#ATCF: Untying the Stress Knot: 3 Ways to Wake Up from Anxiety

Vance Crowe [00:00:11] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Well, I was supposed to have a substance abuse counselor on the podcast today, but the phone calls I made didn't get returned. And I found myself kind of agonizing over this because I was spending a lot of time finding a podcast guest when just like you, I have a hundred other things to be doing, and the fact that somebody isn't calling me back is like getting in my way from getting all the things done that I need to do. And I found myself having so much frustration and stress about this that I realized like, wait a second, this month's topic, untying the knot, breaking the back of the knot so you can untie and loosen the things that have a grip on you. A perfect thing to talk about would be this stress and anxiety, because there is no way out of stress and anxiety if you are a person that has responsibilities. If people count on you, whether you're a parent or a husband or a friend or an employee or an employer, if you are a person that has people depending on you, then there's some level of stress. And if you have ambitions or if you have things that you wanna reach or the obligations you need to meet, then you are inevitably going to run into obstacles that will keep you from that. Now, in this example, mine was a person wouldn't schedule for the podcast, but this is on top of all the other challenges and things you have going on in your life.

Vance Crowe [00:01:45] And so it becomes so easy to get frustrated and angry that I wanted to talk about like, what are the ways you can get past this? What are the ways that you can figure out like not how to not have stress anymore, but how to deal with it? And I really only have two good coping methods, may maybe three I, I guess I guess three. And I'm sharing these with you, not because they are the three best or the three that you just have to try, but because if I put these out there and they aren't coping mechanisms you're using, then you can take them on in your own life. But maybe I'm gonna share things with you and you're gonna be like, ah, Vance, you're missing the most important one. This is what you should be doing. This is something that works for me and that would be really deeply valuable. So I'm gonna share the things that I do to be able to work my way through stress and anxiety about everyday things. And some of these everyday things are real, you know, real actual problems. You don't solve this. You're gonna have an actual issue. And I know that if you're listening to this, like you have real problems in your life, it could be that you don't know what you are going to do to, to make your finances work. It could be that you have a family member that you're worried about, maybe you're worried about your own health, right? Every single person, no matter how easy their life looks, definitely, definitely, definitely has stresses and problems and obstacles that get in their way.

Vance Crowe [00:03:20] And that maybe is the first thing to think about is that it, you look around and you see people like, they don't have my problems. If they had my problems, they wouldn't look that happy, or they wouldn't look that able to just set down their issues. And that's okay. That's a natural thing that happens to humans. I find myself all the time thinking, oh man, if I could just be that guy then, then I could be happier, then I could be more present. But that's a reality that once you accept that everybody has these challenges, whether they're rich or poor, you know, whether they're fully abled or have all kinds of problems that are apparent to you, and obvious, everybody has problems underneath the surface, problems that you couldn't possibly understand unless you were living inside of their own existence. So just having that knowledge has really, it's made me relax a little bit more. It's made me be a less envy driven person. I guess I'm kind of embarrassed to say that. So what are the things that I do to help unburden my anxiety? Well, the first thing that I have come to realize is if I wake up at three 30 in the morning and I'm tossing and turning, if I don't fall back asleep pretty quickly right after I wake up, then I get outta bed. I don't delay it, I get outta bed and I go to my special dad chair and I pull out my journal and I write down everything that I can about what's going on in my world, the things that I need to solve. And this usually takes me like five, 10 minutes.

Vance Crowe [00:04:50] And then when I get that done, I find that when I go to lay back down now, at least those ideas are out of my head. My brain isn't being like, don't forget this, don't forget that. And it's not to say that I'm writing a to-do list. I'm actually just writing like, Hey, these are the things that I'm worried about or that I'm bothered by. And somehow writing them down makes me feel a lot better. And, and usually I get to go back to sleep. And if I can go back to sleep, my anxiety the next morning feels a lot better because I'm not both anxious and tired. Then the the second thing that I always do when I feel anxiety or stress is I try and observe how much I'm thinking about the future. So I look at all of the conversations that I've had in the last 10 minutes, the last hour, the last 24 hours, and I ask myself, how present was I there, you know, was, was my daughter asking me for something? And I was just kind of placating her? Was my wife telling me about something big going on in her life or with her work or with something she's seen with the children that I'm just kind of nodding my head and moving past? And now the reason that I do this is because I almost inevitably will discover that when I am feeling the most anxious is when I am the most asleep. And what I mean by that is I'm thinking so much either about things that have happened in the past, or the things that I'm worried about in the future, that I am not present in my, in my life.

