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In this episode of "A Changed Mind", our host, David Bayer, unpacks anxiety in this transformative episode. Drawing from personal experiences and scientific insights, he presents three game-changing perspectives on anxiety. David reframes anxiety as a healing process, likening it to a fever that helps the body recover.

David explains how anxiety signals expansion and creation in one's life, acting as a catalyst for growth. Finally, Bayer posits that anxiety indicates living on the leading edge of possibility, a common trait among successful individuals.

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SPECIAL MIND HACK/WHOLE HUMAN FRAMEWORK PROGRAM BUNDLE

https://mindhackprogram.com/bundle-acm

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What We Explored This Episode

5:06 Anxiety as a healing process for accumulated tension

10:12 "What's coming is going" - anxiety as release

15:17 Anxiety as a sign of expansion and desire

20:53 Anxiety indicates being on leading edge of possibility

Memorable Quotes

"Anxiety isn't here to ruin your life, but to reveal something extraordinary about yourself."

"Understanding anxiety as a healing process helps us see it's not our enemy. It's the body's way of offloading accumulated stress and tension."

"Successful people don't live without anxiety. They learn how to live with anxiety, recognizing it as a sign they're on the leading edge of possibility."

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Mentioned in this episode:

SPECIAL MIND HACK/WHOLE HUMAN FRAMEWORK PROGRAM BUNDLE

Anxiety, it's one of the most uncomfortable experiences a human being can endure. For some people, it's the constant hum in the background. And for others, it hits out of nowhere. Your heart starts racing, your breath gets shallow. You feel like you're literally going to die. And I know because I've been there. I had my first full blown panic attack at 17 years old. And for years after that, I struggled with anxiety. But here's what I learned. Almost everything we've been taught about anxiety is wrong. We treat it like an enemy, like there's something wrong with us. But what if that's not true? What if anxiety isn't here to ruin your life, but to actually reveal something extraordinary about yourself? What if you could finally understand it and not just manage anxiety, but transform it without pills, without years of therapy, without fighting yourself anymore. That's exactly what we're going to unlock in today's episode. Welcome to a Changed Mind. A journey into the topics that matter to you most. From the neuroscience and spirituality of mindset and personal growth, to groundbreaking strategies for health, wealth and relationships, to open and honest conversations about pressing global issues such as the environment, censorship, corporate capture and democracy. Each and every episode reminds us of the certainty of the goodness of the future and provides the teachings, tools, and timeless wisdom inspiring you to create real, lasting change in your life and in the world. If you've been desiring a sanctuary for your spirit, a place to go to tune out the distraction, negativity and doom and gloom so that you can tap into the deep power, the vibrancy, and the potential you have inside, you're in the right place. Welcome to a changed mind. Hey, guys. So today we're going to unpack anxiety. I know so many people struggling with anxiety, especially now with all the crazy chaos that seems to be going on in the world. And I struggled with anxiety for so many years. It started when I was 17 years old. I had a very rare, not serious health condition, but it was complex. And as a result of it, I ended up going from doctor to doctor to doctor. I was in really intense chronic pain for almost a year. I ran a lot of different tests that were very uncomfortable. I missed half my senior year of high school. And the way my body processed that was through anxiety. I started having panic attacks. And I remember the very first time I was training in Los Angeles with a specialized trainer because I was going away to play college basketball. I was driving back to Orange County, California, where I lived. And there's this area called the El Toro, Wyatt's, where Two really big highways come together and there's always a ton of traffic. It's very stressful driving through the El Toro Y. So I'm sitting there stuck in traffic, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I had this overwhelming feeling of fear and panic. It didn't make any intellectual sense. I could feel tingling in my fingers, my heart was racing. The best way that I can describe it was I felt like I was going to die and it did not make any sense. And that was the first time I. I had a full blown panic attack. And I had a series of these panic attacks. My mom took me to her psychiatrist. He said, well, David's got some anxiety. And in order to help him with his anxiety, because at this point it started to become crippling, we're going to give him some medication. And so for about 15 years I was on these anti anxiolytic meds until I turned 33 years old. And at 33, I got sober in my drug and alcohol and sex addiction recovery. And I decided at that point in time that I wanted to live a more holistic life and to get off of these anxiety medications. And when I did, it was like, holy. Like all of a sudden I had emotions I had never felt before. I felt connected to other people, connected to life, connected to myself, connected to God in ways that I hadn't. I realized, wow, I've been numbed out. And it makes sense because if you understand how these medications work, they suppress your nervous system so that you're not feeling it as much, so that the anxiety is not as intense. But you're also disconnecting from this incredible emotional technology that we have called the nervous system. So I get off of my meds, I'm starting to feel life again. But I'm also getting this full on frontal attack with everything else life has to offer, the good, the bad, and the hard. And so I made a decision, like, I got to figure out this anxiety thing because I like feeling in my life. I just don't like the experience of anxiety. And I want to share with you how I did it and the three big life changing mind shifts that I made that helped me not live a life without anxiety, but to actually live a life with anxiety and why that's not a problem for me anymore. In fact, by the end of this episode, you're going to understand why I'd never want to give up my anxiety for anything. So distinction number one, anxiety is a healing process. Now, I know that might sound crazy at first, but anxiety is actually One of the body's most extraordinary healing processes, because what has happened over the course of our lives is that we've been experiencing all kinds of experiences of our life and feeling frustration, anger, stress, overwhelm, feeling like there's not enough time, feeling like we're not good enough, feeling like we're not far along as we should be. Any of that sound familiar? Well, all of those emotions and the thoughts associated with them, they accumulate tension in the body. I would describe this as dissonant energy. It's energy