Introduction: The Anxiety Epidemic and a Path to Freedom

If you've ever found your heart racing before a presentation, felt a knot in your stomach in social situations, or been kept awake by a relentless stream of "what if" thoughts, you're not alone. Anxiety is one of the most common mental health challenges of our time. Millions search daily for terms like "how to calm anxiety," "anxiety relief techniques," and "how to stop overthinking."

 

But what if we've been thinking about anxiety all wrong? What if it's not a life sentence, but a manageable—and even conquerable—pattern?

In a powerful conversation with Mike Wood, a resilience coach and creator of the "Learn to Love Being You" program, we delved deep into the nature of anxiety and depression. Mike, who overcame severe anxiety rooted in childhood dyslexia, presents a compelling case: "Anxiety is easy because it's just thoughts about the future. We're worried about the boogeyman in the future, and it's never coming."

This blog post is your ultimate guide to understanding and implementing the same powerful strategies Mike uses to help clients break free from anxiety for good. We'll explore the crucial link between your past and your present anxiety, provide immediate "how to calm your nerves" techniques, and outline a long-term plan for rewiring your subconscious mind for lasting peace.

Understanding the Root Cause: Why Your Anxiety is Actually Stuck in the Past

Before we can effectively tackle how to overcome anxiety, we must first understand where it comes from. Most of us believe anxiety is about the future—and on the surface, it is. We worry about an upcoming interview, a difficult conversation, or a financial problem.

However, Mike Wood argues that the engine of anxiety is often found in the past.

"Depression is so much harder to get rid of because it's stuck in the past... A lot of times that old negative thought about we're not smart is now creating the anxiety about the future. Oh, I don't feel smart and I'm going to go to a conference. I wonder if everybody else is going to see that I'm not very smart. So, the anxiety is typically coming from the past."

This is a paradigm shift. Your social anxiety or your performance anxiety isn't just about the present situation; it's being fueled by an "old negative core belief" that was formed in a moment of high emotion, often in childhood.

How Core Beliefs Are Formed: The "Pool" Example

Mike uses a brilliant analogy to explain how our subconscious mind gets programmed. Imagine a two-year-old child walking near a pool, who slips and falls in. The child is terrified, gasping for air until someone saves them.

From that day forward, the child's subconscious mind, which has no concept of time, associates the pool with danger and death. It will do everything it can to protect the child from that threat again. This is a healthy, protective mechanism.

The problem arises when we attach this same life-or-death urgency to emotional wounds.

Mike’s own core belief—"I'm not as smart as everyone else"—was formed in kindergarten when he couldn't spell his name and his teacher grew frustrated. In that moment of elevated emotional stress, his subconscious mind accepted that clear intention as a truth to be protected from. For decades, his mind sabotaged him to avoid the "danger" of feeling stupid.

This is the secret mechanism of anxiety: Your subconscious mind is trying to protect you from re-experiencing an old pain (rejection, shame, feeling unworthy) by making you anxious about future situations that might trigger it.

The First Step to Freedom: The 3-Week Framework for Manual Control

You can't heal a wound you don't understand. But while you're doing the deeper work of uncovering core beliefs, you can take manual control of your mind. Mike Wood's program begins with a practical 3-week framework to do just that.

Week 1: Anchor Yourself in the Present Moment

Anxiety cannot survive in the present moment. It feeds on future "what ifs" and past regrets. The goal of Week 1 is to become an expert at pulling your awareness into the "now."

• Gratitude Journaling: This isn't just a fluffy exercise. It's a powerful mental shift. By manually writing down things you are grateful for each day, you force your brain to scan for positives, breaking its negative bias. This is a foundational anxiety relief technique.

• Sensory Grounding ("Stop and Smell the Roses"): Mike recommends going outside, closing your eyes, and identifying as many smells as you can. "It's a real thing. It'll bring you happiness if you could do it for just a few minutes... 100% of the attention goes inward and then all of a sudden we're happy even if only for a few minutes." You can do this with any sense—listening for distant sounds, feeling the texture of your clothes. This is a form of mindfulness for anxiety.

Week 2: Get Separation from Your Thoughts Through Meditation

This is perhaps the most critical skill for learning how to stop overthinking. Most of us are fused with our thoughts; we believe we are our anxiety.

"We are the witness of our thoughts... through meditation I show everybody how to get separation between our thoughts and the true self."

Through consistent practice, often in just a few days, you can reach a point where you see your thoughts as separate from you. You can observe an anxious thought like, "I'm going to fail this interview," without becoming it. You can see it as a cloud passing in the sky, a piece of data, not a truth. This space is where your freedom lies.

