's selling to ads no one's monetizing their channels you pay to be part of the group and that's it that is the model right and when the business

6:09 model is that you just pay for the service of being on that social media then no one's there to spark outrage no one's there to heighten your sensationalist senses right no one's there for the drama and it's a self- selecting group of like-minded people so you just get the best corner of the internet right this is my favorite place to hang out with these are my favorite people to hang out with because they have wisdom because we have etiquette

6:32 and we really treat each other with the same respects that we would offer each other in a face-to-face setting so get off social media it's the easiest thing to lower your anxiety I I know it's not easy it's easier said than done but it is doable I do it and I work on social media so I think it's entirely possible and I think it's a really loow hanging fruit to reduce your level of anxiety just a few hours without scrolling and

6:55 without clicking without watching things is going to already e your sense of jitters and of anxiety and if you can get off other media as well like less news consumption right and get onto positive media like listening to useful podcasts and great books and that kind of thing that's going to really already shift all of the voices whispering in your head and what is actually forming the anxiety inside of you number two is to make a plan now we all love

7:22 spontaneity from time to time and we all want to feel free within our lives but there's something about feeling in control that can really reduce our sense of anxiety and you might say it's an illusion that no one's really in control of Our Lives that you know anyone could get hit by a truck tomorrow and all of that is true but there is something deeply calming about having a plan when you have a plan when you have rules you

7:44 can then break those rules right but having the plan in place can really calm a lot of the functions of our brain that increase anxiety such as decision fatigue analysis paralysis right making lots of choices throughout the day actually depletes our willpower depletes our focus and can cause anxiety we feel nervous like oh I don't know what to decide even over small things have you ever had this experience let me know in the comments below what's the silliest

8:10 thing you've ever got anxious about but have you had this experience of like getting anxious about what to make for dinner getting anxious about what your weekend plans are getting anxious about planning that birthday party these are the types of things that can actually be reduced by making a plan inside of the studio membership this is something that we do we take on projects that establish clear rules and guidelines for our family and we make a plan we make meta

8:33 plans like our family vacation plans we make weekly plans like meal plans having a tech-free day having a family feast we make plans for how we're going to celebrate the holidays and have like a family kind of festive meal together we make plans for our morning rituals for our evening rituals we make plans for how we're going to have good night sleep for the whole family we make all sorts of plans when you make these plans and

9:01 then you somewhat stick to them with some consistency allowing for some Freedom here and there you gain a sense of predictability in your life you gain a sense of routine you gain a sense that things are under control and that is actually the opposite emotional space of anxiety right anxiety is all about the unknown the unprecedented question marks not knowing what's coming not having an idea of how I'm going to react to what's coming that is what creates that sense

9:26 of being undone right being in a tangle and so when you sit down and you make a plan and you put it in writing and then you start exercising it and communicating it with the rest of the family that is going to calm your senses now if you need help with that kind of thing make sure you're on the studio waight list go to ham.com Studio because I can help you establish a meal plan establish a morning routine and an

9:50 evening routine establish your weekend plans your vacation plans your holiday plans knowing what you're doing even establishing physical plans for your household like chores or decluttering right all of these calm the senses calm the frazzled brain calm all of that mental labor and mental load that you're just running list in your head of all the toos that you have to do you're like I'm good I have a plan number three little bit harder is to learn to coach

10:16 yourself specifically learning to coach yourself through cognitive fallacies if you haven't heard me explain that term before just really quick cognitive fallacies are skewed ways of thinking that we all have it's kind of like a biased strange way of thinking that doesn't make that much sense and certainly doesn't serve us but many of us get stuck in cognitive fallacies so for example you might catastrophize that means that you're always Imagining the worst case scenario happening when

10:42 something simple and normal happens in your life your brain goes to the extreme and starts getting anxious about what could go wrong or you might find yourself personalizing where you think things are about you that people are talking about you that people are doing things to you on purpose or you might get stuck in the fairness fallacy right this is a fallacy that imagines that life should just be fair it just should be and the fact that it isn't means that

