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Heart First Leadership
Welcome to Heart First Leadership, the podcast that explores a revolutionary approach to leadership. In a world that often prioritizes success above all else, it's easy to find ourselves leading from a space of fear, doubt, and unworthiness. There is a new way!
Join me, your host Ryan Sawyer, and my co-host and wife, Heidi Sawyer, on a transformative journey as we seek to inspire and guide leaders, parents, and athletes to unlock the secrets to a truly fulfilling life—one that resonates from the heart. In Heart First, we challenge the conventional norms and embark on a voyage together, where heart-driven leadership becomes the compass for a life well lived.
Are you ready to redefine where you lead from? Let's dive into meaningful conversations, insights, and practical tips that will empower you to embrace a new paradigm of leadership.
Heart First Leadership
Using Anxiety as an Invitation
Battling anxiety can feel like an endless war within, and it's a struggle I've faced alongside countless others. But what if we could find strength in our most anxious moments? A story of a young athlete I coach shines a light on how anxiety not only blurs the now but also breeds self-judgment, reminding us that our harshest critic can often be our own mind.
Embrace these words as we uncover the importance of self-trust and faith while wading through anxious waters. By recognizing pressure as a chance to affirm our self-reliance, we can reshape the very foundations of our fear. You'll hear how the anxiety we experience can serve as a signpost, directing us inward toward alignment and growth. Together, we'll explore the liberating power of living in the present, where the unknown becomes familiar, and fear loses its foothold. As we close, I leave you with a heartfelt invitation to take control of your inner response, to shape not just your day but your life, with a newfound sense of freedom and hope.
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So welcome back to the show. Today I'm going to do another solo cast, just going to have a very graceful conversation. I've been obviously doing a lot of coaching with youth recently, the last couple of years, and there's clearly a trend that I see showing up and we all know it's there. I'm not sure we talk about it as much as we need to, as we should be talking about it, but there is a lot of talk about how much anxiety our culture experiences, especially our youth, and so I just want to unpack this a little bit, because I am somebody who has an experience with high levels of anxiety.
Speaker 1:There was even a point in my life where I experienced panic attacks, the point where I would lose vision and lose muscle strength and even you know it sometimes would go to the ground because the moment overwhelmed me to such a degree and didn't know how to handle stress. I didn't know how to handle those moments of anxiousness, I didn't know where it was coming from, I didn't know how to relate to it, I didn't know how to make sense of it. Therefore, I attached to it. So we first think of it as anxiety is coming from out there, from the world, from the pressures, from all these influences, from expectations. It's very clear that our culture because of media, social media, news, because of screens, because of the amount of social terrains that we have to cross, that we are very externally focused, that we are overly externally focused. And when we become externally focused, it actually narrows our vision and narrows our perception. Therefore, things have to kind of be a certain way outside for us to be okay and we attach this anxious experience that we're having inside to things outside.
Speaker 1:So a quick story that I had recently with one of the athletes that I'm working with is that she talked to me about wanting to have more focus, that she said that in competition she finds herself being pulled out of the moment because and she's not focused on the moment. I said, okay, what's that experience like? And as we unpacked it a little bit, what she recognized and what we found was that there's a level of anxiety and fear and self-judgment and doubt that's keeping her from being focused on the present moment. So I'm not here to talk about in this conversation, about presence and focus and concentration and these type of things, but it is kind of part of all one conversation. Through all that, we identified some specific tools and ways of approaching the game differently, but it sparked this conversation that I want to have here today. I want us to start thinking about it differently.
Speaker 1:I want us to start thinking and understanding that where anxiety actually starts, anxiety starts from some sort of a level of dissonance or disconnect, or lack of alignment or integrity within, a lack of connection to your inner domain, the inability to be introspective and to feel what you're feeling. Therefore, those feelings become very scary and unknown and unfamiliar. You don't know what to do with them. See, what we end up doing is we end up feeling these emotions, these experiences, these constrictions, these disturbances of what we call anxiety or even depression. And then we attach them to things outside of ourselves. We attach them to experiences, we attach them to circumstances, we attach them to people, we attach them to places, we attach them to crowds of people, we attach them to all kinds of things. And so what ends up happening? When we attach them to things externally because we're so externally focused already as a culture and we've lost the connection to our inner domain then those things happen. They affirm, they affirm, they give us the credit, the credibility, almost right. Oh, see that, now that's it.