Week 3: The Art of Reframing Your Thoughts

Once you can observe your thoughts, you can consciously choose to change them. This isn't about positive thinking; it's about cognitive reframing.

Mike’s traffic example is perfect. When someone cuts you off, the automatic thought might be, "You jerk! I can't believe you did that!" This triggers anger and stress.

The manual reframe would be: "Oh, this person must be in a huge hurry. Maybe they have a sick kid at home. I hope they get home safe."

The event didn't change, but your response did. You manually shifted from the "fear bucket" to the "love bucket," and in doing so, you changed your body's chemical response from cortisol-driven stress to oxytocin-driven calm.

The Neurochemical Key: Mike explains, "We are drug-induced either happy or sad based off of the content of our thoughts." Negative thoughts produce cortisol (the fear/stress chemical), keeping you on high alert. Positive, compassionate thoughts produce oxytocin (the love/bonding chemical), inducing a state of safety and well-being.

How to Calm Nerves Before a Stressful Event: Immediate Tools

Let's get hyper-practical. You have a job interview, a public speaking engagement, or a first date. The anxiety is building. What can you do right now? Here are Mike Wood's top recommendations, used by athletes and Navy SEALs.

1. Pre-Event Meditation

Don't just nervously pace. Schedule time to meditate before the event.

"My advice would be to just try to get yourself in a very calm state by meditating. Go into a quiet place an hour before you go on... Get on YouTube. There's a million of them... and just try to get lost in a chakra meditation or something where you're really focusing inward for about an hour and it'll be a beautiful state of mind."

This practice settles your nervous system and prevents the "freaking out before" that creates most of the performance anxiety.

2. Navy SEAL Box Breathing

This is one of the most effective breathing exercises for anxiety and can be done anywhere, even with your eyes open.

The Technique:

• Inhale slowly for 4 seconds.

• Hold your breath for 4 seconds.

• Exhale slowly for 4 seconds.

• Hold your breath for 4 seconds.

• Repeat this cycle for 2-5 minutes.

"This will reset [your emotions] back down to zero. And what it will do is it'll bring your attention into the present moment. You won't be thinking about getting on stage in an hour. You'll be in the present moment and it'll calm you down."

Tackling Social Anxiety: The "Essence of God" Trick

Social anxiety is particularly debilitating because it feels so personal. Mike explains that we are energetically sensitive; within a 12-foot radius, we can pick up on the nervous energy of others, which can then trigger our own.

For immediate relief in social situations, he teaches a powerful mental reframe. When you make eye contact with someone, silently say to yourself:

"The essence of God in me is honored to be in the presence of the essence of God in you."

You can replace "God" with "the Universe," "Divine Spirit," or "True Self" based on your beliefs.

Why this works: "It disconnects the ego from the ego. And we now are connecting with the true source... it helps us get rid of the muck and get in touch with the true source... in the other person." This shifts the interaction from one of judgment and comparison to one of shared humanity and respect, instantly dissolving anxiety.

The Long-Term Cure: Rewiring Your Subconscious Core Beliefs

While the techniques above provide immense relief, the permanent solution to anxiety involves going back to the source: the core beliefs formed in your past.

The Process of Rewriting Core Beliefs

Mike shares his own profound journey of rewriting 170 of his own core beliefs.

1. Identify the Core Belief: Through self-reflection or coaching, uncover the root memory where a belief like "I'm not good enough" or "I'm unlovable" was formed.

2. Revisit with Compassion: In your mind's eye, go back to that moment. Don't just observe it; re-enter it with the wisdom and compassion of your adult self.

3. Apply Forgiveness: This is the most critical step. "Forgiveness is everything. None of it works without forgiveness." You must forgive everyone involved—the person who triggered the event, the bystanders, and, most importantly, yourself.

4. Reframe the Memory: Turn the memory from one of pain and shame into a "compassionate, loving moment filled with forgiveness."

Mike did this with his kindergarten teacher. He forgave her, forgave the laughing students, and forgave his younger self. The result?

"And now my subconscious mind said, 'Oh, I don't need to protect you from falling into the pool. I don't need to protect you from some danger,' and it just moves it into the love bucket and now all of a sudden I'm not living with that anymore."

When the core belief is dissolved, the anxiety it was generating simply has no foundation left to stand on. This is the essence of rewiring your brain for lasting peace.

Anxiety vs. Depression: A Crucial Distinction

Mike draws a clear and helpful distinction between the two:

• Anxiety: Focused on the future. "The boogeyman that's never coming." It is often a symptom of a past-based core belief.

• Depression: Focused on the past. "It's stuck in the past and it's coming from an old negative core belief that no longer serves us."

He finds anxiety easier to treat because once you learn to manage your thoughts and address the core beliefs, it can dissolve quickly, as seen with his clients who were able to stop high-dose anxiety medication within weeks.