that's not meant to stay in the body. It's meant to come out. It's our limiting beliefs. It's all of the negative emotions that we've experienced in nature. Animals actually have a way of offloading this. We can see, for example, that when animals have a confrontation, a stressful confrontation, they move into some sort of fight or flight. After they're done with that, they'll move their body, they'll shake their wings, they'll shake their bodies out, they'll go for a run, they're rolling the ground. So they have a way of offloading almost immediately this dissonant energy and this tension and then going back on with their daily business. But we've lost connection with that primal instinct of alleviating ourselves of stress. So as a result of that, we become emotionally constipated with all these energies in our body and our nervous system and in our cells. There's this accumulation over time. So we become emotionally constipated with all these energies, and we don't have a way to release the distant energy that we've accumulated. I mean, can you imagine, like, if you didn't take a shit for 30 years, how uncomfortable you would be? Well, we haven't taken an emotional poop for so long because we were told, hey, don't get upset, or hey, you shouldn't cry, or we're trying to fit into life and not upset anyone around us, and we hold it. We have a confrontation with a co worker, with a spouse, or even with a show that we're watching on television or a news broadcaster where we're arguing in our head. And we don't have a release mechanism for this tension. So over time, this accumulates and that accumulation, if not offloaded, begins to break down the body. So it starts to produce things like gut dysfunction or autoimmune disease or. Or cardiovascular disease, even cancers. So it's really interesting because if you look at the major disease categories today, and you can just go look anywhere with any official organization that you trust to give you health information. They all have different causes, every single disease. But the number one consistent thing you'll see from the medical authorities and the experts is that all of these major disease categories are stress related. It's like the number one thing that they say this is a stress related disease. Well, what does that mean? Well, it means that it's related to the accumulation that occurs over time. The accumulation of stress causes the disease. And one major way that your body is offloading stress is actually through the act of anxiety. That is your nervous system's way of processing the stress. Uncomfortable? Yes. Oftentimes terrifying, a hundred percent. But healthy? Yes. In fact, it's essential. And this isn't just an interesting idea that David came up with. It's scientifically proven. Dr. Stephen Porges, a neuroscientist and researcher who's best known for his polyvagal theory, demonstrated how mammals naturally discharge trauma and stress through physical movement and shaking, just like we talked about. But what's more, when they do this, it activates what's called the vagus nerve. This is one of the major regulatory nerves of the nervous system, which helps return the body to a state of safety and calm. And when humans suppress this natural discharge mechanism through social conditioning, again, like holding in your frustration or being told that you shouldn't cry, the unprocessed energy accumulates in our system, leading to chronic anxiety, tension, and various stress related disorders. So why is this important? It's important because understanding this helps us see that anxiety is a natural mechanism that is attempting to complete this natural discharge process. Or you can think about it as an emotional laxative. It's the body's way of pooping out all that unprocessed emotion that you've been holding up inside of you. So for most of us, it's time to have a big old emotional poop. The metaphor that I would give is a fever. Like when we have a fever most people understand. Medical practitioners would agree that the fever is a helpful mechanism. When there's something like a viral infection and the immune system needs to be activated, the body increases its temperature, which then creates a cascade of other immunological responses. We allow the fever to run its course. We're waiting and wanting the fever to break because then it's an indication that now the body systems have become activated for the healing process to be initiated. So I want you guys to think about this in relationship to anxiety. I want you to encourage yourself to be able to view anxiety as the same thing. Anxiety is the breaking of A fever. It's the activation of a response in the body to this accumulation, this constipation of unmetabolized emotions. And while the anxiety isn't comfortable, we want to allow it. So this is a big, big distinction. Anxiety is actually a healing process. It's not your enemy. I learned a really powerful distinction about healing that I view anxiety and fevers and really all symptoms through when my wife Carol and I were in Costa Rica doing indigenous medicine healing work, specifically with ayahuasca. And the shaman who facilitated this medicine experience, who's become a very good friend of ours, a healer by the name of Mitra Politi, after the ceremony, after the medicine ceremony, in the morning, explained that the discomfort that we were experiencing in ceremony the night before, the hallucinations, the psychedelic experience, the physical discomforts, the emotional discomforts, were actually all of the dissonant energies leaving our body. And he said, that's what the healing is. And he gave me a very powerful mantra, which is, what's coming is going. What I'm experiencing right now isn't invading me. The anxiety is not attacking me. The fever's not attacking me. It's not coming into my body. It's actually energy inside of me that's coming up to the surface to be released. But the key is to understand this and that this is a healing process and that the work is to actually allow it. In fact, this is a great mantra for life in general. Problem comes, discomforts come, anxiety and fear come, but they come to pass. What's coming is going. They don't come to stay, but they stay when we don't understand what's happening, when we move into fear and become afraid of the anxiety, which is just a natural, healthy process. See, the problem that occurs with anxiety is the meaning we give the experience of anxiety itself. Because rather than going, oh, this doesn't feel good, but I know this is good for me. This is my body's way of relieving me of all of the accumulated tension that I've had in my life. Instead, the story we tell about it is something more like, oh, my God, there's something wrong with me. There's something wrong with my body. What's going on? Why is this happening? This shouldn't be happening. What if I die? And the irony here is the story we tell about the uncomfortable physical experience of anxiety creates more tension on the system. To think about that for a moment here, your body's trying to alleviate you of tension, and in the process of alleviating that tension, the Meaning that you give that experience of the process creates even more fight or flight, more dissonant energy.

