This is EXACTLY how I eliminated anxiety from my life

Yesterday I had a call with a young man who reminded me of an earlier version of myself.

He mentioned he had struggled with drugs and alcohol since being a teenager.

He started having panic attacks and his anxiety has been getting progressively worse through his 20’s.

He wasn’t able to hold down his job due to mental health issues.

He had become addicted to substances as his coping mechanisms.

He had mental health issues in his family.

His social environment didn’t sound very healthy either.

I’m writing this blog for him because I know that terrain all too well.

It sounds almost identical to my own experience as a young man.

Now I’m sure it’s NOT the same because everyone has their own unique experience with anxiety.

However after working with 100’s of people struggling, I have started to recognise patterns.

The same patterns show up over and over again.

For men in their 20’s and 30’s, what you’ve just read is a common experience.

I personally went through it and I’ve worked with dozens of young men in the same situation.

This is not what happens to everyone but it is an experience I know a lot of people will resonate with.

In this blog, I’m going to share exactly how I eliminated anxiety from my life coming from this type of experience earlier in life.

Deciding To Change

The first part of the process for a person in this kind of situation is the DECISION to change.

For the longest time, I didn’t change because I didn’t DECIDE to change.

I was too comfortable in my social environment, drinking with my friends every weekend and to be honest, sometimes even having a really good time.

It was fun.

I can’t deny that.

But come Monday morning (or Sunday night), I would feel like an anxious mess.

• I would hate myself.
• I would struggle to sleep.
• I would overthink everything.
• I would doubt myself.
• I would be constantly on edge. 

I didn’t know it was anxiety at the time but now I’m more aware of what anxiety is, I can say all of this were symptoms of anxiety that I didn’t know I had.

All of these issues would lead to a poor quality of life during the week.

I would be a very average worker.

I would hate my job.

I had no good routines.

I was basically just surviving.

• I knew deep down that this wasn’t a good way to live.
• I knew deep down that I had more potential.
• I knew deep down that I needed to change.

But for the life of me, I couldn’t bring myself to make the changes.

I ended up distancing myself from my friends.

I went travelling around the world to try and escape.

But most of the time I’d just find new people to drink and party with.

It was a vicious cycle that I was stuck in for close to 10 years.

It caused me to fuck up all kinds of things in my life.

• I had panic attacks that made me physically sick.
• I was concerned for my life.
• I lost a few jobs.
• I lost good relationships.
• I was straight up unhealthy.

I thought I was going crazy at times.

That was not fun.

It consumed my early twenties and really held me back from making any meaningful progress in my life back then.

Learning to Meditate

During all of this, I learned to meditate. 

It wasn’t easy in the beginning.

I would get frustrated at myself.

I would feel like an idiot.

I would second guess myself.

But I had read a blog post one day when I was about 17 years old that said if I meditate for a few years then I’d become a “superhuman”, so I stuck at it.

I didn’t know it at the time but this practice would set me free.

I learned some important things from my meditation practice.

• I learned to be disciplined and consistent.
• I learned to detach myself from my thoughts.
• I learned to process my difficult emotions.
• I learned to accept my past and heal my trauma.
• I learned to feel safe in my mind and body.
• I learned to regulate my nervous system.
• I learned to open up to my spiritual side.

I didn’t realise it at the time but through my meditation practice...

I was healing my trauma, I was regulating my nervous system and I was able to reframe my thoughts and beliefs.

Meditation is so interesting because when you learn to quiet down your conscious thinking mind, it allows you to open up the subconscious emotional mind.

When the subconscious mind opens up in meditation, you start having all these memories float to the surface of your awareness.

When you’re in meditation and you have these memories “coming up” while you’re in this safe environment of mindfulness, it allows you to process things that have been left unresolved.

This is actually why meditation can be so hard for people...

Because they don’t know that’s what’s happening.

Most people sit down to meditate, start feeling anxious, frustrated or annoyed and so they quit.

Without knowing, those feelings that are coming up, are coming up to be resolved.

They’re not coming up because something is wrong with you, they’re coming up because they need to come up for the healing process to take place.

This is why meditation is so powerful when you learn to do it properly.

This is why it's been such a healing practice for me and one that I am now so passionate about teaching others.

This simple habit was a game changer that helped me build my self confidence up and start getting my life back on track.