FAQs: Your Questions on Overcoming Anxiety, Answered

How long does it take to overcome anxiety?

It depends on the depth of the core beliefs, but significant relief from general anxiety can be very quick. Mike cites cases of clients overcoming debilitating anxiety in a matter of weeks. The key is consistent practice of the techniques.

Can hypnotherapy help with anxiety?

Mike believes it can, if the hypnotherapy is able to access and reframe the original core belief with love and forgiveness. The principle is the same: the subconscious mind must be reprogrammed in a state of elevated emotion (which hypnosis can provide).

What's the role of self-love in beating anxiety?

Fundamental. The entire process of reframing core beliefs is an act of profound self-love. It is about finally giving yourself the compassion, understanding, and forgiveness you may not have received when the original wound occurred. As you release these beliefs, loving yourself becomes the natural state, not the anxious one.

Conclusion: Your Journey to a Quieter Mind Starts Now

Overcoming anxiety is not about fighting your thoughts or "just relaxing." It's a systematic process of:

1. Understanding that your anxiety is a protective mechanism from your past.

2. Taking manual control through present-moment awareness, meditation, and thought reframing.

3. Using immediate tools like box breathing and pre-event meditation to handle stressful situations.

4. Committing to the deeper work of identifying, forgiving, and rewriting the core beliefs that have been running the show.

As Mike Wood's story and work brilliantly demonstrate, a quiet mind and a heart free from constant fear are not just possible; they are your birthright. The path is one of compassion, curiosity, and consistent practice. Start today by taking one deep breath and acknowledging that you are not your anxiety. You are the one who can witness it, understand it, and, ultimately, set yourself free.

Transcript:

Podcast Host: Neeti Keswani
Podcast Guest: Mike Wood

Neeti Keswani: Welcome to the podcast. This is your space for self-improvement, wellness, and mindset mastery. Here, luxury isn't about things. It's about the freedom to live authentically and heal deeply along the path. I'm Neeti Keswani, author, storytelling coach, and we help businesses bring their message out so it's authentic inside out and you're able to reach your right audience.

Today we are going to explore a success story with Mike Wood. Mike Wood is the creator of the "Learn to Love Being You" 10-week program. He has helped countless people break free from limiting beliefs and quieten the mind to cultivate true self-love. His story is one of resilience, healing, and lasting success, and he's here to share practical tools for anyone ready to move beyond survival and into freedom. Welcome, Mike.

Mike Wood: Thank you for having me.

Neeti Keswani: So lovely to have you, Mike, on this call in this discussion. We have some set of questions regarding anxiety for you. Tell us about your story, your background and how did you get into coaching people on anxiety relief.

Mike Wood: Well, I grew up with anxiety. You know, I had a rare form, I still do, I guess, a rare form of dyslexia. And so when I graduated high school, I could read at about a second-grade level. I figured out cool little ways and little tricks to get myself through, navigate school and graduate with a bunch of C's and D's. But it left me with a lot of anxiety. It made me feel like I was less than. I thought everybody was more intelligent than me. And I had all these programs inside that told me constantly that I was less than, that other people were smarter than me, that I was stupid. Just a constant barrage of thoughts that lived with me on a daily basis until I was in my late 40s and I learned why I was programmed that way and how I was programmed. Once I understood how the subconscious mind works, I was able to go back and kind of reframe all that stuff with love and compassion and make that go away.

Neeti Keswani: Right. And then your shift into anxiety coaching, is that a genuine natural process for you to get into something because you have overcome it?

Mike Wood: Yeah. You know, when I turned my focus from the outside world and turned it inward and had the tools to understand how my mind and body worked, I started to see pain in everyone. It was almost a curse for a long time because the same pain that I was holding on to, I could see it in everyone. And so, it was instant pain and, you know, sorrow for everyone. So, I wanted to help everyone. If I'm feeling great all the time now for no reason, why can't everybody else feel the same way? I learned really quickly it doesn't work that way. Somebody has to want to. You can't push it on them. So, it's been an evolution for me. And then once I got to a certain place with my own health and mental well-being, people started just coming to me. And so, it's kind of evolved in a slow, organic way that's been beautiful. And so, once I was able to help one person, it was almost like a drug. Now, I just want to help everyone that is willing.

Neeti Keswani: Lovely. So now tell us, what are the practical steps that you possibly help people with when you are helping somebody dealing with anxiety? What are the three things that you look forward to when you are sort of starting your process?

Mike Wood: So the first thing is just to help people understand where peace and joy is found. Peace and joy is found in the present moment. You know, when we stop thinking about the future, where anxiety is, and we stop the noise coming from our past, that's where depression is found. And so, just some basic fundamental understanding of where peace is found. But the trauma from the past, the pain from the past is going to pull us really quickly. So, we can only hold on to it for brief moments in the beginning.