So while your body's trying to let go of this energy, you're pouring more dissonant energy into the top of the cup. And this is where and how we end up with chronic anxiety and anxiety disorder. My grandfather had this little toy that used to sit on his table, and I would grab it. It was called the Chinese Finger trap. And it was this little straw thing that had an opening on each end, and your index finger could fit in, and you'd put your fingers in and you'd pull on it to try to get your fingers out. But what would actually happen is this little straw contraption would just tighten around my left and my right finger. And the more I pulled, the tighter it got. And so the way that we experience anxiety, because we've never been educated as to what anxiety really is, and because we medicate it and actually shut down this natural healing process, and we're told it's something that hey, can be dealt with and maybe shouldn't be happening, and we've got some medicine for that. I'm not saying that medicine isn't appropriate. At a certain stage of you working with your anxiety. It. It is for a lot of people, and it was for me. But rather than allowing the anxiety and understanding truly what it is, we want to get away from the anxiety and think it's a problem. And so we're pulling proverbially on both sides of the Chinese finger trap. And it just gets tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter. So nobody's ever taught us, and doctors don't explain to us that anxiety is actually the same thing as a fever. It's an indication of a healing that's taking place. So what do we do? Well, the first thing we need to do is understand what anxiety is, which is this first distinction. Anxiety is a healing process. We have to know what's going on. Because if you understand what's going on, that will put you in an intellectual position to allow the experience rather than resist the experience or think something wrong is happening. This is really, really important because chronic anxiety is a result of the story that you tell about the anxiety that you're experiencing. If you can just tell a different story and know truly what's happening, even though it's uncomfortable, over time, the anxiety will pass. You'll allow the anxiety to diminish, and eventually the anxiety will pass. What I love about this as a lesson in my own life, is this is very much how we can interface with life. It's talking about accepting what is and knowing that what is is safe and is loving. That the problems that show up in our life are problems that come to pass. That life is always working for our greatest growth, our greatest prosperity and our greatest evolution. That we live in a loving body and that we live in a loving life. And anxiety is actually no different. And so the key here is to be able to experience anxiety differently and the anxiety will pass. Distinction number one is that anxiety is a healing. Distinction number two, and this is why I will never allow you to take my anxiety from me. Anxiety is a sign of expansion. So let me back this up for you. Anytime we move into some form of suffering or a negative emotional state, what we would call a primal state, like anxiety or fear or anger, a contrasting experience of life meaning something we don't like, what's happening at that moment is we're activating a desire for the opposite. You don't even have to intentionally do it. But when you experience financial insecurity, there's a desire that gets active in you for financial abundance, whether you're aware of it or not. And that desire that gets active inside of you is an electromagnetic phenomenon. There's an electrical activation in your nervous system and in your brain for the opposite of whatever you're experiencing that you don't like. And when that electrical activation takes place inside of you, there's a corresponding activation in the quantum field. So I've done other episodes on fourth dimensional creation and how we materialize our reality and how thoughts become things. But there are two dimensions that we're living in simultaneously. The third dimensional reality that we're used to living in, and the fourth dimensional reality. This was identified by the great mystic Neville Goddard. And through the work of both Neville Goddard and Abraham Hicks, I've come to understand that anytime I'm experiencing something that doesn't feel good, I'm activating a in the field. And 100% of the time that solution, that desire will manifest or materialize itself into my reality. And the key to it materializing is actually allowing and relaxing to downregulate my nervous system. So when you are experiencing some form of friction, for example, in your personal relationship, you're immediately placing a wish with the field. You're creating a connection and joy and peace and calm in your relationship in the field. And so part of the way this reality works is that we're supposed to experience problems in uncomfortable situations in order to activate and help us clarify our desires. And in the moment of the contraction or the discomfort. Abraham Hicks would describe it as a rocket of desire is launched. And so this is important to understand because we can then experience anxiety not only as a healing