Try This 5-Minute Exercise If You Struggle with Anxiety
What going broke taught me about fear, anxiety, and finding my way back
There was a season in my early forties when anxiety didn’t knock. It just moved in, took the best chair, and started telling me what was going to happen next. None of it was good.
I had sold a small business to someone I shouldn’t have trusted. A lawsuit loomed. A decade of savings was evaporating. Every morning, I woke up already exhausted from whatever my brain had been doing while I slept. The hangover from drinking the night before never helped.
My chest was tight before my feet hit the floor. I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t eating right. I was white-knuckling my way through every conversation that required something from me I didn’t have.
The picture you see above? That was a very bad day when a family tragedy hit. Fear and anxiety showed up, and this time, I had a way to shift through it.
Even though I’m not a therapist, I’m an expert when it comes to managing my fear, anxiety, and anger. It’s why I freely offer my way of taking on my toxic emotions.
If you learn nothing else, just know that self-help isn’t selfish.
That’s what anxiety does at its worst
Same with fear. It doesn’t just make you nervous. It makes you a stranger to yourself.
It’s a war we wage within ourselves. And most of us hate war.
Here’s the part nobody tells you: the anxiety about the anxiety is almost worse than the original thing. You start monitoring yourself. Am I okay right now? Why can’t I calm down?
It compounds. It becomes its own problem stacked on top of the problem that started it.
Once upon a time, many years ago, I went broke. I won’t dress that up. And somewhere in the wreckage of that emotional disaster, not because I was wise, but because I had run out of other options, I started paying attention to what was actually happening inside me instead of just reacting to it.
I dove deep into group therapy and fellowship with others struggling. It was all local, sitting in rooms talking through our head trash and problems. Writing helped me process what I was going through. And eventually, I formalized the process that worked for me and started teaching and sharing it with anyone willing to try it out.
I eventually named the process The Clarity S.H.I.F.T. Method™. Not born in a boardroom and not pulled from a book. Built in the middle of a mess, I wasn’t sure I was going to survive.
Today, I don’t suffer from fear, anxiety, or anger the way I once did. That’s not a small thing. That’s everything.
And I want to walk you through the reason why.
Start here now, wherever you are
If something is weighing on you, and if you’re reading this, something probably is, I want you to stop, just for a moment. Put the problem down like a bag you’ve been carrying too long.
It’ll still be there in five minutes. Right now, stop.
Breathe. Not a polite little breath. A real one. Fill your belly like there’s a balloon in there. Let it expand. Hold it one beat. Then let it go, slowly.
Do it again.
And once more.
Keep going, close your eyes, and imagine a happy place that warms your heart.
Smile.
Be still, observing yourself and the sounds and smells around you. Take it all in with each breath, and let the oxygen do its magic.
Did anything shift? Not the situation. But something in you, a few degrees. That’s not nothing. That’s the gateway to higher consciousness.
Now you’re ready. If not, keep reading and believing that you can help yourself face the anxiety that is trying to tell you something big.
The first step is called Self-Awareness
It begins with the simplest, hardest thing: noticing what’s actually happening inside you. You already started that step.
It’s called being present. Observing and asking, listening. Write your notes in a journal if you feel like it.
What are you telling yourself right now? What are you feeling, and where do you feel it: your chest, your throat, your gut? What’s the story running in the background, the one you’ve been half-listening to all day?
Don’t judge it. Don’t fix it. Just name it. Anxiety lives in the shadows. The moment you shine a light on it and say this is what’s happening inside me right now, it loses a little of its power.
Not all of it. Just enough.
From there, we move into Higher Understanding
This step is about seeing the bigger picture beyond the fog of the feeling.
Ask yourself this: what do you actually know to be real right now, based on your current perception?
Be honest.
Not the worst-case scenario your mind has been rehearsing. Not the catastrophe that hasn’t happened yet. What is verifiably, honestly real in this moment?
When I did this during my own meltdown, the picture was still hard to see. But it was a picture. Something I could stand in front of and look at clearly.
Anxiety was calling me. But in that place, that moment, I could ask myself what values or principles apply here.
