How I Became a Calm and Collected Man After Once Being Extremely Anxious.
You want to stop getting anxious in every little scenario during the day.
But, you don't know how to remain calm and present during social interactions or when anticipating a high effort activity.
By the end of this Procedure, you'll be equipped with the tactics I used to go from where you are to being socially confident in most situations and capable of staying calm in high stress or high effort situations.
Plus, you'll wake up tomorrow with a skill to immediately put into practice so that one day you can confidently look in the mirror and say, "I'm the kind of man who is calm, even when my thoughts are telling me I should be freaking out".
Journalling every morning gets built-up thoughts out of your head and allows freedom of speech.
When I first started finding long-term solutions to social anxiety at the age of 16, I heard about journalling. I heard that it was good for creating free-flowing thought.
My goal with doing it right after my 5am home work-outs was to get all the intrusive thoughts out of my head so that I could observe them from a distance instead of feeling suffocated by them internally.
Thinking about it now, this activity was likely attractive to me because the first lesson that ever improved my mental health, specifically by reducing the severity of my OCD, involved observing my thoughts, identifying them like "Ah, there's the overthinking story again. I've heard it a million times" and then continuing with whatever I was doing before the intrusive thought came along.
Journalling further allowed me to detach from the thought, understanding that it was not me and could be observed and deconstructed if I wanted to do so.
Two unexpected benefits of journalling to get thoughts out of my head were that I understood who I was and my thought processes at a deeper level, which developed my ability to self-reflect, and gave me topics of conversation to bring up at school.
However, from experience I've realised that topics of conversation actually decrease your ability to connect with a person because you focus on the surface-level words being spoken instead of the energy, vibe and values you naturally share with them.
Today, this benefit manifests in honesty. People ask me how I am and because I constantly express my thoughts and feelings through online content, I know exactly what's been going on inside me and can immediately express that which means I've got very little reason to stay stuck inside my head. I can be present with the person, which also helps me connect with them.
If you don't externally express your thoughts and feelings either through journalling or writing/speaking online, you're more likely to stay forever trapped in your head and lacking connection with human beings, which will make it impossible to become a calm, level-headed human being. For now, I want you to journal on paper. After reading this Procedure, go buy one and start. Now let's look at how to slow your crazy mind down so you can be calm.
Slow the fuck down.
People walk fast, talk fast and have no patience. They go on their phone when they get bored and now that I've had 2 years of experience in a 9-5 job, I can see that these people have countless other problems in their life, have minimal ability to stay calm during stress and pressure and are generally unhappy people.
I swear, if you want knowledge that covers multiple life problems at once because it's deep and uncovered from years of self-reflection and life experience, follow my content. Specifically join the Peaky Pines Email Community for a Procedure like this every Sunday in your inbox.
Start looking at your hands like you're a video game character, picking objects up while intentionally focusing on the object. Start walking slower, even if you feel an urge to move faster. If you notice something like a funny-looking tree, stop walking for a second and look at it.
Presuming you look at your phone in public, try and stop.
Just stand there waiting for your bus. Stand there at the party even if you've got no-one to speak to, because going on your phone makes people think you'll ignore and reject them if they try and talk to you.
If you've got your neck bent down looking at your phone, you look insecure and un-intelligent and ironically you will feel more insecure and train your brain to retreat to comfort instead of having stimulating conversations, working out or being present as the world plays live around you.
Missing that stuff means you're unlikely to work out or do other stuff that increases your intelligence through healthy stimulation and lessons learned.
I hope you can see from this Procedure so far that everything in life has multiple layers and without becoming aware of them, your happiness and levels of excitement for life will be stupidly, ridiculously minimised.
Choose calmness as a life-value.
Values are things that are important to you and which you keep in mind when making decisions and choosing an action. I'm gonna break down how calmness has exponentially improved my life in a 3+ year chain of events to the point that I am now an absolute beast in most areas of life. Specifically what that means is that I've become the kind of man I once aspired to and I feel a deep sense of respect when I look in the mirror.
After I explain this 3+ year chain of events and advantages to calmness, I will show you how to take action and embody this value.
Calmness helps you detach from your negative and intrusive thoughts so that you can observe exactly what's happening in your mind, why it's happening, what triggered it and why those triggers exist, so that you can let those thoughts go and be present. In maintaining calmness despite what your thoughts say, you develop more control over your mind than it has over you.