And so the first three weeks I really show people how to take manual control of your thoughts and emotions. And it's a really simple three-part thing. And the first thing is learning how to bring your attention into the present moment. So in week one, we start a gratitude journal, which is extremely powerful. It shifts the mind every day. It's a manual shift. And then I teach them how to use some breath work, some box breathing, some tools like just going outside and closing your eyes and smelling all the smells of the trees and the flowers or even the traffic, whatever it is, identify how many smells you could smell. And in that process, you're bringing your attention into the present moment. You know the phrase "stop and smell the roses." It's a real thing. It'll bring you happiness if you could do it for just a few minutes and all everything else goes away. 100% of the attention goes inward and then all of a sudden we're happy even if only for a few minutes. And so week one kind of gets everybody going, right? Gets into the present moment.

Week two, we get separation from our thoughts because the thoughts and the noise that comes in our mind, it's not real. It's coming from future fears or past memories, but it's not us. You know, we are the witness of our thoughts and through meditation I show everybody how to get separation between our thoughts and the true self. It's a little complicated to show but it's through a week of practicing meditation. Anybody could do it. It usually takes about two or three days and then all of a sudden people are looking at two different thoughts and getting separation between them and they're realizing, "Wait a minute, I can get separation between these thoughts."

In week three we just do a writing exercise. So you'll write down three bad things that happen in your mind, three negative thoughts that we had, and you write them down and reframe them. So if somebody cuts you off in traffic and you're thinking, "Oh, you sucker. I can't believe you did this to me." You reframe it with love and compassion and forgiveness. You come up with something like, "Oh, this person's got a sick kid at home. I hope that he makes it home safe and his kid is okay." And now all of a sudden, I remain in a beautiful state of mind and I'm manually shifting my thoughts in my head. But it takes practice. It's not easy to do. So, a week of practice of that and then all of a sudden after three weeks, we know where peace is found. We get separation from our thoughts and now we can start reframing them. We've not healed anything at this point, but we've manually taken control of what we think is uncontrollable in our head. And now all of a sudden, we start to understand that, "Oh, wait a minute. I'm not in a negative place all the time. I could shift this into a positive place."

Because the beautiful part, Neeti, is we are drug-induced either happy or sad based off of the content of our thoughts. So if we're riddled with negativity, we got cortisol producing this fear drug that puts us on high alert and keeps thinking those fearful thoughts, right? But if we just switch it to positive thoughts, now we're going to be producing oxytocin and it's going to be a love drug. We're going to be drug-induced happy by the content of our thoughts. And so in the first three weeks we give everybody these tools to manually shift ourselves out of the fear bucket, what I like to say, and put them in the love bucket.

Neeti Keswani: Lovely. So basically you pointed out three things: first of all being in the present moment, then journaling, and then you get on with the meditation aspect and then perhaps the healing starts.

Now I have a very practical question for you here, just to twist things a little bit. What about in a situation where, of course, you are in traffic and just like the analogy that you just took, that somebody has done some kind of a wrong turn and you are stuck with them and you are cursing and things like that? You kind of help people to understand that you have to reframe the story in your head, but in the heat of the moment things would have happened right so you still reframe it afterwards.

Mike Wood: Yeah, because it's practice. You know, when you start to get separation between you and your thoughts, you could feel that thought and that emotion swell up and the more you practice, the intensity... So, let's just say 10 years ago, somebody would have cut me off. I was a hothead. I had to snap so fast and there was no time frame for me to slow down. But once I started to learn this process and I started to practice, I still reacted fast, but then I would come down really quick. I'd catch it and then I'd come down and the more I would come down, the more the reaction time started to slow down, right? So then after I practiced, even for just a week or two, it happens really fast. Now all of a sudden, you start to feel the anger come and you go, "Oh, no, no, no, no, no." Because you're not attached to that, you've got separation between it and now that emotion can happen and you can calm it down and then now you're catching it before you actually say a cursed word and you actually get mad. You feel it but you just watch it float by like a cloud and now there's no attachment to it. We realize that we are not our thoughts. We are so much more than that. We are the witness of them. And now all of a sudden everything just starts to shift. And it doesn't take very long at all. And immediately with the practice, your brain will get trained really quickly to just go, "Oh, I hope they get home safe. They're in such a hurry. Their mind is going a million miles an hour. They're clearly not in a peaceful state like I am right now. I wish them the same peace and joy that I'm feeling right now." And you could come up with a thousand different ways to wish them well and wish them peace and just slow down, get out of their way and you know wish them well and it's... I use traffic as a way because most everybody has some type of emotions in traffic and it's a great place to practice.