11:07 something's wrong that people are doing unfair things to you rather than understanding that life isn't always Fair these are all cognitive fallacies that we all suffer from they're like skewed lenses you know when there's some kind of weird filter on that makes the image look distorted and they distort the world around us when we look at the world through the lens of a cognitive fallacy see it distorts otherwise normal images and it makes the world seem much

11:34 scarier and much worse than it otherwise is because we're human our brains can't always do the statistical analysis and really understand risk mitigation and dangers Etc and we get overly emotionally invested and distort realities that are happening to us causing greater anxiety about things so for example if I'm a really nervous passenger my head might be flooding me with images that I'm imagining that I'm Conjuring up or that I've seen and been exposed to from media for example of car

12:07 crashes of how dangerous the roads are and that is going to get me anxious I'm going to be nervous about it because I'm envisioning the worst case scenario I'm catastrophizing but the truth is that maybe I'm driving a really safe car on a very safe road and the truth is maybe the risk of a car crash is extremely low but I'm going to be emotionally responding to it as though it were extremely high simply because I have a

12:32 human brain that engages in cognitive distortions and that's why self- coaching becomes so important right this is based on cognitive behavioral therapy CBT and the ability to analyze our thoughts in a more logical way and offer ourselves alternative thoughts reframing right looking at a situation through a new lens through a less distorted lens or through a more helpful lens this is when we learn not to take things personally not to catastrophize not to think in terms of black and white not to

13:01 have should thinking or think that everything should be fair those types of things and this is something that might be a little bit harder to learn than making a plan or than you know getting off of social media but it's going to have a huge effect on your anxiety now I come by this information honestly I personally have suffered from crippling anxiety actually in the form of clinical PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder okay so I was crippled by flashbacks and

13:28 hallucinations and getting completely paralyzed by anxiety and fear because of legitimate traumas that I've been through namely living through Terror attacks now when you go through that you start to project and to imagine that that dangerous always around the corner and sometimes it really is sometimes there's real evidence that the things that you're afraid of really could happen but even in those cases being on high alert and high anxiety and Imagining the worst all the time doesn't

13:57 necessarily serve you it doesn't make us respond better to an emergency it doesn't make us more realistic or more statistically viable in our imaginations and so it's better for us to be able to coach ourselves to stay calm and to be Collective and to think clearly so how do you learn to coach yourself well it's something that I teach extensively inside the studio as I've already mentioned and yes this video is totally brought to you by the studio because

14:22 that is where I coach people from all over the world and we talk about how to become a great leader for our family great leaders cannot be anxious you can't have the Jitters you can't constantly be worried about the future if you want to be a great leader for your family and so this is a big part of what we learn inside of the studio however I do want to give you a bit of a kind of funny tip that I've come across

14:43 recently which is that you can actually learn to coach yourself first of all by learning about the cognitive fallacies but also I have found quite a lot of success by going to AI for example chat gbt and saying I have this recurring thought I have this intrusive thought it's not useful for me I keep worrying about a school shooting or I keep worrying about a terror attack or about a car crash or about my kids future or I

15:07 just have a general sense of worry can you offer me CBT techniques to overcome this and to reframe my mindset that's the script that you would want to use that now I know this might be a bit of a controversial tip not everybody's going to like it but I personally found it really useful when I found myself stuck in certain mindsets to have this tool that is algorithmically there that has been trained in BT right that is able to

15:31 actually offer you that back and forth and offer you ways of reframing and thinking about it now you'll still need to go out and practice that to make it part of your psyche right but this is basically free many models are free it's Anonymous it's easily available so there's a place for therapy for sure but if you just want to learn to master some of your cognitive distortions AI might be a good tool for that try it out

15:55 number four craft a long-term vision for yourself yes yes this is another thing that we do inside of the studio we craft a vision for our family why anxiety is a lot about this negative projection of what's going to happen right it's kind of the sense of worry about the future that's what anxiety really is on a technical level and what can happen is we can easily ruminate we can easily get stuck in these Cycles these Vicious