process, but as the starting point or the launch pad for the opposite of what's creating our anxiety. I'll give you an example. When I used to get on stage, I'd have a lot of anxiety. As a speaker, I would get on stage and I'd have a lot of fear. I was afraid that I wasn't going to do well or speak well or perform well, or that I was going to embarrass myself, and so I would feel anxiety. But all of those ideas that I don't like were creating in the field a future version of me, a powerful speaker, someone who was articulate, someone who was confident, someone who's going to provide a lot of value for the people in the audience that was being activated through this experience of contrast. And over the course of the last eight years, as I've learned how to relax and work with my limiting beliefs and be with my anxiety, I've materialized that reality. I've literally become that. David. So over a short period of time, exactly what was making me uncomfortable and what I was afraid of, I've created the opposite. I've become that. My life has become that. And so today, I'm able to get on stage and be calm. I'm able to get on stage and impact people. I'm able to get on stage and be that version of me that I was the exact opposite of and feeling the anxiety around. And many people have anxiety, for example, around money. So they're anxious that they're going to run out of money or they don't have enough. But what's happening when you're experiencing that anxiety is they're creating in the field a life where they have abundance and prosperity and where money is overflowing. So you can't have the expansion without the contraction. It's very much like the birth process. I got to witness my son being born. I obviously didn't give birth to my son. I don't want to pretend like I know anything like what that experience feels like, But I can imagine that my wife would very much prefer the expansion than the contraction. The contraction is super uncomfortable, and you have to breathe through it. And then there's a relief in the expansion. And if you can line up enough contractions and expansions and contractions and expansions, lo and behold, you give birth to a miracle. In this case, it's a child. But this is how we give birth to miracles in our own life. But the key is to allow that to occur. And that's the one thing we can't seem to do when we're battling with anxiety. One of my mentors, he gave me a metaphor years ago. He said, anxiety is like being on a roller coaster. The roller coaster invokes all these different emotions. Fear, oh, my God, I might die. Release of all kinds of hormones in your body that are part of the fight or flight mechanism. In many ways, it's a lot of the same feelings of anxiety. But you know that the roller coaster is going to end, and you know how it's going to end. It's going to end well. It's going to be safe. And that's part of the thrill of the roller coaster. So in this distinction of understanding that anxiety is a sign of you creating something extraordinary in your future, it gives us permission to relax in that discomfort, the real physical discomfort that the anxiety invokes. What we're talking about here are mind shifts that allow us to be with the anxiety, which ironically, over time alleviates us of the anxiety, but also allows us to create even more powerfully in our life. Because anxiety or fear or resistance is part of the process of us getting clear on what we want and placing that request into the field, or to God or Jesus or Allah or whoever you believe is fulfilling on that promise for you. Distinction number three. When you're experiencing anxiety, it means you're on the leading edge of possibility. This is really important to understand. Anxiety is an indication of being on the leading edge of possibility. So there are different types of anxiety, right? There's the kind of anxiety that I had when I was sitting in traffic, which was a healing process. It was also helping me get clear on how I wanted to be in relationship to how I was feeling. But there's also the type of anxiety that we have when we're moving into uncertainty, like when I was on stage. This is anxiety that is a byproduct of being on the leading edge of new possibility for you. And it's because your nervous system is designed to experience anxiety when you're in uncertainty. Anxiety goes along with uncertainty. So any successful person is actually living in anxiety, because any successful person is living on the edge of possibility or into the uncertainty. Because success is about creating a perpetual creation of growth in your life, and that comes from consistently moving into uncertainty. So I gave you the example of me speaking on stage. Uncertain, yes, but part of my growth edge. The example when I would Ask a woman out. The anxiety that I would feel leading up to that uncertainty, the yes or the no. But living on the leading edge of potentially meeting my soulmate but not knowing how she would respond. The anxiety of my first live event, not knowing how many people would show up, or whether or not we'd have enough sales to recuperate, the cost of the investment, or how I would show up at the event and whether or not people would receive value, but living into my leading edge.

