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.

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

Is inflammation causing your anxiety and depression?

Inflammation is our body’s basic reaction to protecting itself to whatever it perceives to be harmful – toxins, irritants, infection, stress, and as we’ll talk about later, even thoughts or emotions.

Essentially inflammation is the body’s attempt to heal itself. So a certain amount of inflammation is actually a good thing.

The problem comes in when that inflammatory response gets out of hand or becomes chronic in nature.

You’re probably familiar with a lot of conditions already where this is known to be the case … rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, allergies, and so on.

And you’ve probably already heard about the link between inflammation and outside influences like environmental toxins, junk food, smoking and alcohol.

Pollution, a doughnut, puffing on a cigarette or downing a martini – those are all pretty easy to understand, how they might cause inflammation or harm to our body. All are outside sources.

But, did you know that our bodies can create inflammation all on their own, with no outside influences as triggers?

Our thoughts, moods, stress levels, and even our social lives can trigger a cascade of inflammatory reactions in our bodies that can lead to all those conditions I mentioned earlier, as well as anxiety and depression.

And that’s what this podcast episode is all about. Learn about what you can to decrease your inflammation levels… and, as a result, heal anxiety and depression…

• Researchers have discovered that being anxious, depressed or stressed also has an effect on inflammatory chemicals in our body.
• And the chemicals associated with those emotional states change how our immune, cardiovascular and hormonal systems function.
• Current research suggests that the pain of social injury is very similar to the pain of physical injury like arthritis joint pain or a sports injury. And in large part, this has to do with inflammation. They affect the same regions of the brain, and they can be just as painful, maybe more so for social pain.
• The methods we are using in the Calm Living Blueprint, the step by step process we talk about each episode, not only will that help anxiety and depression, but it is also anti-inflammatory.

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

“Do not let your thoughts play havoc by worrying about what may happen, and what may not happen, but instead, ask yourself the question what is there in this that I cannot endure? You will then discover there is no situation which may arise that you cannot deal with effectively.”

– Marcus Aurelius

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

What do we do when those negative thoughts impact our behaviour or hold us back from doing the things we want to do?

For example, having the thought, “I have nothing to say” may lead to avoiding social situations or trying to get out of a social situation. Having the thought, “I blush too much” may lead to trying to hide your face.

So how do we deal with these negative or uncomfortable thoughts and prevent them from ruining our lives?

That’s what this podcast episode is all about… unhooking yourself from your thoughts so they no longer run your life. Listen to find out how…

• The human mind has evolved to think negatively.
• And that’s why, no matter how hard we try to think positively, we can’t stop our minds from generating negative thoughts.
• Be wary of any self-help books or programs that claim stuff like “erasing old memories” or “eliminating negative core beliefs” because it doesn’t happen. The latest research in neuroscience tells us that our brains do not eliminate old neural pathways. Our brains lay down new ones on top of the old ones.
• Our thoughts do not control our actions. Negative thoughts aren’t really the problem.
• Negative thoughts only become problematic when we get caught up in them, when we give them all our attention, when we believe them as the gospel truth, when we allow them to control us. This is called fusion.
• When we defuse from our thoughts – when we separate ourselves from our thoughts – they have little to no influence on us.
• Even just recognizing the thought as unhelpful can lessen its influence on you. However, you can go a step further and unhook yourself from your thoughts using any one of the defusion techniques discussed in this episode.
• Negative thoughts are normal. Don’t fight them. Defuse from them. You can take action even in the midst of negative thoughts.

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

The moment you notice you’ve been hooked by a thought, acknowledge it and use one of the techniques we went over. You can download a list of techniques, along with their instructions here.

Notice what happens. If you notice high expectations popping up unhook yourself by saying, “I’m having the thought that this should magically solve all my problems.”

Let your mind try its best to dissuade you and then do the homeplay anyway.

Do these techniques at least 5 times per day. The more the better. And if don’t use them notice how your mind talked you out it, what reasons did it come up with, what old stories did it tell you?