Neeti Keswani: True. So, but then like now we have spoken about something which happened in the past and how we can reframe it almost immediately when something has occurred. But in cases of, you know, a stressful situation you're about to face—for example, a public speaking event. It is stressful for a lot of people. Or, let's say, interviews, podcast interviews, some people are very nervous about it. So now, how do I calm my nerves before that? How do I become less anxious before that?

Mike Wood: So what I would recommend doing is doing the manual shifts like we talked about. So, let's just say if I have a podcast or I got to go stand up in front of people, right? That's the thing everybody's the most afraid of. I got to go talk to a thousand people, get on stage and tell them about something. I'm terrified. So, what I would highly recommend doing, and I coach athletes to do some of this as well—high performance athletes that are phenomenal at practice, but in the game time, they fall apart. And so some of the advice that I've given them is to meditate for an hour if they can, maybe two hours before they get on. And then what I would highly recommend doing is just use the same thing that the Navy Seals use, the Navy Seals box breathing technique. And it's you just inhale for 4 seconds, you hold your breath for 4 seconds, you exhale for 4 seconds, and you hold your breath for 4 seconds. Now, this is typical breath work. It could be used as a form of meditation, but you can do it with your eyes open. You can do it while you're driving. You can do it when that guy cuts you off in traffic too. If you can't get control of your emotions, this will reset them back down to zero. And what it will do is it'll bring your attention into the present moment. You won't be thinking about getting on stage in an hour. You'll be in the present moment and it'll calm you down and bring you into the present moment. So, when you do get on stage, you'll be relaxed, you'll be calm because once the light comes on, it gets easy. It's the freaking out before that creates all the anxiety. We're worrying about something in the future that's probably going to be okay. It's going to be beautiful in the future. We just worry about it. So, my advice would be to just try to get yourself in a very calm state by meditating. Go into a quiet place an hour before you go on. Well, have the meditation end an hour before. Get on YouTube. There's a million of them. Get on your site. You've got some too that are beautiful. And just try to get lost in a chakra meditation or something where you're really focusing inward for about an hour and it'll be a beautiful state of mind and then hold that state with your breath work.

Neeti Keswani: Right. That's beautiful. What you just talked about is just beautiful because you talked about Navy Seal meditations and what athletes go through.

Now I'll just take a step back in that and understand from you: we talked about how we can reframe the story in our head, how can we get off the anxious thoughts and calm down. So now we are essentially trying to practice the scene and calming our nerves. In case of athletes, they have already done the work. They've already practiced so well in their practice sessions. Then why do people of that level actually, you know, chicken out in the actual game? What happens at that time?

Mike Wood: It's a pre-program. It's a pre-programmed response. You know, something happened when we were younger. There's four common things that we all get programmed with and we unknowingly program ourselves. We get programmed that we're ugly or stupid, unlovable, or unworthy.

And so, just like me, when I realized when I was in kindergarten that I couldn't read and write like the other kids... In that moment, when I was in kindergarten, my name is Michael and I was trying to spell Michael and I couldn't do it. And my teacher at the time got really frustrated with me. And that was the first time that I realized that I couldn't read or write just like the rest of the kids. I was because I started looking around. They could all do it. I was the only one left and she's getting irritated. And she basically told me at that point to write "Mike." And so I did. I wrote Mike and shortened my name up and I became Mike from that point on. Well, in that moment, I got into an elevated emotional state. And when we get into an elevated emotional state, it opens up the subconscious mind. And what we get left with is the clear intention. So I got left with "I'm not as smart as everybody else." And that's what got programmed. So from that day forward, it happened in the present moment and it's still the present moment. It's always the present moment. So I was left with feeling not as smart as everybody. So carry that forward from a 5-year-old kid in kindergarten to a 35-year-old person trying to start a business. And they've got all the tools. They know what they're supposed to be doing, but they just run into a block. They think they're not as smart as everybody and their brain sabotages them, saying, "Oh, don't do it. You're not smart enough." Well, where's it all coming from? It's coming from the program that got created when I was five.

Because this is how it works, Neeti. So, let's imagine that a 2-year-old kid is walking along the edge of the pool and they fall in. They get water in their lungs, they freak out, and they're panicked. Somebody picks them up, gets them safe, gets the water out of their lungs, and they start to breathe. The subconscious mind is going to hold that as a very high memory. So that child will not walk into the pool again. The next time the kid gets near a pool, he's going like, "Uh-uh, I'm getting over here. I don't want nothing to do with that pool." It's the subconscious mind's way to protect us from death. The problem is our subconscious mind is going to protect us from anything we attach to. So if I considered myself as smart when I was a little boy and now all of a sudden I said, "No, I'm not smart, I'm dumb." Well now all of a sudden I just put that attachment on me. I've decorated my ego with that attachment that I wasn't smart. And so now I go through life with that attachment and it becomes something that the subconscious mind is trying to protect me from.

