Have you ever noticed the link between anxiety and creativity? Well, today we’re going to discuss releasing anxiety and unleashing your creativity.
Hey, it’s me Rebecca Wiener McGregor, the Anxiety Eraser. And welcome to another episode of Effective Immediately, the show where we talk mindset healthy emotions, leadership, abundance, and I give you a mindset shift that you can start to use effective immediately.
Okay, today, we have an exciting topic to dive into the incredible link between releasing anxiety and unleashing your creativity. Now, you’re going to be amazed at how these two elements work hand in hand to unlock your genius. So grab your favorite beverage, you may want to grab a journal for this so you can write some notes, and get comfortable and let’s get started. Okay? All right.
So, we’re going to talk about first we’re gonna explore the ways that anxiety can hinder creative expression and ideation. Now, think of yourself as this powerful channel, right? This powerful idea machine. And how when you are in the state of creating ideas, things just flow through you. Right? The ideas are popping, ideas are flooding in, there are new stories to be crafted, art to be created, products to be shared with your audience, messages to come through for your community, things that you want to share with your team, new ideas on how to connect and grow your team and all those different things. And anxiety will stand in the way of that. Now, the anxiety, you know, the brain uses anxiety as a safety mechanism. Right? You and I with all of our time together that we spent so far, we know that the brain doesn’t care about your happiness, doesn’t care about my happiness, it cares about keeping us safe. And in the similar. And in the same. It does not care about our happiness, or comfort, or joy, or trust, or relationships, or success, or any of that stuff. It’s our spirit that wants all of that. And sometimes when the anxiety is so strong, and the spirit feels like it’s being pushed down, we can feel stuck. We can feel in a rut, caught, and sometimes even paralyzed. So releasing anxiety actually creates mental space for fresh ideas and perspectives to come through. Anxiety, releasing anxiety, and opening up creativity is like my favorite thing to talk about because I help people create their rich life and the easiest way to do that is to release the things that hold us back. Anxiety, frustration, anger, rage, and depression, those kinds of things are the things that keep us stuck, keep us staying in the same place. And when we move all of that energy, we move that emotion, we move what’s happening in the body the creativity can expand, inflate, explode in the best possible ways. All right, so I’ve worked with 1000s of clients over the years, I’m going to give you a few examples of what has happened, okay? These people were able to create more powerful connections, business solutions, and even create works of art, series of books, series of podcast episodes, series of products, so many things that they were able to create after releasing their anxiety, different solutions, finding the right person to join their team that they didn’t see was missing from their team before that made such a huge difference. Okay, so now just think about this for a moment. Imagine releasing anxiety and getting a super exciting download and starting a new business. Okay, so one of my clients released the anxiety, released the frustration they were carrying for years. And you know, anxiety, it tears at the self-esteem, it tears at our self-worth and our self-trust. So when though when that anxiety is released, we start to believe in ourselves and our ideas more. So when we have more ideas, we get to execute those ideas, because there’s more self-trust. Okay, like such a fun. I know it’s kind of a heavy topic. Anxiety is always kind of a heavy topic. But I want you to think to the other side of anxiety when it’s released, what can be possible.
Releasing Anxiety: Client Success
So here’s an example of one of my clients, I want to read the notes because I want to make sure I get this right because I’m so frickin proud of her. Okay, she released anxiety, she got a super exciting download about a new business that expanded her passion. She loved helping people, she loved helping kids. She was able to create her dreams about becoming a digital nomad. So she lives on the road most of the time and explores the world while helping people, helping kids with ADHD in her business. How freaking cool is that? Because she released the anxiety, all this powerful messaging came through her through her intuition from her higher power and she was able to create a business out of it that helped her fund the lifestyle that she wants to have and also leave a legacy of helping people. Another one was released anxiety and anger and decided that now was the time to sell his business. He had many people reach out to buy his business over the years, but he just didn’t feel safe with any of the ideas, didn’t feel safe with any of the plans because the anxiety kept him from really trusting himself. Right? So we released the anxiety when we worked together and he felt safe to say yes to a really great future for himself. He stayed on with the company, he sold his company, he stayed on as a consultant for 18 months, and walked away with an eight-figure paycheck. He said this wouldn’t have happened if he had stayed stuck in that anger and that anxiety, but he was able to fully release it and begin to trust himself and more opportunities, things that he didn’t even know were possible, he did not know that he could get a check for eight figures for his business.
