“How To Stop Anxiety
In 10 Minutes Or Less
Without Harmful Drugs or Endless Therapy"

By Mark Shepard, NLPT

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You can either watch the 9 part video series on the previous page or scroll down and read the text instructions (or both)

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Part One
What is Anxiety?

When you experience Anxiety, what are you thinking of?

• Are you imagining wonderful pictures in your mind of fluffy clouds floating lazily through a blue summer sky?
• Are you imagining your loved ones home safe and sound?
• Are you imagining that attractive person of the opposite sex wanting to go on a date with you?
• Are you seeing yourself finishing your speech to wild applause?
• Are you imagining perfect health throughout your body?
• Are you experiencing the safe landing of your airplane in your mind's eye?
• Do you see yourself passing your exams with flying colors?

Let me take a wild guess...you're not.

Whatever it is you get anxious about, I know from my own experience as an anxiety sufferer as well as working with countless clients and groups,  you are probably thinking about what you don't want to have happen. If you're like me, you're probably pretty good at imagining the "worst case scenario." Am I right? Or am I right?

What is Anxiety?

Anxiety is thinking about what you do not want to have happen.

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Thinking about what you do not want to have happen is such a powerful thing because your unconscious mind does not know the difference between what is real and what is imagined. So if you imagine the worst, your brain starts pumping fight or flight chemicals through your body. It's a great cocktail to get you out of trouble (if you're being chased by a lion) but it gets toxic pretty fast.

Particularly when it repeatedly turns out to be just another false alarm.

Can we play for a moment?

Imagine a beautiful, immaculate kitchen with dappled sun light streaming through the windows. On the counter is a cutting board and a bowl of beautiful, perfectly ripe lemons.

Take a lemon and cut it in half. Notice the pungent spray of oils from the lemon rind sparkling in a sunbeam...And then the fresh lemon scent filling your nostrils...Now cut a wedge from the lemon and imagine putting it into your mouth and biting into the juicy, pulpy, sour fruit...

Chances are you have more saliva in your mouth right now than you did a moment ago. True?

But there is no lemon here. You did this exercise in your imagination.  Your body responded as if there really was a lemon.

So that's why anxiety is so nasty to experience. We imagine something really bad happening and then our body literally goes through the experience as if it is real.

Imagining it is every bit as traumatic as actually experiencing it in reality.

The better you are at using your imagination the more intense your anxiety can be. The good news is, the better you are at using your imagination the more power you have to destroy anxiety forever.

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Anxiety is all about the future. It's imagining something bad happening in the future.

A Phobia is a one time learning event that happened in the past in response to some traumatic event.

Classic example I overhead the other day: A woman said she never goes swimming or on a boat or even near the water because when she was 4 years old, her father threw her into the pool  to teach her how to swim....So she has a phobia about water. And anxiety about what might happen if she encounters water in the future.

So there is usually an anxiety component with every phobia.

By the way, I've had a lot of success with helping phobia sufferers in a very short time as well but it usually takes me a bit longer than 10 minutes. So today we'll stick with clearing anxiety okay?

So again, the difference between Anxiety and a Phobia is: anxiety is about the future and a phobia is an intense conditioned response to a traumatic event in the past.

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As I discussed a minute ago. Anxiety is thinking about what you don't want to have happen. Because your unconscious mind does not know the difference between what is real and what is imagined, your body reacts as if the event is real.

So now picture what happens in typical talk therapy. You talk about the problem. You describe it in detail. You go over it and over it. If you're anything like me or my clients, during this talking, you are seeing the negative experience through your own eyes in your imagination. Your body is reacting. You could actually be making the problem worse...just by talking about it.

In fact, chances are you are associating or "anchoring" the problem to the therapist. So after a few weeks of this, just going to the therapist's office brings up the pain. Then seeing the therapist's face and hearing the sound of the therapist's voice become negative anchors as well. Everything about the therapist and the therapist's office begins to act as a trigger that reinforces the problem.

Now, don't get me wrong. Your therapist is well meaning and really wants you to feel better. Most therapists just haven't been trained in this particular technique or any of the others that I use everyday to help myself and my clients. I sincerely hope you'll learn this and teach it to your family and friends and yes, even to your therapist.

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The flip answer of course is "Stop Thinking about what you don't want to happen."

But that's not very helpful because another thing you may not know about your unconscious mind, is that it doesn't process a negative very well.

For example: Don't think of a blue tree!

What happens? You thought of a blue tree didn't you?

So telling yourself to not think about something bad happening in the future is like unintentionally "programming" yourself to think about something bad happening in the future. Does that make sense?

The solution is to purposely think about what you do want to have happen in the future instead. This is a subtle distinction but it makes all the difference in the world particularly to your  internal world.

And with an advanced (yet very simple) technique we can totally change our experience.

Now, before I teach this to you, there are a few things you need to be aware of.

• First of all, when I work with clients like you one on one, we would usually do this process at the end of a full day session. During that session we've done a lot of ground work using a number of powerful techniques to clear the emotional "junk" in the past. So by the time we get to this particular process you've already gotten pretty good at taking charge of your own process of change and you've already cleared a bunch of stuff from the past.
   
• Secondly, even though this is simple and fast, please respect the tremendous potential it has to positively impact your life.
   
• Finally, it may take a little practice. You don't get the benefit unless you actually use it. So use it over and over again. Fine tune it. Be sure to read all the way to the end of this page for the "tweaking" tips.