So I've got a son today that's 10 and he has the same rare form of dyslexia. It's hereditary. My two youngest boys have the same thing. And I've taught him. He's going through the same thing I did. I've got him in a special school. So, he's 10. He's a little bit later where this happened to him. But now we go through a little exercise where he just says out loud, "I'm not a good reader or a bad reader. I'm so much more than a reader. I just read." And so, he's not putting any attachment on himself and his subconscious mind doesn't have anything to protect. So, now he's not breaking down when he can't read as good as the other kids. He's just doing the best he can, and whatever it is, it is because he's not feeling an involuntary attack.

So, to go back to the original question, these athletes that are panicking even though they've done all the work, they're panicking because they have old core beliefs from when they were a young child that said they weren't good enough. They weren't strong enough. Their dad looked at them in a certain way and made them feel funky unknowingly and all of a sudden they were left with something where they felt unworthy, unlovable, stupid or ugly. Those are pretty much the universal ones for everyone.

Neeti Keswani: I mean, they are really good in the practice. They just ace up the game. They're doing their best and people can notice, coaches can notice. Then how come in the same field, the same football area, they do not perform that well? So why would that happen is what I was trying to ask you.

Mike Wood: Yeah. So because the old stuff... it happened in the present moment. The subconscious mind has no concept of time. So if it happened in the present moment they're still feeling that way right here and right now. This is the beautiful thing that I learned and the reason I created my 10-week program because of this one thing right here. The gift of it is it's still the present moment. And we can go back and reframe all of those things and make them go away.

I've rewritten probably 170 of my own core beliefs. And with every one of them, it's like lifting a burden off your head and the mind starts to quiet a little bit. All the negative voices start to slow down, they finally start to go away because I've gone back to that place where I got into an elevated emotional state. I forgave my teacher. I forgave myself. I forgave the other students who were laughing because I couldn't read the way that they could. And I turned it into a compassionate, loving moment filled with forgiveness. And now my subconscious mind said, "Oh, I don't need to protect you from falling into the pool. I don't need to protect you from some danger." and it just moves it into the love bucket and it now all of a sudden I'm not living with that anymore.

Neeti Keswani: It so if we can go if we can have enough self-awareness to go back and find those things that are haunting us and face those fears, it's a simple little writing process and we can make it go away within an hour and then it's just gone forever.

Mike Wood: It's right. Right.

Neeti Keswani: I understood from you that you do use forgiveness practices to actually get on with life practically. Does Ho'oponopono play a role in your teaching style?

Mike Wood: Ho'o... that's a Hawaiian technique for forgiveness. So forgiveness is everything. None of it works without forgiveness. And I don't, I'm not familiar with that one, that term, but that's beautiful. But yes, if we don't use forgiveness to go back in time—because we get to use our imagination and go back to these moments and reframe it with love, compassion, and forgiveness—if we don't forgive, it's not going to release. It's not going away. We have to forgive everyone and everything and try to live with unconditional love. Really, that's the practice. And in order to do that, you have to forgive everyone and yourself, right?

Neeti Keswani: And that's practically what the Ho'oponopono technique is all about, forgiving everything and everyone including yourself. So that's amazing. Without knowing the technique you are using it and perhaps helping lots of people.

So onto the next question. We have discussed so far about self-awareness, self-love, anxiety and overcoming anxiety in difficult, challenging situations. There's also a term called social anxiety. Now people do have fear of others being judged, being criticized, stuff like that. What is the most compassionate way to deal with such situations with elders, with kids, competitive people? How do you, because this could happen with anybody, right?

Mike Wood: Yes, it does happen. So, I want to say one thing to start off here. In the first three weeks of my program, everybody is so used to feeling negative thoughts in their head that it's just normal. But if you can get used to feeling positive emotions, now all of a sudden you got both. And you can feel both. If you're within 12 feet of somebody, we can physically feel their emotions that they're having in their body. And most people are having negative emotions. And so when you can go into a social environment, a lot of people are nervous. And so if you come around them just by being within 12 feet of them, you're going to feel nervous. And you're not going to know why. It might be them. It's not you that's nervous. It's them. You're feeling their anxiety. You're feeling their energy and it will trigger yours.