Specifically what this means, is that regardless of the thoughts and stories your mind tells you all day, you can say, do and feel confident and chill.
You can leave the house knowing that you can have a good day despite waking up anxious that morning and worried it was gonna be a bad day.
In my personal journey, I would always convince myself that I was calm, that every problem had a solution and that it was okay for my thoughts go crazy. I would let them go. These approaches to life I developed led to me acting like a calm, controlled and problem-solving leader, which led to me dressing a certain way which further complemented this leadership identity I was building.
This is for another post, but the fact that I started convincing myself I was a leader made me consciously choose other values to implement into my life such as accountability and honesty. This led to me identifying certain behaviours or things I did and associating them with the man I wanted to become, such as working out 2 days in a row and saying, "I'm the kind of man who consistently takes care of his body and trains his mind to withstand pain".
This led to me gaining power at work as the more I convinced myself that I the kind of man I value most, demonstrated through real actions I took, other people started to perceive me the same way which further reinforced the leadership identity I was building for myself.
Self-influence helped me develop a capacity to manipulate my own mindset so that when speaking to mentors such as my jiu jitsu teacher Chris Dirksen, I would stay humble and listen to his advice so that I could learn and grow. At this point, these events which all stemmed from calmness have turned me into the kind of person others of many ages come to for advice, emotional support, connection and fun times.
This has increased my feelings of responsibility to the point that I put more effort into writing content that helps people skip years of pain and cluelessness, stay healthy and overcome my own problems such as porn addiction. Now that I'm in this position, the natural empathy I always had and which you probably have too, helps me connect deeply with people by truly seeing and hearing them, which makes everyone feel good and is now helping me network with business owners.
Let’s explore how to be calm in practice.
The longer you sit or walk in silence, the easier it becomes to stay present without latching onto your intrusive thoughts.
This is because silent sitting and a mindful throughout the day helps you process the mental pain and suffering of your past and allows you to exist more in the current moment.
This makes calmness much easier.
As for how for how to sit in silence and be mindful, consider this tweet I wrote. "I find meditation a lot easier when I remember I’m doing it to process thoughts and become a new man. I find running easier if I think of it as a meditative practice that achieves the same thing. What we teach in marketing - the benefit - works on ourselves too".
Think about the benefit of meditation. For me, the idea of processing my past so that I can live in the present is pretty motivating and makes meditation something I look forward to.
Now, what does it mean to be mindful throughout the day and why's it necessary? Earlier in this Procedure, I spoke about slowing the fuck down and stopping to observe things you see such as funny-looking trees.
That is mindfulness.
Cool. Now understand something for me. Understand that your brain will come up with stories to make you avoid perceived dangers, such as social interactions. It'll stop you speaking and feed you questions like, "is that a funny, or stupid thing to say?"
This is where a previous Procedure of mine comes in - one that teaches the AIR Technique. In short, the technique teaches you how to do and say what you want and eventually overcome the fears of your mind. Let's wrap this up.
You're now equipped with the tactics I used to go from socially anxious, uncomfortable in my own skin and trapped in my head, to becoming socially confident in most situations and capable of staying calm under pressure.
You'll wake up tomorrow already a step ahead, as you journal your annoying and noisy thoughts onto paper so that you can feel free and some day look confidently in the mirror, saying "I'm the kind of man who is calm, even when my thoughts are telling me I should be freaking out".
In this Procedure, I was going to talk about yoga as a method to not only practice slow movement, focus and calmness under pressure, but also get toned, fit, flexible and strong. I won't go into the details about the incredible YouTube channel "Breathe and Flow", whose yoga videos I follow along with every morning and I won't mention the fact that you can do yoga on the floor or carpet if you don't yet have a mat. Don't ask me why, but for whatever reason, I didn't want to make this part of the last paragraph about mindfulness.
Remember how significant calmness has been in my journey of becoming a man I respect.
Best of luck cheeky dog.
Go buy a fucken journal and start there,
Riley.
P.S. If you can tell that I have experience in building confidence and breaking free from mental imprisonment and want similar results while saving years of time and mental suffering, book a 30 minute chat with me here.
P.P.S. Join the Peaky Pines Community on Discord if you want to talk to others very similar to you.
P.P.P.S. Check out my resources here. 11 Steps to Social Freedom is a really solid material I’ve created and will help you see the cognitive advantages of an overthinking mind, if trained properly.
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