Your emotional state plays a significant role in your day to day effectiveness personally, professionally, and relationally.

Positive emotions can be empowering and motivating. Negative emotions can increase stress, reduce performance quality, and even lead to disease and death.

Emotions are powerful. Words are powerful, too.

Emotions are a direct result of your mindset, your focus, and your words. They created the negative emotional state in the first place. If they can do that, they can move you in the other direction, too.

It would be nice to know how to shift out of uncomfortable, harmful negative emotions as quickly as possible. It would be just as nice to know how to shift into a positive, helpful state as quickly as possible, too.

Did you know that an anxiety attack or a panic attack takes anywhere from 4 hours to 4 days to occur? It might seem to happen out of the clear, blue sky,” but it’s the result of your focus on negative thoughts, perceptions, and beliefs that generate any stressful state, including anxiety.

Are You A Skeptic, Too?

I’ve explained this process to dozens, if not hundreds, of people. Most of them look at me like there’s no way I could possibly know what I’m talking about.

They think it’s not possible to change how they feel. They think that how they feel is inevitable and a reflection of the truth. Further, they think only some miraculous change in their circumstances can make any difference for them.

One reason they think that is because it’s been reinforced in movies, literature, the media, and poorly trained counselors. Another reason is that strong feelings can be seductive. Many people become intrigued with their feelings and are obsessed with knowing “Why” they feel the way they do.

Of course it’s possible to change how you feel in a matter of seconds.

The truth is your feelings can be changed in as quickly as 30 seconds to 3 minutes with some practice.

Feelings are a by-product of your thoughts and beliefs. If you believe you’re in danger, you might feel fear. If you believe there is no hope, you might feel depressed. If you believe you have no control you might feel powerless.

When you change your thoughts and beliefs your emotions will change very quickly afterward.

• Step One is to accurately identify the adjective that best describes your negative emotion.Let’s take anxiety for example. The more specific and accurate you are about how you feel, the more effective is this process.
• Step Two is to rate the level of intensity of the emotion on a 0-10 scale.
• Step Three is to apply an intervention. In this article I’m illustrating the intervention that I call “Body Proclamation.”
• Step Four is to evaluate the result. Did the shift happen completely, partially, or not at all?
• Step Five is to either celebrate, or rinse and repeat the process. In my experience, the need to repeat the process is usually only needed no more than once. If the process isn’t successful after two attempts, you may have some internal resistance to making the change from negative to positive.

Here’s how it goes.

It’s a fact that whatever you focus on you get more of.

Let’s say your anxiety is an 8 on a zero to ten scale. The next step is to ask yourself, “How would I rather feel?”

That seems to be a really tough question for almost everyone. What I usually have heard is, “I just don’t want to feel anxiety!”

Saying that is just like saying, “Don’t think of Pink Elephants.” The unconscious mind only hears the subject of the sentence. It disregards the “Don’t” part.

If you say, “I just don’t want to feel anxiety,” you’re still focused on the anxiety and it persists.

How would you rather feel? It can be helpful to look up the antonym of anxiety in the dictionary. Although there are several, what I’ve found is that most for most people, one of the “Three C’s” will work just fine.

The Three C’s are either, “Calm, Confident, or Courageous.” Some people choose the word, “Peace.”

It’s important that the word you choose be the positive antithesis to the one that’s not working for you. Generally speaking, “Peace” is the antithesis of torment. “Calm, Confidence, and Courageous” are the antithesis of anxiety.

Let’s say you choose the word, “Calm.”

So the intervention is to tell your body, one area at a time to feel calm. It starts, for example, with saying, “My toes feel calm, my feet feel calm, my ankles feel very calm…,” and so on.

Work your way up all segments of your body this way and include the major internal organs. Keep going until you get to the top of your head. Speak it out loud with authenticity. Be sincere.

It may just be my imagination, but I think it’s helpful to use the word, “Very,” when speaking to your joints. For example, “My ankles are ‘very’ calm.”

When you’ve completed telling the parts of your body how to feel, the next step is to re-evaluate.

How anxious do you feel now on a zero to ten scale? How calm do you feel?

Repeat the process as many times as you like. Make sure you say the intention statement with authenticity and like you really mean it.

Keep going until you’re satisfied with how calm you feel and resume your day. Support yourself by repeating it a few times per day preventatively.

Here’s a short video tutorial:

What if it doesn’t seem to work?

There are a few common reasons why it may not work 100%. You can download a free PDF explaining reasons why it may not work 100% and specific steps you can take to improve your results.

It takes repeated practice. Repeated practice begins to gradually refocus your mind onto how you would rather feel and make it more of a habit.

Changing your thoughts and speech can literally change your life.

Very Sincerely,

John Mason