How can I see this from a higher, more honest perspective than fear is offering me right now?
That question alone changes everything because we are shifting our consciousness, our point of view, to a much higher perspective where we can see the situation differently.
The third step is Introspection
It’s where the real work lives. You begin to search inside yourself. Again, pause where you are unless it’s in the middle of a road.
You don’t need to be a monk to do this. Just be willing to practice wherever you go, actually.
You’re working on yourself by going within yourself. You’re learning to ask and be with your higher self. We all have that part of us; otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to talk to ourselves, would we?
What beliefs, fears, or old patterns are driving what you’re feeling? Because anxiety rarely arrives alone. It travels with old stories. Fear of losing everything. Fear of not being enough. Fear that the ground you built your life on was never as solid as you told yourself it was.
I had known fear and anxiety for my entire life. And until I shone an introspective light on it, it held a fierce grip on me.
What do you need to let go of to feel better about your situation? What are you trying to control that is absolutely impossible to control, which is pretty much everything other than your perspective?
And here’s the quieter, harder question underneath that one: can you begin to see the outcome you want most as already possible, even now, even here?
It’s about knowing what you want by knowing what you don’t want. That takes lots of practice. Over time, you no longer let fear and anxiety own you.
That question leads us directly into Focused Intention
Here’s the fourth of five steps. What outcome do you want, and by when? Not vaguely. Specifically, as it relates to you, the person, place, or thing that sets off your fear and anxiety.
Because anxiety thrives in vagueness, clarity is its natural enemy. It’s the ultimate peaceful warrior that defends you against your lower self; that’s the part of you that tells you that you suck.
That’s just a story. You can change the story. Imagine that.
What new story can you begin telling yourself? Not a lie, not toxic positivity, but an honest, forward-facing script you can practice morning and night.
How can you begin weaving that into the ordinary fabric of your days, so that over time, the new story becomes louder than the old one?
Your intention is where transformation stops being a concept and starts being a practice.
You begin to have faith in yourself and your ability to shift, to change the one thing you can change: yourself, and in turn, you treat yourself and the world around you with compassion.
Because the world is your mirror, it reflects to you what you show it.
Here’s the fifth step
Transformation. A daily transformation of yourself by aligning with your higher self, such that your lower self doesn’t suck the life out of you.
“You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” — Marcus Aurelius
What will you actually do, starting today, to overcome the old beliefs, the old scripts and untrue stories, the old patterns that anxiety has been feeding on? How will you know you’ve shifted? What will be different about the way you move through the world?
And maybe most importantly: who benefits when you do?
Because this was never just about you, the people in your life, the ones who need you present, steady, and real, see and feel the difference when you shift.
Your anxiety costs them something, too. Your transformation gives something back. You align with your higher self.
Anxiety doesn’t check credentials
It finds the gap between who you are and who you’re afraid you might actually be, and it moves right in.
I’m almost 65. I work with executives, founders, and professionals who have built remarkable things by every external measure and still lie awake at three in the morning wondering when it’s all going to fall apart.
What I tell them is what I’ll tell you. Practice this method daily.
Not when a crisis hits, by then you’re already behind. Build the muscle quietly and steadily before the meltdown comes.
Five minutes in the morning before the noise starts. Breathe. Move through the steps. Ask the honest questions.
Five minutes sitting anywhere, you find yourself feeling fear or anxiety knocking on your door. You can open that door, and when you do, you now have a way to let your emotions know you’re in charge.
That’s the power of the higher power within you; your higher self
The people who shift aren’t the ones who had it easier. They’re the ones who kept showing up to the practice when nothing seemed to be working.
I no longer wake up with my chest already tight. I no longer white-knuckle my way through the day. I haven’t needed to chug a small bucket of beer to take the edge off life at night.
Fear, anxiety, anger, they visit sometimes, the way the weather passes through. But they don’t live here anymore.
That didn’t happen because life got easier. It happened because I built something that works.
Daily progress. Not perfection.
That’s all this is.
If you’re stuck in the business of life, start your shift here.