Are thrilled to have you here and grateful for your time we're so excited to share with you our new workshop on how to manage anxiety to build a positive mindset so a little bit about learn it if you're new to us if this is your first friday event with us we are a learning and development organization based out of san francisco california but really located all over the world um all over the country and our goal with these friday sessions and with our community called offsite is really to make.
Learning and development and upskilling more accessible to everybody to connect us all really globally to learn together and also to give you a taste of the workshops that we do have and that we facilitate privately for customers and also that we have publicly available on our schedule for anyone to enroll at roll with so um we're really excited to have been launching our health and wellness program and our workshops on that throughout the last month if you've.
Been following along so this will kind of be the last friday that we'll be specifically highlighting our health and wellness programming but before i hand it over to bindi just a couple of housekeeping items this session is being recorded and we'll have it available in our community called offsite there's a little qr code there for you to check it out we'll go into that more after the session as well um and there will also be plenty of interaction here so please do use the chat you can also use the q a section.
Down here so if you have a specific question i recommend inputting it into the q a session that way bindi and i don't lose it um and we'll also be asking for interaction in the chat throughout so please do feel free and we'll also make time for questions at the end so with that i'll hand it over to bindy thank you so much mindy for being here thank you kali and welcome in everyone this morning or this evening or this afternoon wherever you are joining us um in the world it's wonderful to have you.
And join in today um so we can take a little sneak peek at the latest health and wellness workshop um that we have um available which is a manage manage anxiety to build a positive mindset um but i thought i'd kick it off just so you know a little bit about me um so i am a facilitator here for learnet but as um cali also said i also develop our content and courseware as well particularly in our health and wellness um section but i've been in education and health and wellness for over 15 years.
Empowerment that it brings to always be learning so it brings me great joy to have you all in here today um hopefully there'll be a small takeaway for you and something that you can share with friends and family members or even something to even make a small step or improvement in your own health and wellness so let's get going our workshop for today manage anxiety to build a positive mindset and i'd like to sort of start with an interesting quote this comes from uh.
Robert fulgrim uh he's a renowned and best-selling author and he says you don't have to believe everything you think i'll say that one more time while you let it resonate you don't have to believe everything you think just an interesting quote to kind of land us where we're at in this managing anxiety and building a.
Positive mindset workshop so i'd like you to have a read of this this is from gandhi i'm not going to read it out to you all but i'd like you to have a read and then in the chat i'd like you to share what are your thoughts on this on this quote so i'll give you a moment to read this from gandhi now read our last line here keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
Some great comments coming positivity is key it all starts with your mindset joanna i love that you notice it all stems from our thoughts right if you take those first few lines from the beginning and mix it with the end right what about keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your destiny right amazingly simple right but so true and this is what we have to think about is our thoughts they really do flow.
Through all of our life and flow through into how we act how we think how we behave right how we speak um because of our thoughts so moving into our first slide here i want you to have a listen as you watch this and have a listen to this.
[Music]
Hey how did that make you feel when listening and watching this astronaut on edge disoriented tense it's an awful sound like bindi hurry up and turn it off right omnious kind of crazy alone yeah anxious indifferent sort of an awful sort of soundtrack now have a think about how this makes you feel.okay so i love some of the comments coming through here right like a kid happy adventurous right ice cream time um out of control right suddenly that soundtrack suddenly makes the astronaut look like he's having fun as opposed to that first one where you felt omnius anxious right alongside that visual so the point of this exercise is i want.
You to think of anxiety as the soundtrack of your perspective right when we are anxious or have an anxious mind it overshadows our thoughts and it can kind of take over your brain and make you act or think out of a place of fear and worry so anxiety really can be a normal it's normal right in a stressful situation maybe public speaking maybe taking a test right when anxiety is not good is when the feelings become excessive or they're.
All consuming or they completely interfere with your daily living so small amount of anxiety definitely okay but when it's overtaking and becoming that sort of soundtrack to your perspective is when it becomes a much more challenging and something that we need to address so the workshop um that we would explore and we're going to get a little bit of a taste of it i'm coming up as well but we would actually start with looking at how anxiety affects the brain um and have a.
Look at how it affects positive thinking as well we would go into some innovative and creative ways to look at how to manage anxiety um and this sort of comes up in these three areas of learning how to retrain the brain so we can stop sort of these things called thinking traps that put us in some negative sort of pathways and learn how to create some positive pathways and we do all of that by exploring some worry patterns that you might have going on that are unique to yourself and then learn how to sort of build this.