Vance Crowe [00:06:28] And the presence in your own life. Being awake and being alert is actually the only place that you can solve problems. It's the only place if you have your attention and it is thinking about the future or the past, you're not resolving anything. And in fact, you're probably making things worse. You're probably making people that love you and care about you and want to see the best for you and want the best out of you. You're probably making them feel like you're distant. And so when I do that, and I look back on the last 24 hours about what conversations I've been in and, and where I've not been present, I start to think, okay, well, I can't go back and change any of that, but I want to try and be awake for the next few hours. I wanna try and be as present as I can. So that usually means I put my phone away. I, I set a little timeline where I'm saying, I'm not gonna work on any of my problems for a little while. I'm just gonna attend to what's here. And that may seem paradoxical, right? Like, Hey, you got problems, you got stress. Why don't you just buckle down and work on it? But I've found that if I attend to the people around me that care about me, and if I'm really paying attention, many of the problems that I think are huge problems settle into their, their actually appropriate place, their appropriate priority. And I also get to have that feeling of being fully present with other people, which makes that my whole demeanor, everything about me feel better and more relaxed.

Vance Crowe [00:07:59] So the next thing I do after I journal is I try and observe, you know, where have I been present and where have I been asleep? And try and wake myself up to being as present as possible for as much as I can, and to try and avoid the trap of thinking too much about the past and the future. And then finally, the third thing, and this is something I just learned about, I don't know, a couple of months ago, and it has made a really, really big difference with me. And that is, whenever I'm feeling really stressed or really any strong emotion, even happiness, I try and imagine myself about a foot and a half away from me. And, and I'm watching this human that is me, and I'm watching how he's reacting, what he's feeling, what he's thinking. And I try and be as objective as I possibly can, right? I try and look at like, well, he's really getting frustrated. And I think it's because there's a whole bunch of noise, like there's some music on over there, and both the kids are yelling. And if he had had some foresight, he would've thought to do things maybe a little bit differently. But I never really let that person, that's about a foot and a half away from me, my own mind's eye. I never let him be mean to me. He's just making observations about what's going on with this human sitting right in front of me. And there's something kind of liberating about having this perspective, about having this thing where it's like, what's going on?

Vance Crowe [00:09:36] Why is this person feeling this way? Because if you can observe yourself from outside of yourself, now you can start to both be kinder, you can be gentler and, and just kind of understanding. Well, there's a lot going on for him right now. And the other thing is, you can notice where you're being silly. You can notice what it is that you're doing that's contributing to this problem. And at first, I did this only when I was stressed and I found that this really, really helped. In fact, this is what made me observe that I shouldn't drink the coffee, right? It was me being like, Hmm, that the, the guy is stressed and he thinks the cup of coffee is gonna make him feel better, but it turns out that's not gonna help him. And then when I communicate that with myself, I feel a lot better. Right? Then I have this conversation about what I can do. But what I've noticed more recently is that when I'm feeling these moments of euphoria or excitement or like unbridled, like, Hey, these things are working normally because I'm an extrovert, because I love positive emotion, I sink into those moments and those are just the greatest that I can have. But now, because I've been observing myself from that foot and a half, right? When I'm at my peak happiness, I realize like, wait a second. You should try and temper this. Is everything gonna be great? Now, maybe not. You know, is everything solved? No, probably not.

Vance Crowe [00:11:07] You got other issues? Should you be feeling good about this? Yeah, probably, you know, this was a good thing. But that observation allows me to step back and make it so I don't go too high up that mountain because inevitably you're gonna crash down. And I think a younger version of myself would've said, why would you do that? Why would you stop yourself from feeling enthusiasm and excitement? You know, good things don't always happen. But I realized that many of the times when I'm feeling down happen as a result of feeling wildly high as I, as I was feeling good. And so the difference between those two made me feel like I was careening towards the floor. When if I had just really been more balanced, not just about how bad things are, but really about how good things are, then maybe I wouldn't have these emotional ups and downs. So these are the three things that I've been doing to kind of quell the anxiety that keeps me from being present. And it allows me to be more creative and think through challenges. And I've found that just sitting here and talking with you about it actually has made me more observant about other things. So I hope that as you're listening to this and you're thinking about untying the knots that are difficult for you, you apply some of these ideas. Or if you have solved ways to make yourself be less anxious, less stressed, better under in control of yourself, I would love to hear it.