So, one thing that I would say in all those situations is to understand that everybody is dealing with the same stuff and try to relax. But what another thing that I would do is... so if you're talking to somebody and you're feeling social anxiety, I actually taught a wrestler this, a very good wrestler, probably the top 20 in the United States at the time. And he could do all the things like you talked about before in practice, but when he would go have to shake their hand and introduce himself before the fight, he would feel all this anxiety. So what I told him to do is to bow in his mind mentally—because for him it was weird, he didn't want to actually bow—and look him in the eyes and say these words: "The essence of God in me is honored to be in the presence of the essence of God in you." And when we do that and we look in somebody's eyes, this is just a little trick to help anybody with social anxiety. Whether you're on a date, whether you're going to be in a room full of people, when we do that, there's something about that that disconnects the ego from the ego. And we now are connecting with the true source, the essence of God, the universe, the divine, whatever you want to call it. And it helps us get rid of the muck and get in touch with the true source of God in the other person. And it gets away. So, it's a nice little trick to use.

Long-term, being able to do that without tricks, we have to go back and heal old core beliefs and it'll just make it all go away. But in the short term, if you're going to do it using, you know, "the essence of God in me is honored to be in the presence of the essence of God in you" or using some breathing techniques while you're in the middle of conversations or in between them. Anything you can do to pull your attention into the present moment will get rid of the social anxiety.

Neeti Keswani: Oh, that's beautiful. Again, I would like to circle it back to the Ho'oponopono technique. It also talks about what you just said. It's a small word, I guess, because the technique is simply about forgiveness and appreciating the person in front of you in your head even before you put two words out, right?

Mike Wood: Yeah. Well, it is my understanding of the universe. The essence of God is in all of us. And if we want to find God, we got to go inward. And when we acknowledge the essence of God in somebody else, it does something. Like seeing the white of their eyes, looking into their eyes, and then continuing to say that, it's an amazing feeling. I get lit up with energy. Anytime I do that with anybody, it's just like the ego just goes away and the energy that is me just starts to come through. There's no thoughts and there's love and compassion coming through. It's pretty powerful but it's a practice, you know, we just have to practice these things.

Neeti Keswani: So in that case, does self-love play a role in figuring out how to deal with anxiety? And if it does, okay, fine, I start consulting with you or somebody like you and then I start feeling that love for myself. I start developing it and then it will still take some time for me to overcome my anxiety. How long could this process be?

Mike Wood: Anxiety is really quick. Anxiety is easy to be honest. I had, when I first started coaching, I had two girls start taking it. They were both in their early 20s. Both of them had been taking the highest dose of anxiety medication for one over two years and one for four years, all the way through high school and then into where they met me. They followed the program and the technique perfectly. They were like the best students you could ever wish for. And within a week and a half, both of them stopped taking their anxiety medications. And it's been over two years since they started the program and they still are done with it.

The reason I say anxiety is easy because it's just thoughts about the future. We're worried about the boogeyman in the future and it's never coming. Depression is so much harder to get rid of because it's stuck in the past and it's coming from an old negative core belief that no longer serves us. It happened in the present moment and it's still haunting us right now. And so a lot of times that old negative thought about we're not smart is now creating the anxiety about the future. "Oh, I don't feel smart and I'm going to go try to do something or I'm going to go to a conference. I wonder if everybody else is going to see that I'm not very smart." So, the anxiety is typically coming from the past. But when we learn how to calm our thoughts down, get disconnected from them, and start reframing them, a lot of that anxiety will go away because you know that it's not you. You start to get disconnected.

I remember telling a girl that came through here one time that her thoughts were not hers and she was just completely floored. And just that one simple awareness and change in perspective—that the negative thoughts that come in our mind are not ours and we can control them and we could take them and reframe them—because she would always call herself really bad names and it came from her childhood. And so that night she went home and she's like, "Oh, no, no, I'm not that b-word." And she reframed it with some positivity. And then that next morning she would always struggle to go to work and she's going to have a horrible day and "I don't want to go to work." And she's like, "Oh, no, no, these aren't real. I'm going to have a great day today." And all of a sudden, she started manually shifting and it was just like a light bulb went off. And so if people can have that awareness that you are not your thoughts, there's separation between them. You were the one witnessing your thoughts and emotions and that space allows us to start reframing them.

When we start reframing them, the anxiety goes away because the negativity is putting us into a drug-induced state of cortisol. That cortisol is going to put us on high alert for any fearful thoughts that are going to happen in the future. It's going to hold us there. You won't be able to sleep because you're just paranoid. But that's what it's designed to do; your body's trying to protect us. So, if you and I were going to stay in a little village and there's a lion around the village, right? We would stay up all night on high alert freaking out, like when's that lion going to get us? We probably get some spears or something try to protect ourselves, but there's no way we would sleep because of cortisol. It's designed to keep us alive. Our body's trying to protect us, but protecting us from feeling stupid, that's not what it was designed for, but that's what it's doing. It's literally our subconscious mind is trying to protect us and as soon as we switch over into the love drug, well, it'll just go away. It's a beautiful thing.