Positive mindset and some actionable takeaways for for the mindset let's have a little look at the beginning here we're going to start at having a look at how anxiety affects the brain and kind of dive into that a little bit this morning so anxiety what is it why does it happen so in preparation for the session today um you should have all received an email with a sort of a pre-session assignment.
For the off um site workshop um so you should have completed a two day anxiety sort of perspective analysis chart and it would have been linked to your your sign up so i'm going to give you a moment um to sort of get that ready um it's it was a two-page document for you to kind of track that that anxiety kind of perspective in the lead up for today um and while you're getting that together we're going to compile um our results from this assignment and we'll.
Sort of investigate the patterns that we have common um in common as a group and how we differ as well so i'll give you just that moment and i'm just kidding false alarm here there was no assignment i'm sorry that was really awful but i wanted you to start to feel maybe a tiny bit of rising anxiety so there is no assignment don't worry but.
I'd like to know anyone come into the chat who started to feel a little bit tiny panicked that suddenly oh no where was that assignment i didn't get it thanks for the brutal shot of anxiety right um searching your email i know that was so awful of me i apologize we're gonna do a calming activity straight after this but anxiety if you started to feel a little bit of it right it's that feeling of fear that feeling of dread that sort of.
Uneasiness that some of you might have started to feel you might have started to
Sweat you might have started to feel restless you might have started to feel tense maybe your heart rate started going fast right and this is all a normal reaction and you might feel that when you're faced with a difficult situation maybe a difficult problem at work maybe an important decision um and that actually can help you cope that feeling.It kind of gives you that burst of energy maybe to help you focus right so what i gave you was that little taste possible of anxiety but for many people that anxiety is not temporary and it could be overwhelming for someone so it can be where it just never goes away and it's sort of that constant feeling so before we have a look into.
Really um unpacking anxiety i want to give you a moment to kind of come back down calm down if if you did get anxious um so in this moment um you i want you to sit comfortably in your chair and i want you to take a deep breath close your eyes picture yourself on a beach maybe the sun is setting.
Take a deep breath in and breathe out and again breathe in and breathe out take one more breath breathe in.
And breathe out letting the sound of the waves wash over you bringing you back to a sense of calm relief and peace when you're ready opening your eyes.
And coming back to the screen so hopefully that just gave you a small little part of relief there from our boost of boost of possible anxiety the this friday morning so hopefully you're feeling a little more relaxed so i want to get into this part about the brain because the workshop is about retraining your brain and it's about helping sort of find some new neural pathways to positive thinking.
But before you can retrain your brain to think more positively you still need to understand why it might be trained in a certain way the certain way it is so our brain is actually a pathway of neural connections and each neuron gets connected to another neuron and the brain is sort of gets trained around how to react to everything so it's basically learned pathways in your brain so i want you to close your eyes again.
We're going to do a little imagery activity you're walking out on a beautiful beach or in the park and the the sun is shining it's warm on your face and there's some birds sort of dipping and diving you can kind of hear fun sounds around you people enjoying their day and then suddenly you hear barking and an owner calls out watch out.
And bam you're knocked off your feet onto the ground and it seems like an aggressive dog right it's it's scrambling but it's actually just trying to catch a tennis ball um and it's all that accidentally claws you while it's trying to sort of get up in the struggle of knocking you over the owner runs over and says i'm sorry are you okay the ball flung right into your legs i'm really sorry he's a nice dog he won't hurt you but what's happened is there's some.
Damage that has been done you're not severely hurt but you're really shaken and now what happens is your brain has started to make a neural pathway and when you hear the sound of a dog you may instantly then become a little bit anxious so opening your eyes again this may or may not happen to you after one event but it's just to kind of highlight how this is because the brain.
Is trained in connection pathways it then starts to think dog barking maybe now i should need to be fearful because of that experience of having you know that sort of traumatic event around it and this is sort of a big worst case scenario example for you but then what's happening is you start to maybe every time you see a dog kind of in the future crossing the street you sort of start to avoid a dog right it's over on the other side of the street so you maybe avoid it you don't go too close and you don't get hurt so what's.
Happening is that that pathway is beginning to build it's sort of saying if i don't go near the dog maybe i won't get hurt right so you're almost like training that brain into that new information so what has to happen to get out of that is you have to get into a new connection and you have to have a new situation or a new kind of train of thought to overtake that and so that you can create new neuron connections so that you can have more of a calm and sort of positive experience um out of.
What was initially a traumatic one and then the more you get a positive experience going on the more the new connection gets stronger and stronger and then what happens is your brain defaults to use that new pathway it defaults to the one that's quicker and stronger so we're going to try a little activity here in the chat just to kind of have a look at what what this might look like as a little bit of an example for you so in the chat.
