The tool of perspective for reducing anxiety.
This is a coping tool by reducing anxiety and stress.
It is a tool that will also, when used over and over again, help to reprogram your brain’s propensity for hope and optimism and reduce the brains propensity for overwhelm, stress and anxiety. Because the brain is a habit machine, we need to teach it better serving habits.
The Clarity of distance
This is like a rescue remedy when you are feeling stressed or overwhelmed.
For many of us, it is possible that our neural pathways and therefore our cellular memory has formed the habit of stress, anxiety, overthinking and overwhelm as its ‘norm’.
It feels like a familiar vibrational energy to hold in the body. To the degree where, it may seem foreign to imagine life void of this vibrational energy. What might it be like not to feel the stress or the overwhelm or the anxiety or the overthinking or the worry? For some, it is difficult to contemplate not holding this vibration. The brain in this case, really needs to be gently retrained.
Clarity of distance is about drawing yourself up out of the detail so that you are not immersed in the situation or the drama (immersed like a piece of bread in a pond) that would cause you to feel hijacked by the fear, the worry, the stress of an ‘in the moment’ situation or an ongoing situation etc.
When we find ourself getting hijacked by fear, stress, overwhelm, anxiety, energy we have just pinned a meaning to the situation. We have just flung ourself into the middle of the pond and we are the piece of bread being saturated by the surrounding water which is the surrounding situation/stress energy.
Perspective is about either not flinging ourself into the middle of that pond or if we have found ourself treading water saturated by the situation/stress, we need a life raft to lift us out so that we can shake off the excess water/stress and place ourself in a more general, less overwhelmed emotional position.
When we place ourself in a more general less overwhelmed position, we have more space around us to choose different thoughts, to feel a different vibration, to consider different ways of processing things and thinking of different solutions.
When you find yourself, immersed in the middle of the overwhelm or stress or anxiety etc., it means you have pinned a meaning on something, I might ask you, “what are you making that mean”? Just because you are pinning a meaning on something, does not mean you are right, it does not mean that is the only way to look at a situation, it just means you have strapped an anchor to yourself and dropped it into the pond. So you are now immersed in the stress of a situation based on what you are making it mean.
Clarity of distance is what a coach has. It is what a coach encourages you to evoke when we work with you. I often ask people to come and sit up on the moon with me. To look down at the landscape of your life, to see the broader landscape around you, so that you can see many other possible ways of viewing what is going on. There are always several ways to view any situation. We can chose a disempowering way to view a situation (out of old habit and limiting self beliefs) or we can choose a general way to view a situation, or we can choose an empowering way to view a situation.
Sometimes, viewing in a general way, is the best tool, because it is believable, achievable and it reduces the degree of negative vibrations by 50%, 70%, 90%. And when your stress and anxiety or worry and overwhelm are physically reduced in your brain, different things are possible. Different thoughts are possible, and a better vibration is inevitable. The chemicals are different.
This tool assists you not to dissolve like a disprin in the water where you and the stress are so intertwined that there is no out, there is no relief. Clarity of distance is about, separating yourself from the situation. The stress, the anxiety the depression the worry etc., are now external from you. You take yourself up out of the detail of the situation and you sit on the moon just looking down and you see the broader perspective of life all around you and you put more perspective to your situation. This often makes the situation seem much smaller and less overwhelming compared to when you are lost in the forest for the trees, engulfed by the situation, making it mean something that creates that negative vibration in your body creating nasty chemicals in your brain.
When you are on the moon, looking down at your human, in that moment in your time line, feeling what they are feeling, doing what they are doing, not doing what they are not doing, what is it, that you would say to yourself in that moment, from your position on the moon? What is it that you can see from up on the moon that allows you a vantage point that expands your capacity to know more, see more and decide better?
Also, to add to this clarity of distance tool ask yourself the 10 x 10 x 10 question,
How much will this matter in 10hrs
How much is this going to matter in 10 days
How much is this going to matter in 10 weeks
How much is this going to matter in 10 months
How much is this going to matter in 10 years
When life or a situation hijacks your vibration, go sit on the moon look down, get the broader perspective into play, ask yourself, what am I making this mean, is there an old energy wound or limiting belief being triggered, how can I let go of the negative energy and also, will this matter in 10 x 10 x 10 x 10
Just another little gem of a tool to add to your tool kit of coping strategies.
When practiced though, you really will transform the habit system. The habit system that may be used to flinging into overdrive, it can be tamed, and retrained. Sit on the moon, release the velocity or the extremeness of the negative vibration by pulling yourself up out of being immersed in the detail and putting a broader clarity of distance perspective to the situation.
Practice, practice, practice.
Roslyn Loxton
Peak Performance & Mindset Coach | Eliminator of Self Limiting Beliefs
Brisbane Life Coach | Mindset Coach | Counsellor