Vance Crowe [00:12:40] And you can send an email to me at Vance at Legacy Interviews dot com. I would, I would love to, to read about that and to hear more about it. Alright, at the end of this podcast, if you've stayed all the way here, then I wanna share something with you that I'm really proud of. At the end of last week, my editor came to me and said, Hey, you know, we had some footage of Zach Smith, the fantastic stock cropper. He recorded a, a testimonial about what it was like to have his dad do a legacy interview. And I've recorded that and I've kind of edited it up and I put it together and I saw it. And it was a very proud moment for me. And it was proud because I heard this guy that had had bought a service that we had used, put something together that was really compelling and, and to talk about it in a way that I thought was really honest and open and authentic. And then my editor really unprompted said, Hey, I think I can make this something watchable, something people will enjoy. And so he did. And I sent this off to my good friend Steve, who listens to the podcast every week. And I got a text message back from him that it made him tear up and that he watched it multiple times. And so I was like, you know what? That's great and I wanna share this with people. I want to try and get it out there and I know I can put it up on my website and I can try and put it out on emails. But really my podcast, you the listener, you and I have built this relationship. You've been along with me while we're doing Legacy Interviews, so I'm excited to share this with you.

Vance Crowe [00:14:12] So I hope you enjoy this, this little audio clip of Zach Smith talking about doing the legacy interview with this dad. One quick note is if you are living anywhere in the Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota area, there is on August 26th, gonna be a field day with Zach Smith, and he's in Buffalo Center, Iowa, and he's invited me up to see it. I'm really excited to see it because he's the guy that's made that stock cropper thing. The, the thing where your goats go in front of your chickens and then go in front of your pigs and it moves in between the fields. And it's a really interesting way to integrate crops and and animals together. And I'm gonna go up to it on August 26th. I, I have included the link to his event in my show notes. I would love to see you there. I'm gonna be there and, and, and I think it's just a really cool thing and I wanna see Zach be successful. So, alright, without further ado, let's, let's do the little thing with Zach. Thank you so much for being here and we'll be back next week with some more on Untying the Nut.

Guest [00:15:24] So you bought a legacy

Vance Crowe [00:15:24] Interview for your father. Tell

Guest [00:15:26] Me about that

Vance Crowe [00:15:26] Experience,

Guest [00:15:27] Been following your podcast and I saw this service that you were starting to offer, and I thought that's kind of an interesting idea, the stuff that you were unearthing and the value that was being created. My dad is a great, great storyteller. He comes from a lineage of great storytellers and like, this might be a really cool thing to do for my, not only for my dad, for his 70th birthday, but for our family and our lineage to come for a long time. 'cause my grandmother wasn't a fantastic storyteller and she wrote a lot of things down, but, you know, we don't have any video evidence of her mannerisms and the way that she was. And like, I never got to meet my, my grandfather, he died before I was born. And like, to have something like that and capture it, you know, and since I, I did it and I told other people about the idea, they're like, I would've given anything. Like they had a parent die too soon. Like, I would give anything to be able to go back and watch a video of my mom or my dad and talk and, and to be able to show my kids who never had the opportunity to meet 'em and to pass those, to pass those things on. And then my own children, I think question who I am or why I am the way I am. But when you can see that in a generation before from like grandpa or grandma and you start, okay, well this is why dad

Vance Crowe [00:16:43] Was this way, and

Guest [00:16:44] Like, wait, I'm kind of that way too. And it starts to connect the dots across multi-generations about who we are and, and why we are who we are. I didn't know my, my father was reluctant. I think like a lot of people that don't like to talk or share things to drive to St. Louis to make a eight hour drive to come down and talk to a stranger in a studio that have no idea, you know, how this is going to go. Is it gonna be kept private? You know, I don't want this to get out 'cause a lot of personal information, but, you know, you've done a masterful job of packaging it to, to make it feel secure and, and the way that you handled my dad with guiding him, kinda like a Sherpa, you know, for my dad because he would go all over the place and you would rope him in and, and keep him on a track that made sense in the presentation. And I couldn't be happier with the investment. I told you this before, you know, I'd pay double, at least probably for the value of what I ascertained. It's, it's an investment and, but it's an investment that will stand the test of time. So thank you. Ah.