Speaker 1:That's what causes my anxiety is when that happens out there, I feel this way in here, and so then that makes me think that I need to avoid that thing, I need to avoid that person, I need to avoid that place, I need to avoid those circumstances or scenarios. Don't get me wrong. There's a place and a time. There's a part of our brain that's in there that's keeping us safe, and so there's a difference between normal mechanisms of survival and keeping us safe and higher, increased levels of anxiety and even panic attacks and overwhelm. So this is about understanding the difference between the two, understanding how our anxiety starts within, and mainly it's because we're so externally focused.
Speaker 1:We've lost the ability to have any sort of introspection, to know what's going on inside, to be able to experience what's going on inside without attaching or identifying to it something externally. So we begin these lives where we have to arrange everything to be a certain way for us to be okay, and when we continuously do that, our world gets smaller, our comfort zones get smaller, what we're able to experience gets smaller, and we start to build beliefs. We start to build beliefs that, well, there must be something wrong with me, I am not good enough, I'm not worthy. I'm not lovable, I'm not adequate. There's something wrong with me. I have anxiety. It's my anxiety, it's mine, it's who I am. Well, here's the truth. The truth is is that it starts inside and it creates all kinds of self-doubt, it creates all kinds of judgment and rather, thinking like it shouldn't be there.
Speaker 1:The real practice with anxiety is, rather than trying to fix all kinds of things you don't need to be fixed, the external world's going to do what it's going to do. Circumstances are going to unfold in front of you regardless is your ability to no longer judge. No longer judge and feel like that shouldn't be there. Well, some levels of anxiety, again, are human. They're natural. It's our inability to feel our feelings fully without judging them is the problem. Fear is no longer feared.
Speaker 1:When you get better at feeling fear, because the reality is when you're stepping into an environment let's say it's a competitive environment with the athletes I work with and you're stepping into a high stakes or a rugged environment, you're stepping into a competitive environment. There absolutely should be anxiousness, there absolutely should be nerves, there absolutely should be excitement, there absolutely should be all these things and the point is to feel those things and yet still be able to step into that fire, to feel those things and still be able to act with faith to overcome. That's why victory is so sweet is because you felt the doubt, you felt the fear. You stepped into that. You felt it and complete faith and optimism within yourself. Self-trust means that I feel that same level at the same time. It's okay, it's part of the game, it's part of the game of life, it's part of the process, and the better you get at feeling what you're feeling internally, without judging it, without thinking it shouldn't be there, the more your capacity grows. You no longer attach it to something outside.
Speaker 1:And here's a thing that I want to invite us to explore that listen to this podcast, whether you're a client of mine or whether you're somebody who's leaning in and curious of what it looks like to really literally liberate yourself, to be able to experience life fully, to be present, to experience deeper levels of connection and confidence, is what if what you're experiencing internally, based upon whatever's happening outside, is an invitation? What if it's just that? What if it's just an invitation into the present moment and nothing more? The same athlete that I was speaking of earlier that was feeling like they didn't have enough focus or concentration because of their anxiety which was pulling them out of the present moment. With a little bit of shift, the perception and a little bit of talking through and practice and application of being able to just slightly self-detach and observe without judgment, non-judgmental awareness. It goes so much further than we give it credit for the ability to just observe yourself without judging, without attaching.
Speaker 1:The anxiousness is just something you're experiencing. It's not who you are, it's a signal within your body and it may be rooted in some form of survival and it may be that your awareness, attention is just too externally focused, so we need to bring it inside. And when you bring your awareness inside and you connect to your breath and you become aware of what's happened internally and you begin to learn how to work with your mind, your body, what you're experiencing in the moment, those experiences of anxiety, it's all. They are experiences, not who you are, there's nothing wrong with you. They're an invitation into the present moment. So I can take that same experience that was pulling somebody out of the present moment and use it as an invitation into the moment. It's getting your attention and maybe it's just letting you know that you're doing something that matters to you.
Speaker 1:So good You're doing something you care about, so good. You're doing something that's expanding your capacity. You're doing something that's stretching you Good and you're recognizing that there's a new level of awareness, there's a new level of skill, there's a new level of the ability to observe and not judge yourself. That is being asked of you. There's a new level of introspection, of being able to know yourself, be familiar with yourself and create an internal domain that's able to operate with faith. The only way to do that is to feel those feelings. The only way to do that is to allow for the nerves, anxiousness, excitement, whatever that all may be, to be there and then to take a step forward and to feel both at the same time, because faith doesn't mean that we walk around this feeling, and I think it's faith.