Okay, so let’s talk about this in simple terms. Imagine your creativity as a pipeline or a channel. And this channel, when it’s open, the ideas are flowing, inspiration comes through loud and clear. And you feel such great energy moving through your body, you’re rolling through your day, little and big things come up in your life, and they need to be solved. Right? As they do. Life happens, life keeps happening, whether you release anxiety or not, life keeps happening. But when your creative channel is open, and all this stuff is coming through your day, little and big problems. Little and big problems because they happen to everybody, right? Little and big problems come through, they need solving. And as your creative channel is open, you get ideas, you see solutions. And you know, when your channel is open, that each problem that comes up whether it’s big or small, has many infinite solutions. When we are in anxiety, most of the time we see one or two, maybe three or four solutions to our problems. But when our channel is open, the anxiety is released, you can notice that there are many ways to solve problems. Many ways that you may not use yourself, that may require additional help, may require additional resources, but you’re willing to see them and explore them when the mind is not full of anxiety. Okay? So you’re going through your day, you’re connected to your creativity, these things come up. You’re connected to yourself, your intuition, your spirit. And the way is shown to you how to deal with these things over and over. So simple. Something comes up. ‘Oh yes, that’s exactly how we’ll do it’. Or ‘oh, here are the 10 ways that I can choose to handle the situation’. And you use your discernment to choose how to do it. Now imagine anxiety coming in, that darn anxiety, causing you to hold your breath, feel tension in your body, heaviness in your chest, maybe heaviness in your head, your thoughts start racing, the channel is getting gunked up. The volume seems to go down on all your ideas and your creativity. Because your body is tense, distracting you, you can’t hear the messages, you can’t hear the nudges, you can’t hear the knowings. This is anxiety holding on, right? Distracting you. You can’t hear all that stuff like you could when you felt free. And you go through your day and the little and big things that seem to come up all feel like big things. And they take a long time to deal with now because the creativity is shut down. Maybe it’s still happening in the background, but you can’t feel it because of the tension in your body or the thoughts right seeing through your head. You can simply see how anxiety and this is true of anger, rage, depression, those kinds of things are all rooted in the same kind of stuff anyway, how these can shut down your creativity. And frankly, make life a lot less fun. Like nobody ever said anxiety, or depression, or anger was fun anyway, right? But you can imagine now that creativity is being shut down because of the anxiety in your body, and you can simply see how anxiety would block creativity. And anything rooted in fear is actually the only thing that will block your creativity. Your Creativity is a powerful force, it wants to come through, it wants to show you the solutions for your life, it wants to give you the ideas to help you move in the direction of your big vision, it wants to move you forward. Remember, your brain does not like that, your brain does not like movement, your brain likes to keep you in the same and the similar. And if that means stuck and uncomfortable, that’s fine. Your brain doesn’t care. It’s your spirit that wants happiness.
Okay, so now I want to give you the opportunity to hear a few ideas that will help you manage your emotions, and get in the creative flow. So you may want to grab your journal. Before you do anything creative, set your intention. This is the number one most powerful tool that you have is to set your intention for how you want to feel, what you want to create, what kind of solutions you want to call in, whatever creative thing you’re working on, set your intention for how you want it to feel, and maybe don’t be so tied to the result, but tied to the process. You know, we hear a lot about the journey being the really cool part and the destination being secondary, right? So allow yourself to set an intention for the process. Okay, so we’ve set our intention. Open up your body, start to shift your energy, and get into the optimal state of mind. Now, if you’re trying to intentionally create from a state of anxiety, it’s gonna feel terrible. It’s going to exhaust you very quickly. Okay? So give yourself a breath, trust yourself, trust and do not judge yourself. Okay? Please don’t judge yourself through this process. So allow yourself to feel what you need to feel. Take your breaths, and move forward.