16:19 Cycles in our brain where we're spiraling into all of the bad what ifs what if what if what if what if what if we don't have enough money what if my kids get into trouble what if I lose the house what if we get divorced what if a million different things that you might be worrying about and that anxious what if cycle needs to be replaced by something positive and that's where your vision comes in when you craft a vivid

16:44 really Lively sensual Clear Vision for where you want your family to be say in 10 years then you can do something that I use very often to get myself out of an anxious place which is flipping the channel so say for example I'm getting into a car and I'm really nervous about a car crash I am quite a nervous passenger so I have those images running through my head that we mentioned of a car crash what I then do to mute that

17:11 anxiety is that instead of saying to myself don't think about a car crash stop thinking about that just don't think about that is I start to actively think about the opposite image okay so what's the opposite image is US arriving safely at our destination I imagine us all getting out of the car and everything was safe and it was smooth and it was a beautiful ride and everything's okay and everything's in good order and I put in all of that same

17:35 energy I burn all of those same calories in my brain rather than Imagining the worst case scenario Imagining the best case scenario what I want right now you might put on a spiritual bent to this or a religious bent to this or a psychological bent to this maybe it's about manifesting or a self-fulfilling prophecy but when we focus on what we do want rather than what we don't want we get out of anxiety and into inspiration

17:59 we become in that aspirational space where we're imagining a bright future and either way we're imagining like we're either imagining that anxious outcome or we're Imagining the vision uh might as well imagine something that makes you feel good right so you might engage in all sorts of magical thinking like if I imagine the worst then I'm somehow protected against the worst right we've got to neutralize those strange thoughts that we kind of twist ourselves into pretzels with mental

18:28 gymnastics and start to focus on our vision what do you want for yourself what do you want for your children many of us don't even dare to think about it we don't dare to think about the life we want for our children we feel like it's somehow Politically Incorrect or taboo or uncomfortable to say you know I really hope my children get married and have children I really hope my children have a fantastic career I really hope my

18:49 children are healthy and sound of Mind there are so many things that you do want for your child maybe not the things I just mentioned but I'm sure there are things that you want for them and that you want for your relationship with them right like I hope my children live nearby or are able to visit often I hope I get to be active in my grandchildren's life those are the types of things that can replace the anxiety about the future

19:11 rather than getting so worried about our children failing to launch we could imagine and fantasize being at their weddings for example even if the vision doesn't end up coming true and I hope and pray that it does at least it gave you a positive Focus through these years right right at least we were directing ourselves and orienting ourselves towards a North star it's going to help in every other realm of your life as well because you'll be focused on what

19:38 you do want you'll be making decisions and choices that guide you towards that it's not going to be a motivation out of just fear and anxiety of the worst case scenario but rather inspiration and aspiration towards the best case scenario that's a completely different energy to parent from am I right number five develop the self-identity of someone who is unbothered someone who is unruffled someone who is unvc imized unoffendable unshakeable yes yes yes you all know I teach all of these things

20:08 inside of my course and my membership but here I just want to say this there's a lot of power to how we identify ourselves there is a big difference in research shows this between someone saying I run and someone saying I'm a runner now if you identify as an anxious person like I'm just an anxious person or I have anxiety you you are actually boxing yourself in and in this case labeling is disabling in this case it's

20:34 making you feel like oh my default reaction my autopilot is to be anxious that's just who I am I want you to completely rethink that identity I want you to reframe how you see yourself I want you to focus on stories of resilience of overcoming of the ways that you are actually strong of the ways that you're actually calm and emotionally stable and not volatile or you know on a roller coaster but rather really grounded and centered I want you

21:00 to focus on the fact that you do have a strong backbone that you do have broad shoulders that you do have a thick skin that you can and have withstood a lot you've overcome a lot already and you will overcome more in the future I want you to focus on your strengths I want you to see yourself as a strong person as a strong leader as someone who's building a strong family culture a culture of resilience and overcoming not

