Connect with Candice → ⁠https://candiceesposito.com/⁠

In my opinion this is the most important step of the Calm Living Blueprint, of setting yourself free from fear, free from your struggles with anxiety.

• Values alone aren’t enough. Our journey begins only when we start taking action.
• When we move forward guided by our values, we feel a sense of meaning and purpose, even in the face of major challenges.
• Even if we think a goal is impossible we can still keep moving towards it. You don’t have to believe that you’ll achieve it. You just need to take action.
• Every little step counts. Each and every step is an important part of the journey.
• Oftentimes, moving in a meaningful direction will give rise to uncomfortable feelings – fear, self-doubt, anxiety. Therefore, we better learn to make room for those painful feelings if we want to achieve our goals.
• We can’t stop the difficult thoughts and feelings from popping up, but we can stop investing our energy in struggling with them and instead focus on the task at hand.
• Commitment doesn’t mean you never give up or never go off track. Commitment means that when you do give up you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back on track again.
• The actions of social confidence come first. The feelings of social confidence come later.

You can download a copy of this episode’s transcript by clicking here.

If you chose option 2, it’s time to get moving …

Take a moment to clarify your next step and then take action. Take the action you commit to.

Connect with Candice → ⁠https://candiceesposito.com/⁠

So up to this point we’ve been placing a lot of our focus on the painful feelings you struggle with and the painful thoughts you get entangled by … basically, all the things that you don’t want. But we haven’t yet focused on what you do want – what sort of person you want to be, what sort of relationships you want to build, what you want to do with your life to make it richer, fuller, and more meaningful.

So let’s get clear about what you really want.

What are you here for? What makes your life worth living? It’s amazing how many people never consider those questions, just going through life following the same routine, day after day.

The whole point of what we’re doing here is, sure, to help you overcome social anxiety … but at a deeper level it’s about helping you to live a rich, full and meaningful life.

The reality is that you don’t just want to overcome social anxiety. You want to be able to live the life you want to live – make new friends, date, get a new job – whatever that is for you.

Here’s how to gain some clarity…

• Knowing what matters is about identifying your values and living your life guided by those values.
• Values are our heart’s deepest desires: how we want to be, what we want to stand for, and how we want to relate to the world around us.
• Values are like a compass. A compass gives you direction and keeps you on track when you’re traveling. And our values do the same for the journey of life. We use them to choose the direction in which we want to move and to keep us on track as we go.
• Values are far more empowering than goals because they’re always available to us. In any moment you have the choice to act on your values or not.
• Values are here and now (goals are in the future).
• Values never need to be justified.
• Values often need to be prioritized.
• Values are best held lightly.
• Values are freely chosen.

You can download a copy of this episode’s transcript by clicking here.

I encourage you to download and complete the Life Values Questionnaire.

Connect with Candice → ⁠https://candiceesposito.com/⁠

In this episode we are going to swerve back to discussing one of the steps of the Calm Living Blueprint, the blueprint to overcoming social anxiety.

Pure awareness. A powerful aspect of the mind that has largely been ignored by western psychology. And as you get to know this part of yourself you will further transform your relationship with difficult thoughts and feelings of anxiety and fear.

• One of the things that’s important to recognize is that there are two very distinct parts of the mind. There’s the part that we’re all very familiar with – the part that thinks, imagines, remembers, analyzes, plans, fantasizes and so on – the “thinking self.”
• And the other part of your mind that doesn’t think, can’t think – it just notices. It notices whatever you’re thinking and feeling and doing and seeing and hearing and tasting and so on – the “observing self.”
• As your thinking self thinks about your experience, your observing self registers your experience directly.
• The observing self:
• Pure awareness is about connecting with that part of you that is separate from your thoughts and feelings and that provides a safe and constant viewpoint from which to observe and accept them.
• It’s this place where, no matter how great the pain is, it cannot harm you. Knowing that, experiencing that can help you stop running from your pain.

You can download a copy of this episode’s transcript by clicking here.

Download the action worksheet here.

Grab an index card or a small piece of paper. On one side of the card write out 3 negative self-judgements that you have. “I’m not good enough. I’m not smart enough. I can’t talk well.” Whatever those are for you.

Then on the other side of the card write out 3 positive self-judgements. “I’m a good person, I’m kind.” Again, whatever applies to you.

I want you to carry the card around in your purse or a bag for the next week. Pull it out several times a day, read both sides, then put it back in your purse or bag again.

That’s it. That’s all I’m going to tell you. Let me know what noticed, what you observed from this exercise by leaving me a comment on iTunes. And we’ll follow up with this in the next episode.