Um we're going to start with an example here of a flower hopefully you can see the annotation on my screen in the chat i want you to write anything that comes to mind with a flower anything at all could be pretty could be colorful okay let's see what we've got we've got petals we've got i think i saw pretty we've got scent.
Happy maybe beautiful okay and now i want you to think of a memory that involves a flower a happy memory that involves a flower and you don't have to share the happy memory but i want you to think about or even yeah weddings right a happy memory around a wedding mother's day love summer how does those events make you feel we have wedding.
Birthday how do those make you feel uplifting good word happy joy okay thank you all for joining in in that so what happens is your brain makes this really complicated network of pathways and then when you see a flower you associate it with all of those good.
Feelings of uplifting joy happiness peace that were associated with that happy memory so you can see this connection you see flower you feel good right that's what's going on in that scenario now what also happens is the opposite for some of you and will investigate this as well is where you might actually have an experience that makes you see.
Differently with a flower so if we have here i saw a few things sort of popping up in the chat someone said thorns someone said bees so those that maybe see if yep's exactly a funeral and a funeral brings on sadness right and loss maybe another good one in their pollen and maybe that brings on memories of.
Allergies yeah possibly a hospital visit maybe frustration with the allergies so you can start to see where this could then create a new neural pathway so for other people seeing a flower might actually then have a neural pathway that has them with memories of like invasive flowers good one rust bees thorns and pollen you know allergies and then because this it it's something that.
Then they might see a flower and feel frustration sadness um sort of a different kind of feeling so i know this is sort of a very broad example for you but it's just to get that analysis just to show you how the brain can actually start to make these connections and associate things maybe as seemingly meaningless as a flower with certain feelings that we have um and that's what happens when we have possible anxieties around actions and.
Things is that we start to have these pathways and we need to sort of understand these pathways first so we can start breaking some of the thinking traps so what i'd like you to do um is we're going to have a little think about some anxieties and we're going to put our professional hat on so i want you to think about um and i'll bring up some examples but think about anything you'd like to share can be very general things that might give you even a small amount of anxiety at work.
And you don't have to share in great detail but some examples here go back one paperwork public speaking lack of control tech issues bad uh bad attitudes yeah timelines commuting unemployment deadlines lack of communication all these coming through in the chat you're all super fast to type i've got some examples there as well co-workers catch-ups changes right too much work.
So so so many things that could be creating um some small kind of anxieties for us so what i want you to do is have a think about something that is this is a self-reflection you don't have to share this but think about something that does make you a little bit anxious in your professional life and i want you to grab a piece of paper in a pen again this is for you you don't need to share but i want you to write down what is the story that is behind that anxiety.
What are some of the the neural pathways maybe you can make an association but more just starting to look at the story behind it and i'll give you an example to make it a little easier let's say deadlines is something that makes um you're a little bit anxious at work and the story that you tell yourself or the story that's going on right is that the deadline has been moved up two weeks to meet a customer inquiry it's now two weeks earlier.
And because of that deadline now you believe you're going to have to put in 60 to 80 plus hours of work to meet the deadline this is the story that's around this deadline if you don't meet the deadline the client could be unhappy the client could then decide to not go ahead with your business you could potentially even worst case scenario lose your job over losing this client so the anxiety of missing the deadline is starting to cause right some anxiety.
Every time you look at your calendar new meetings start popping up how are you ever going to get to that project to meet the deadline in time and whenever you maybe start to see the client's name you start to feel a little anxious a little stressed right that little sense of dread starts coming in because this deadline has now started to be associated with this terrifying story that that's going on so i want you to think about that and write your story and i'm going to give you a minute you.
Don't have to share this this is not to share in the chat this is just for you to start kind of thinking about what's going on what's going on behind that anxiety give you about another 20 more seconds okay so once you have that story what we would actually do with this first up is have a look at thinking traps and the thinking trap is sometimes.
It's what you tell yourself about a situation that's going to affect how you feel and what you do um and sometimes your interpretation can get a little distorted so maybe there's some negative aspects that are in there getting focused on and that's what a thinking trap is when we might tend to look into some of the negatives of the situation sometimes it's good to do that right remember we did talk about anxiety and stress still being helpful to help you sort of achieve some things but.
Sometimes those interpretations can maybe get a little too negative and they might end up then making you respond in an unhelpful way um and that sort of assumption that might might appear is called a thinking trap and you can think of a thinking trap of like the story that you tell yourself right that's what a thinking trap is because maybe it's not yet in reality but there might be some future things to it there might be you know some maybe exaggeration to it and that we would need to unpack and kind of have a look.