Here are my top three things to manage the anxiety, manage the feelings so that you can help them calm down enough for you to set your intention and move into your creative endeavor, your problem-solving that you need to do, your actual creating of art, your desire to download your next big thing, your next big solution, your next project, your book, your story, your movie, your screen, your screenplay, whatever it is, okay? The first number one thing that I love to use is EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique, also known as Tapping. There are many, many ways to do this many, many different teachers, you can find probably billions at this point of videos on YouTube about how to use EFT to move through the stages of anxiety, move that emotion out of your body. The cool thing about EFT is that it’s very simple. You don’t need any equipment. You don’t need any special tools or any special skills to do it. You can do it on your own, and it will help move the energy through your body very quickly. Okay, so usually there is a setup statement and certain tapping points that you’ll follow. And I’m actually going to share some of that with you next week. So be sure to tune in next week for an explanation of EFT. And this actually helps to calm your amygdala, the emotion center of your brain, and helps to calm your body. It puts you in a slightly altered state of consciousness. We’re in all different states of consciousness all day anyway. But this helps to pull you out of that anxious state. Relax your brain, relax your fight or flight response, relax your breathing, and help you focus on moving the energy and the emotion through your body. It’s not about bypassing and not feeling the energy and the emotion, but allowing it when you’re ready to move it on. Move it out through your body. Okay?
The next thing is journaling. When you don’t know what to do, write it all down. This is the easiest, simplest thing that you could possibly do is take a pen and paper, write down every single thing that’s going through your mind. In the middle of it, you may think, ‘oh my gosh, I need to pick up coffee from the grocery store’. Put your grocery list in the middle if you need to. Okay? ‘Oh, I need to drink more water’. Yes. Write down, I need to drink more water, whatever comes through your mind, regarding anything that’s on your mind right now just do a solid brain dump. Get it all out on paper and then you can start to look at it, analyze it a little bit, kind of reflect on some of the things you’re feeling, and then start to highlight where you can create some solutions. The easiest way for you to get to a solution is to be able to take a step back and look at the problem from a different state of mind. That is why we want our creativity open, because that’s how we get to that different state of mind. Okay? So you’ve journaled, you’ve written everything down.
Now the next step, you can use all of these three together, by the way. You can use all of these three together, by the way, each of them will work separately and beautifully. This is the process that I go through. I go through setting my intention, I use EFT to release any emotions that have built up, I write down everything that’s going on, and finally, I will finish with gratitude because I love gratitude. If you’ve heard me talk about gratitude before, it is the easiest, simplest way to start to feel a different emotion. And that is to write down what you’re grateful for, why you’re grateful for it, and how it makes you feel in your body. Now, some people think, ‘Well, I think about what I’m grateful for all day, I say thank you to people, I let myself feel gratitude all day’. There’s something special that happens when you write it down and you think about, Oh, I’m so grateful for this person in my life, I’m so thankful for them because this is what they bring to my life, this is how they are such a great partner or friend to me, or whatever the case may be. And this is how it makes me feel in my body. The more that you practice these experiences, the more that you practice, these awarenesses the more that you practice these awarenesses, the more your body starts to recognize them and will actually look for them when you aren’t even trying. Your body will look for these experiences when you aren’t even trying. So, feeling grateful, writing down what you’re grateful for, why you’re grateful for it, and how it makes you feel in your body. These are so key, alright? Now you can write down, even write down how grateful you are that solutions are coming to you left and right, you’re so grateful that you were able to able to solve this problem because you know you will have a really high success rate of solving problems in your life where you wouldn’t be here, right? You have a really high success rate of handling things, even the feelings and even the experiences that feel unhandleable when they first come about. You have a really high success rate of handling them. So give yourself lots of love and lots of grace through this process. Okay?