But I was still drinking and doing drugs…

Going Sober

In 2018, when I was 25 years old, I decided to go sober for 12-months.

This was hands down the most transformative year of my life.

I had tried to go sober before and I had done 1 month or 3 months but then I would always go back to drinking and doing drugs with the same kind of energy.

I had a really bad relationship with drugs and alcohol.

It runs in my family as well so I had this really warped idea about it.

My poison of choice was really anything from alcohol to weed to mdma to cocaine and I also tried a wide range of psychedelics like acid and mushrooms.

When I went sober for a year, I completely changed my relationship with substances.

I also completely changed my relationship with myself.

I used to use drugs and alcohol as some kind of courage booster or confidence booster.

The funny thing was it never actually worked that well for my confidence because it wasn’t real, it was fake.

So I would always end up worse when I wasn’t drinking or on drugs.

Again, this fed a vicious cycle of self hatred and self doubt.

When I went sober for the year, I was forced to confront all of my insecurities.

I was forced to sit with the emotions I had been avoiding for so long.

You know what the crazy thing was?

My confidence skyrocketed.

I won’t go into it too much but when I was in my late teens and early twenties, I didn’t have much luck with girls.

When I went sober, I was going on more dates and talking to more girls than I had ever before.

I was actually confident and it was showing in the way people were relating to me.

Not just that, I felt confident. I felt truly comfortable in my own skin.

This was a game changer for me.

I’m 32 now with a wife and 2 kids.

I run a successful business that’s helped 100’s of people.

I’m living my purpose.

I’m fit and healthy.

That year of sobriety was the turning point that made all of this possible.

Now I don’t have any significant anxiety.

Anxiety still shows up from time to time because it’s normal for that to happen.

All humans experience anxiety or anxiousness.

That feeling of being a bit scared, stressed, nervous or worried.

It’s a natural human experience.

What I learned to do is just let it be without feeding the monster.

I stopped getting involved in it.

I learned to allow the thoughts and feelings to come and go so it’s not a problem anymore.

Now I have more energy to focus on my goals and how I actually want to live my life.

The Summary

So to summarise everything I did to eliminate anxiety and tie this blog post up in a nice little conclusion, here’s a list…

1. I had to DECIDE to make changes.
2. I learned to meditate, detach from thoughts & emotions + heal trauma.
3. I stopped drinking and drugs that were harming my mind and body.
4. I worked on facing my insecurities from a place of sobriety.
5. I worked on building my confidence naturally.

Finally, I was consistent. I’ve been doing this for 15 years now.

Constantly improving myself day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year.

Over the years, I’ve learned a lot more about nervous system regulation, reprogramming subconscious beliefs and healing trauma. 

Understanding these things is important (and I teach a lot of this in my coaching program).

However when you boil it down to a clear focus on the solution that actually generates results...

The solution is changing your habits and behaviors.

Even when it comes to healing trauma, reprogramming your mind or regulating your nervous system, you need to implement certain habits and behaviours to do those things...

If you have resistance to this idea, it’s your ego.

Your ego will say “I’m special” or “I’m different” or “this won’t work for me”.

You’re wrong.

You may have a different situation to the one I’ve explained in this blog post but the solution is the same

The same principles for healing apply to everyone.

• Stop doing stuff that makes you sick.
• Start doing stuff that makes you healthy.

Don’t buy into the mental stories you tell yourself (or others have told you) about your “trauma” or your “special situation” or how you’re “different”.

These mental stories often do more harm than good.

Focus on the road ahead. 

Not the road behind.

After working with 300+ coaching clients, I can confidently say, anxiety can be solved with this approach.

I don’t think it needs to take you 10 years like it took me, but that long-term mindset does help if you want to make sustainable change.

In my experience working with 100’s of different people, we can reduce the time to get your anxiety under control to within 3-6 months.

It took me a long time because I figured it all out by myself.

I didn’t have any help.

You can do it on your own if you want.

There’s plenty of helpful free content on my blog page and social media.

But if you want a proven and tested pathway to eliminate anxiety and find peace within the next few months (and have accountability to stick with the process), I have developed a program that does just that.

If you’d like to learn more about my Mind Launch Method, you can check out the short 5-minute explainer video on my website here.

Whatever you decide to do, I want you to know...

You got this.

With Optimism,

Josh