So it's important to understand that in many ways anxiety is an indication that you are on the edge of your possibility. Whether that's growing your business or being in a relationship or having children, Becoming a new dad was incredibly anxiety invoking for me. I was living on my leading edge or performing athletically or in any type of sports competition. My brother, who's a professional jiu jitsu fighter, told me the anxiety that he feels before any of his competitions is extraordinary. And he said, there's so much uncertainty. And in that case, the uncertainty is I could have a bone broken, I could get choked out. And I said, well, why do you do it? And he said, because that's my leading edge. This is how I grow. And so if you're someone who's growth oriented, it's not about eliminating anxiety. It's learning how to be with the anxiety. And the way to be with the anxiety in a more efficient way is to eliminate the story that we tell ourselves. Anxiety is uncomfortable, yes, but so is growth, so is expansion, so is healing. But we can tolerate and live with that level of anxiety for the rewards that it affords us when we're not layering on top of that uncomfortable experience a story that's not true, that there's something wrong, that my body's attacking me, that this shouldn't be happening. So here's what I want you to understand. Successful people don't live without anxiety. They learn how to live with anxiety. Because the majority of the discomfort around anxiety is from the story that you tell yourself about the experience of anxiety. By eliminating that story, we're able to be with the anxiety a much more tolerable level. And I still experience what I would call baseline anxiety as I'm living on the edge of my possibility. But I'm no longer experiencing this self inflicted wound of anxiety story that makes the experience unmanageable and intolerable. It's very much in the same way that we go to the gym and our muscles hurt. You can actually love that feeling of the sore muscles after a workout. Because you know what's going on. Anxiety is an indication that you're growing, you're healing, you're getting stronger. It's part of the reward for your hard workout in life. You can almost take a little bit of pride in it. And so you can do that not only with working out in the gym, but working out in life with anxiety too. And this aligns perfectly with what Scripture teaches us. Consider it pure joy. My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. This is. James, this isn't about toxic positivity or pretending difficulty doesn't hurt. What I'm talking about is understanding that our trials, including anxiety, are actually developing something powerful within us. The word testing here comes from the Greek word do kimon, which refers to the process of purifying precious metals through fire. And just as gold becomes more valuable and pure through intense heat, our character, resilience and spiritual strength are refined through the challenges we face. When we understand anxiety through this lens, we can begin to see it not as punishment, but as preparation. Not as a sign we're broken, but as evidence that we're being strengthened for something greater. So remember these three transformational truths. First, anxiety is not an attack on your body. It's your body's healing process. What's coming is going to. Second, when you're experiencing anxiety, you're actually creating the expansion you desire in the field. And third, anxiety is an indicator that you're living on the leading edge of possibility, exactly where successful people live. And it's baby steps. One day at a time. As you experience your anxiety, if you can just remind yourself that what's taking place is healing, creation and growth, that's a new powerful rep in a new transformative direction. You've got an insight now that most people don't have. You're no longer living in the confusion that anxiety is the enemy. Because it's not. Anxiety is the friend. And if you love this episode and you know somebody who can benefit from hearing this, do me a favor, share it with them, pay it forward. And if you're serious about transforming your anxiety, jump on over to davidbear.com, subscribe to our newsletter. You're going to get a four part video training series that's going to help you master your mind and your anxiety and help you create the change that you've been wanting in any area of your life. It's absolutely free and my gift to you, but I love you very much. Thank you for allowing me to pay forward my victory over anxiety so we can live powerfully together. And I will see you in the next episode. Hey, it's David. One more thing. If you want to go even deeper on everything we've talked about on today's episode, don't forget to jump over to www.DavidBear.com. you can find the link in the show notes and subscribe to our newsletter a couple of times a week. I'm going be to be sending you the latest episodes that we've released, along with additional free trainings. You'll get immediate access to my free Mind Hack ebook and go even deeper into all the tools, the technologies, the frameworks that have helped tens of thousands of people establish a changed mind. Don't forget to jump on over to the site and I will see you in the next episode.