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The major anxiety relief tool I use with my anxiety and phobia clients is a technique from NLP and Time Line Therapy™ and it is simply a reversal of something you've been doing all along:

Instead of thinking about what you do not want to happen, think about what you do want to happen. We have a very targeted specific way of doing this.

Step #1: Think of something about which you thought you were anxious

Step #2: Picture a time line of your life.

Step #3: Imagine floating up above "now" on your time line and turning towards your future.

Step #4: Float out above your time line out to the future to the event about which you thought you were anxious...  stay floating up above the event,  nice and safe, looking down on the event as an observer...

Step #5: Now go 15 minutes farther out into the future and turn and look back and down seeing that event resolving fine. Or even better, see the events "working out better than you can possibly imagine."

Go ahead and do that now....

Now where's the anxiety?

It's either gone or less intense isn't it?

Again, the reason this technique works is that your unconscious mind does not know the difference between what is real and what is imagined.

So if you imagine horrible stuff, your body will literally react as if the negative event is really happening. Imagine positive outcomes and your body will relax (or get excited) as if that good stuff is actually happening.

So practice this. Think about what you want to have happen. Float 15 minutes out past the successful completion of the event about which you thought you were anxious. Look back. See everything working out better than you can possibly imagine.

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Here's an example of how I used this technique one day and how I had to tweak it a little bit to get the most out of it.

Like a lot of musicians and performers, I sometimes used to get anxious about a gig. In this particular incident I was driving to a school performance during rush hour. I was running a little bit late.

I don't know about you, but I hate being late. It makes me anxious.

I have a really good imagination.

I started imagining a huge back up as I approached Hartford CT. I clearly saw an 18 wheeler flipped on it's side and bananas splattered all over the highway...then I imagined getting to the gig late and the people that booked me to perform being really nasty and refusing to pay me...then I thought about the fact that my car had close to 200,000 miles on it and hadn't broken down in 6 months...I thought I heard a funny vibration in the engine...

I suddenly felt totally anxious...tight in my gut, shoulders clenched, palms sweating, angry...duh! I was making myself seriously anxious.

So I consciously floated out above my time line and imagined breezing through Hartford, and arriving at the school on time. My anxiety dropped from a 10 to an 8. But it was still there.

So I realized I had to go out farther. I went out to the end of the performance and I imagined it being the best performance I've ever given. I saw the school kids loving my DrumSongStory show,  mesmerized and joyful. I imagined a teacher coming up to me and telling me it was the best assembly they'd ever had...Anxiety dropped to a 6 or a 7. But it was still there.

Hmm...

I realized I had to go even further out. I imagined arriving home safe and sound that night after a totally successful day. I saw myself getting into my Dr. Suess pajamas and getting in to bed.

Poof! Anxiety gone. From a 10 down to a 0. This was done by the way while driving a car. It all happened in my mind. Eyes wide open.

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1. Drove through Hartford CT at the peak of rush hour without a problem.
2. Arrived at the school on time even though we got lost a little bit.
3. The performance went exceptionally well. So well that a teacher  came up to me at the end and said this: "I have been a teacher for over 30 years. This is my last year. In fact this is my last assembly. I have to tell you Mark, it was the best assembly I have ever experienced." 

Please understand I'm not telling you this to boost my ego. The point I'm trying to make here is that we actually do create our reality with our thoughts. If I had persisted in running all the anxious thoughts I'm sure I would have attracted a lot of negative outcomes. I would have probably been annoyed at some kid who wasn't listening or my negative attitude would have attracted the energy of some negative teacher. All of this is a subject for another time and place, the point is, this simple technique really, really works.

Incidentally the very next day, I decided to take my car in to the dealer to get it checked out. It actually broke down within one block of my home. Instead of freaking out, I simply went out 15 minutes after the successful repair of my car. And it turned out it was just a couple of hoses that needed to be replaced.

So there you have it. In about ten minutes I've given you one of my favorite, fastest, best techniques.

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Is there more to learn? Absolutely!

But did I deliver on my promise? Was this helpful? I'd really like to know. So drop me an e-mail  or give me a call and let me know how this helped (see my address and phone below).

To learn more about what I do and what other tools and techniques are available for you to:

• Keep anxiety from returning
• Clear phobias
• Clear negative emotions like, anger, sadness, fear, guilt and shame
• Change self limiting beliefs and childhood vows that may be holding you back and sabotaging your health, wealth and relationships
• Learn how to tune up your life and make it magical...

Here are some resources you now have access to:

You'll get my e-zine, "Modern-Jedi Mind Mastery" which has fascinating articles about how to master your mind for a change and defeat the "dark side" in your personal and professional life. You'll be amazed to see what your mind is capable of.

You'll get information about my music and how I overcame 30 years of anxiety, self sabotage to finally get my life's work out to an audience of appreciative fans who use the songs daily to inspire and motivate themselves.

You qualify for my monthly teleseminars. Usually the 2nd Tuesday or Wednesday of the month. This is a totally free call (except for your long distance telephone charges) where you can learn more about my "Modern Jedi Mind Mastery" Techniques, get your questions answered and meet others who, like yourself, are also seeking to "defeat the dark side" in their lives through self mastery.

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After you've practiced the technique

Go Back To Video Format page to get a FREE song download and a special offer on 16 More Ways To Stop Anxiety Fast