Speaker 1:I'm not talking necessarily about a relationship with God and it very well could be. I would encourage you to explore that but I'm talking about faith within yourself. I'm talking about self-trust. I'm talking about optimism. I'm talking about trusting yourself, wanting the ball in a high-stakes situation. I'm talking about wanting the ball in life. I'm not talking about just athletes, I'm talking about all of us. It says, hey, I want the ball, give me the ball, raise my hand.
Speaker 1:So I'm talking about if you're really truly practicing faith and self-trust, you're going to feel a disturbance. At the same time, I don't believe there's anybody at any level, at the highest level, that doesn't feel anxious. But yet they have mastered the ability to draw their attention away from external things and focus it internally, rather than allowing yourself to be stimulated and programmed by everything outside of you, telling you who it is you need to be and how you need to be and what you need to do and how you need to do. It is to recognize that the anxiety that you're experiencing is some sort of misalignment inside, some sort of dissonance inside. When you come back inside and you learn to work with it and listen to it and explore it and allow that to be an invitation into the present moment, it begins to subside because you're now paying attention to what's happening in there. It's almost like telling yourself you have parts of you in there from childhood and all the way through life that just need to be heard and seen for a moment. So it's like you're coming in and saying like, okay, I'm here with you, I'm in the present moment with you.
Speaker 1:But what I do know is that if we continue this process of constantly trying to rearrange everything externally or trying to win in life so we no longer feel anxious, that judgment and that resistance of what we're experiencing will just multiply what we're experiencing because there's nothing externally, there's nothing outside of you, there's no amount of achievement, there's no amount of approval, there's no amount of accomplishment that's ever going to eradicate the source, the cause of this anxiousness. The only way to be able to learn to work with it and use it for good, to use it to get your attention, use it to recognize you're doing something that matters to you, use it in a way that helps you to grow and expand is to come back inside and to develop the ability to be aware, to not judge and then to still take action. So what if this anxiousness that we're experiencing as a culture, whether it be our youth or whether it be adults, is an invitation to take your attention off of the external world, take your attention off of what everybody else thinks about what is right or wrong for you, but for you to come in, come inside of you, and for you to gain a level of alignment and feeling centered and grounded within yourself and then coming from that place and allowing for the nerves that we now label as anxiousness or excitement, whatever end of the spectrum that may be, as an invitation into the present moment and allowing yourself to feel without judgment and then watch what happens. We're being invited, I'm being invited, you are being invited, we are being invited into presence, into the moment, where that's the only place, into the present moment, is the only place that you're ever going to be able to expand and to explore and to create from. That then allows for your capacity to expand and grow, which means, then, that things outside of you can be however they're going to be. They're going to be however they're going to be, and they'll probably. You'll find yourself creating momentum in a way where you feel like you're winning more in life because there's a more of space, there's more comfort being inside, because you're taking the attention off of the out there and bringing it in here. So faith is not to just feel completely free, it's to feel free in the face of fear. That's what it feels like to experience faith. It's walking right into it and releasing judgment.
Speaker 1:Judgment interferes with the present moment. Judgment interferes with connection. Judgment interferes with performance. Judgment interferes with life and the more you're externally focused, the more you're going to judge yourself. And the more you judge yourself, the more you project judgment on others. The less present you are, the less okay you are. Take your attention off of out there, bring it in here. Become aware of what's going on inside, connect to yourself, hear out who you are, learn to work with and let it bring you into the present moment and from that place you can explore.
Speaker 1:So this is my takeaway from some coaching that's happened in the last week or so and information that's come across my desk that allows for me to say it's without a doubt that the answer is very simple. Not easy, necessarily, but very simple. Take your attention off of the external world and then don't judge yourself. Learn to practice this ability to self-detach, to witness, to observe with non-judgmental awareness and then, from that place, be able to act and your experience of life will completely transform and change and the anxiety that we call anxiety will become a friend and it will most likely subside.
Speaker 1:But, more importantly, what if it doesn't? Okay, if it doesn't, I'm familiar with it. It no longer scares me. All it is is an invitation further into the present moment More than now. I have choice. I have choice of how I respond. I have choice of what I make things mean. I have choice to come to the world from the inside out rather than living from the outside end. I hope this helps. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and thank you for tuning in.
