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Audio Journal: If You're Feeling Anxious, Try This · The Daily Writer

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: We normally think of our writing as something that benefits other people.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: If we're doing copywriting, we're doing client work, we're doing uh blog posts, we're doing social media posts, and whatever else that we're writing, we normally think of it as something we do that other people see and that benefits them.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, we look at it as kind of a one-way street from us to the reader.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: But your writing is also for you.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to share with you a really super simple and quick writing exercise that really helps me and it might uh help you as well.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: So here's how it goes, and I'll use this morning as an example.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm recording this on Tuesday, October the 6th.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: This episode won't come out for a few days, but this morning when I came into work, I was just feeling um extra anxious.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh part of that anxiety was that I'm going out of town for a few days, and you know, traveling kind of disrupts your schedule, and uh traveling always makes me anxious for some reason.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not exactly sure why.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: And there were three or four other just life situations that I was feeling particularly anxious and stressed about.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, keep in mind, there's nothing bad going on, uh, nobody's done anything.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's nothing like that.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's just kind of everyday life stuff that whenever it's all compounded together, whenever there's several things happening at once, it just sort of compounds in your mind and in your heart, and you can kind of feel your blood pressure rising a little bit, and you can feel your anxiety and stress level going up.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: At least that's the way it works with me.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: So when I'm feeling those emotions, when I'm feeling anxiety and uh stress, something I often do is I just sit down and I grab a, in this case, I grabbed a legal pad, and I just make a list of all the things that I'm feeling anxious or stressed about.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so I literally took 15 seconds.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's all the time that it took.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: I took a you know 15 or 20 seconds and I wrote down five or six things.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: I just made a simple list of here's everything that's kind of bothering me today.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Again, this was nothing that anybody had done to me, or um there's no situations where I'm in conflict with somebody or anything like that.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're just kind of life situations that I was stressed and anxious about.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I made the list, and oftentimes when I do this, well, in fact, this happens almost 100% of the time, I looked at the list and I thought, hmm, that's interesting because everything is gonna be okay.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: I looked at the list and I thought, you know, it's kind of silly for me to be so stressed out about these and feeling anxious because I know everything's gonna be okay.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the interesting thing about this exercise, at least this is what happens with me, is whenever I see those things written down on a piece of paper, whenever I see them in black and white, uh, in this case in black and yellow, because I was using a legal pad, whenever I see those actually written down, that takes the power out of those things to cause me stress and anxiety and feeling overwhelmed.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's something about writing those things down and giving a name to those fears and those anxiety-producing situations.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's something about doing that that really takes the power out of them.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're feeling anxious today, if you're feeling stressed, which probably everybody in the world right now is feeling anxiety and stress, that there's several major level things happening in the world right now that uh people are stressed about, plus just all the everyday life stuff that we go through.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you're feeling that, I would encourage you just to literally take 60 seconds and do this exercise.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Write down all the things that are frustrating you or causing you stress or anxiety, and just look at those and see if that doesn't help take the power out of those things.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this really helps me, and I hope that it helps you as well.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: I will see you in the next episode.