Now, you know, I’m not exactly satisfied with just helping you manage your anxiety, right? I want to help you fully release your anxiety and then open your creative process, open your creative channels for you to create the life that you want. And we take all that stuff that’s happening in your body, and we fully relax it. All the tension, all the racing thoughts can feel like a traffic jam in your head sometimes. The tension, the stress, the things that your body carries, when you wake up with it, when you go to sleep with it, when it pops up out of nowhere, we can make all of that go away. We can make the racing thoughts go away, and help that high-speed chase of thoughts to go away to calm it down and then stop it. You can actually get space between your thoughts. Now this space between your thoughts is such a cool place to hang out because this is where you will hear messages and be able to connect with your higher power. This is where you will connect with your higher self and your intuition. This is where you will relax and open up for all the creative solutions in your life to come through. Sounds heavenly doesn’t it? So powerful. So powerful that you will be able to do that. Your brain knows how to heal itself. It actually knows how to heal itself and can do so very quickly.
So the tools I’ve mentioned earlier will help you create a really powerful connection with yourself again and move forward and allow that creative channel to open up. So please use those. if you need to rewatch this, please do okay? Now, if you’re ready to release anxiety, frustration, depression, the things that have been blocking you, keeping you stuck, unable to move forward, unable to create the things in the life that you want, then reach out for a call with me go to callwithrebecca.com and get that scheduled. Okay? I’ll share with you exactly what results you can expect. And I’ll show you how to create more love, trust, joy, confidence, inner peace, and creativity in your life.
Your Effective Immediately Mindfulness Shift
Okay, so for now, I’m going to give you your mindset shift that you can use effective immediately. Okay, are you ready? Put your hand on your heart. This is a powerful statement, you can write it down or just watch the replay to get it. If you can’t remember it, that’s okay. You have places where you can come back to. Put your hand on your heart, not in, put your hand on your heart. Give yourself a breath. And say “even though I’m feeling stuck, anxious, afraid, paralyzed, heavy thoughts, whatever it is, even though I’m feeling anxiety, I deeply and completely love and accept myself”. Remember, I told you the number one thing that will shut down creativity is fear and the hardest thing that you can do on yourself is to judge yourself. Judgment creates separation from yourself. You fight yourself harder, stronger, longer than ever before, when you judge yourself, so release all the judgment. You want to bring more love and safety in and the safest thing that you can do is not judge yourself. The safest thing that you can do is simply love yourself. Even though you’re feeling anxiety you can still deeply and completely love and accept yourself. Okay? So give yourself a breath, put your hand on your heart. Notice how your body relaxes, as you say, and you can just repeat it. “Even though I feel anxiety, even though I feel stuck, I deeply and completely love and accept myself. Even though I feel pressure, even though I feel frustration, even though I feel blocked, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.” Give yourself a breath. Let that sink in. Notice that even though you’re feeling some kind of way, some blocked, anxious, frustrated, angry, irritated, agitated way, you can still deeply and completely love and accept yourself at the very same time. Both things can be true at the same time. “Even though I’m feeling anxiety, even though I’m feeling frustrated, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.” Use that on repeat. Notice that your body will calm. Notice that your thoughts will quiet down. Give yourself a break. Give yourself lots of love. Let me know how it goes for you. Keep practicing. You’ve got this and I’ll see you next week. Bye for now.
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About the Author:
Rebecca Wiener McGregor, also known as The Anxiety Eraser, is a seasoned transformational hypnotist, trauma healer, and abundance coach. Since 2004, she guides visionary women to break free from anxiety, blocks, traumas, and fears, leading them to a life filled with abundance and purpose. Through her book “Loving Her” and work with conscious women executives, leaders, coaches, and healers worldwide, Rebecca sparks profound transformations, helping her clients embrace their true selves and create impactful, joyful, fulfilling lives.
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