Anxious at work? Here’s how to easily and confidently channel nerves and adrenaline in the workplace

We’ve all had those feelings of dread, deep within our stomach—whether it be on a Sunday evening at the thought of having to go to work, the journey in, a presentation you have to give, or a meeting you have to attend. In some cases, people literally hate their job, colleagues, and bosses.

There are several ways to deal with this anxious state or anxious feelings once and for all, but they all start with one key philosophy – we must deal with the cause, not the symptom.

Deep at the root of all these problems is a fundamental lack of alignment with your true self and values. You can test this easily—ask yourself: are there times when you don’t feel anxious? Say with family, friends, hobbies, or weekends?

So immediately, you know you are capable of being anxiety-free, which is great.

Bulletproof yourself against anxiety 

The answer lies deep within you, within your belief system and subconscious mind—the programming that has a good purpose, good intentions to keep you alive, but is actually fueling a self-sabotaging element within you.

While some may take this as an indication that it is they who are at fault, that’s not the case – it’s just about programming and patterns, which can be fixed quickly using clinical hypnotherapy. How you respond to a situation or someone at work is and can only be down to you. Once you understand this and accept that you will never be able to stop the external world from occurring or people from behaving in specific ways, then you can change yourself and live a less anxious life.

Anxiety exists in a world of potential, meaning you are normally anxious about something that either isn’t happening or hasn’t happened yet. We are often worried about things that are not even real externally, but instead ideas manufactured and created within our heads.

So what we need to do is access your patterns and subconscious and change your thought patterns. We are going to address any self-sabotaging tendencies or imposter syndrome by addressing your overall confidence.

Improving your confidence is going to allow you to assert yourself in challenging situations, speak your mind, give your opinion, ask for a pay rise, say no more often, and generally, overall, reduce your worry.

We are then going to address your discipline—this means you will be able to stick to deadlines, deliver work on time, focus on menial tasks such as reports, and learn new materials and courses more easily.

Together, let’s examine how improving your confidence and discipline capabilities will fundamentally change your life forever.

Let’s start with removing the anxiety 

In a moment, I want you to close your eyes and picture your workplace in your mind, in as much or as little detail as you like. You can do this for a person too.
Take a deep breath in for four seconds and out for two—do this three times.

Now, I want you to bring that anxiety-inducing image to mind and make it more detailed. While you are doing that, manifest that feeling of anxiety in your stomach and chest, the feeling all over you. Really think about how anxious your workplace makes you feel—feel that deep sense of dread and anxiety. Keep making it more real, more real, and even more real. Feel the most anxious ever with a clear image in your mind.

While you are doing that, with opposite hands to arms, stroke your arms from the shoulder down to the wrist of the opposite arm—do this 20 times. As you are doing this, fill the image with a bright, bright colour. Every time you stroke down, comforting yourself, make the colour more vivid, and more vivid, and more vivid, and even more until the colour becomes everything, and the image disappears.

When you get to the 20th time, picture yourself walking softly on the warm sands of a beach—blue skies, seagulls, sounds of the ocean. Count 20 steps, and the next twenty steps are slow and joyful as you walk, happy and relaxed, on the golden sand. Slowly walk on those golden sands and feel totally at ease and relaxed.

When you get to 20, you will open your eyes and feel refreshed, energised and ready to go.

This technique alone will reduce your anxiety about the issue or person at work massively. Your nervous system and subconscious mind will take care of the rest. Your anxiety will be reduced after doing this once, but you can do it as many times as you like.

Another technique for when you are in the moment is to pause, breathe, and detach. For example:

A situation occurs that increases your anxiety at work. When you hear about it, or somebody causes you to feel anxious, simply breathe in through your nose for four seconds, hold for four seconds, and then release through your mouth. Practice this at home or alone so that you can do it subtly.

As you breathe in, ask yourself: “I wonder what has caused that person to behave like that?” 

What we are doing here is detaching the emotion and looking at things more analytically while also stopping an immediate anxiety-fueled fight-or-flight response, which will almost never serve you in the workplace.

Then, if whatever has been said or told to you still feels like it is contributing to your anxiety, simply ask the person to repeat what they said. Really calmly say: “Can you repeat that for me?” and repeat your breathing and internal question. You will start to detach from the emotion and be able to rationally move past the incident.

Now, we need to build up your confidence and discipline, and with a few one-to-one sessions of hypnotherapy or by using the confidence downloads and discipline downloads on my app, you will go from an anxious entity living in the shadows to a strong, focused, confident individual who can ask for a pay rise, push back on workload, achieve a promotion, or find another job that is aligned with your core values.

Written by Aaron Surtees.
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