Neeti Keswani: Well, that's beautifully put. Just last question on this topic which is about hypnotherapy. Now, you talked about these girls as an example for this particular self-awareness, self-love to overcome anxiety very quickly. Does hypnotherapy play a big role, do you think, in overcoming anxiety quickly?

Mike Wood: I think it can. I think it can. I've known some folks who have done it to quit smoking and it worked. But in my opinion, going back and facing whatever happened, you know, like that little story of a little boy getting into an elevated state because of the pool. That little boy's going to be terrified forever until he goes back and addresses that moment. He's never going to know why he hates the pool. Even if he learns how to swim, he's never going to know why he doesn't like the water, doesn't like being around it unless he goes back to that moment. So if the hypnotherapy can go back to that moment and reframe it then yes then it does work for me. I don't have enough experience with hypnotherapy to tell you that but I do know that there is only the present moment and the subconscious mind... everything that has ever happened to us has happened in the present moment and our subconscious mind has no concept of time. So if that hypnotherapist can pull up the old and rewrite it with compassion, love, and forgiveness and move it out of that fear bucket, out of the cortisol into the love bucket where it doesn't have to protect you from it anymore, then yes, it can. So I've seen good things happen. I've seen people lose weight from it and I've seen people quit smoking, but I've not seen anybody heal from their past wounds, but it's just because I'm not an expert on hypnotherapy.

Neeti Keswani: Of course. Okay. So something which is related to you then: in case of, you feel you're spiritually inclined in some way, and if you are, then how do you handle anyone's anxiety attacks in the moment using perhaps some kind of spiritual connection?

Mike Wood: So what I do is I center myself. I get rid of all of the noise in my head and let my heart chakra open up. I feel a buzzing warming sensation and I sit with them and I try to listen and I try to understand what's happening and before long I'm speaking and I don't even know what I'm saying. To be honest, I'll have sessions where it's almost like information is being traveled. Whatever they need to hear, they'll hear. And it's not me. I don't want to take any credit, but it's if you sit with somebody and you can connect with them and you get the ego out of the way—instead of it being about me trying to help you—and just sit, everything will open up and whatever you need to hear, you'll hear and you'll calm get calm and you'll relax. It's for me it's become a practice and then I'm constantly learning. Even if I'm helping somebody through a spiritual situation and they're having anxiety, I'm learning from it. Because if I submit and surrender, I'm learning from this wisdom that's coming through me because I don't understand what's happening sometimes. It's really beautiful and amazing. The first times it started to happen, I was like, "Wow, this is pretty cool." But each time I step back and remain humble and I try to assess every situation because each one of those moments is also a learning lesson for me. And so I learn from each time that I'm with somebody who's a little bit troubled from whatever it is. There's usually a lesson in there for me if I can stay calm. And if I can't, that's another reason like, "Oh, why wasn't I calm? Why was my ego involved in that scenario?" And then I'm constantly learning from every encounter.

Neeti Keswani: That's beautiful. It is quite interesting and beautiful at the same time that you are dealing with people who are athletes practically, or who are wrestlers and things like that, people in the younger generation who want to go out and start working, facing anxiety because this is something which has surfaced a lot in our societies lately. Bullying is very common and people face that directly or indirectly and anxiety throws up. Now in that situation you're dealing with athletes and you are giving a spiritual kind of practice, you're sharing that. How are you viewed as a person as a coach in that scenario?

Mike Wood: Well, the good thing is that I could speak from experience. I was the guy who was really good at practice and couldn't perform in the game because of my brain with golf and with basketball. I was a very good athlete and then I even took it into boxing. And so I've got experience doing that and I've had moments where the mind quiets and I was amazing. I performed amazing. And then, but those times when you can't do it and you know you're better than your opponent, oh it chews you up. And so when I can relate to them and share my own experiences and let them know how awful I felt, how small I felt and ashamed because I couldn't perform the way that I knew I could. It usually helps other people open up and start to share their story and then we can get somewhere.

Neeti Keswani: Beautiful. So Mike, this has been an amazing conversation, you know, sharing your story and your challenges, your experiences with people and so many examples, real-life examples of anxiety and how to deal with that. That's been beautiful. I really appreciate your time today and I guess the conversation can still go on for another hour perhaps and we should meet up again.

Mike Wood: I would be happy to come back. I really enjoyed the conversation and I would be happy to come back anytime.

Neeti Keswani: Lovely to have you, Mike. And thank you so much for your time today and I hope to have you soon on the podcast again.

Mike Wood: Absolutely. Thank you.