21:24 a culture of anxiety don't even identify with it don't see it as part of yourself be like yeah okay sometimes I feel anxiety everybody does sometimes everybody feels fear sometimes but I'm not an anxious person you know I could easily identify myself as an anxious person I had crippling PTSD with hallucinations and flashbacks and paralyzation and all of that but I don't see myself as an anxious person I actually see myself as a very calm person as a very capable person as

21:50 someone who can conduct themselves Under Pressure who can handle emergency situations why that's not who I was naturally that's not just what how people would have described me as I was growing up that's not who I was as a young adult but I have crafted a mental model of myself as someone who's very strong someone who's mentally tough and mentally tough people don't suffer from anxiety they're not anxious I mean once in a while they get anxious but they

22:17 aren't anxious people as a category so I guess I'm not an anxious person if I'm mentally tough right do you see the kind of tricks I play on myself and I want you to play on yourself that you label yourself as mentally tough as mentally strong and then you live up to that identity just like if I say I'm a runner then now I have that internal pressure to run if I say I choose vegetarian options versus I'm a vegetarian it's

22:44 like a completely different thing right one is non-negotiable and uncompromising and I want you to become uncompromising in your vision of yourself as someone who is not an anxious person listen my friend it's become really culturally acceptable and even celebrate to have some kind of issue in your life right like you need a diagnosis or a label or a disorder in order to win that life right it's this victim Olympics or the oppression Olympics but that's going

23:10 to get us nowhere in a hurry we don't want that we want to be okay we want to be fine we want to thrive we want to have a smile on our face we want to be capable we want to be a loadbearing w right someone who other people can lean on our children our colleagues our partners we're strong we can have it we can take it we are mentally tough and that is a completely different vision

23:33 for yourself and a completely different identity for yourself than identifying with all of our struggles yeah we all have struggles we've all been through certain traumas and certain difficulties we all have certain diagnoses we all have certain you know mental or physical conditions that we deal with or life circumstances that are true about us but that doesn't have to become our identity you don't need to identify with it it could be the 337th most interesting thing about you

23:57 right like my PTSD doesn't even make the list of the ways that I identify it's not part of my identity at all it's just something that I happen to have in my history and something that I contend with my struggles and difficulties are not who I am who you are how you look at yourself could rise above your anxiety you're not a anous person you just sometimes have anxiety like every other human it's completely normal evolutionary response to fears and our

24:29 imagination and that's all good it's there to protect us it's there to keep us safe that's fine but you can rise above it and overcome it and practice anxiety-free parenting when you're an anxiety-free parent you can parent from a place of confidence of vision of inspiration of leadership of clarity of conviction you can become a compelling leader you can become someone that your children look up to lean on want advice from take wisdom from because you're not

24:56 a mess right you're not a puddle you're not constantly worried you're not flustered and flabbergasted you are a solid pillar and they can take inspiration from that I believe anxiety parenting needs to be the next wave the next Trend the next thing that we jump on we putting some of the gentle parenting and the peaceful parenting and the conscious parenting to one side and embracing anxiety-free parenting where we practice parenting with confidence with conviction with Clarity with a

25:26 clear mind cool as a cucumber and totally competent that is what I want for you if that's something you want for yourself make sure you're on the studio wait list I really hope that you grab a spot inside the membership inside our community hif fam.com Studio can't wait to welcome you in meanwhile let me know below which of these points was most helpful for you would you like a part two on anxiety there is so much more

25:48 where that came from do you sometimes identify as an anxious person or a person with anxiety and if so how are you going to change that let me know below and feel free to disagree I encourage respectful debate push back resistance I would love to walk you through these ideas and go deep on them don't forget to click the like button and please subscribe to the channel if you haven't already use this conversation to have a deeper

26:13 conversation with the people in your own life with your partner your friends and your kids keep on living that high th life and I'll see you next time