SUMMARY

In this video…

Sebastiaan highlights the importance of good lifestyle habits in reducing Social Anxiety and improving overall well-being.

He emphasizes 3 essential key factors:
1. Proper sleep
2. Exercise
3. Diet

As a bonus tip, he recommends practicing meditation and yoga, as these activities have scientifically proven benefits for stress reduction, improved sleep, mood enhancement, and inner strength.

Sebastiaan advises viewers to start small and focus on one positive habit at a time rather than attempting to change everything at once.

To learn more about tapping and overcoming Social Anxiety, get our FREE Mini course:
The 7 Secrets to Social Confidence

FULL TRANSCRIPTION

Don’t you find that when you have a couple of drinks, Social Anxiety isn’t that much of a problem or is actually not even there?

If that’s a yes for you, have you also experienced (just like me, and lots of people inside our club reported this as well in a recent discussion) that when you’re hungover, you’re so much more anxious?

Even so, forget about alcohol. Have you ever had a horrible night of sleep, like three or four hours of sleep? Then the next day, you’re more worried, more nervous, more self-conscious, focused on yourself and not connecting with other people, and just more anxious? Well, me too.

In terms of drinking, a whole bunch of years ago I was in Thailand during the Songkhram Festival, which is the Thai’s New Year’s. This was a big water festival, and I went out drinking. That was my way to deal and cope with Social Anxiety.

When I was drunk, I was having a great time. I was not feeling anxious at all, and I was confident. I didn’t take myself seriously and could joke around with all of that liberated liquid confidence.

But I went too far, as I frequently did. Because New Year’s was spread out over several days, I went out drinking one day until six o’clock in the morning. The next day was Songkran. I was so hungover, I couldn’t go, but let’s just go another day.

I went drinking another day. The next day after that, I had such a bad hangover that I had panic attacks throughout the day. I couldn’t face anyone. I’m super scared of being seen, really ashamed of myself, jittery, and all of that. It was so bad.

I told myself, “I’m going to quit drinking; I am done with this”.

So I did. Not completely. I went to once-a-month drinking to get up with my buddy Lee instead of drinking on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. What I noticed was that my mood was a lot more stable. That was very interesting.

It kind of makes sense, of course. If you go on these big benders, you’ll have a hangover the next day. Then the next day, you have to recover from your hangover, and your mood is very unstable as a result of it. Not only that, but you’re also interrupting your sleep patterns and that kind of stuff.

That was interesting to me. I found that I was just in a better mood overall. Up until that time, I thought that tapping was everything. Yeah, this is in my early days of tapping. I thought I could just tap on anything and do whatever. There is no problem that tapping cannot fix.

I’ve since changed my mind about that. I’ve discovered that certain lifestyle habits lead to me being: 

• more stable
• more at ease
• more grounded
• more easygoing
• happier
• more connected with other people

Whereas certain bad lifestyle habits lead to me being: 

• more moody
• crankier
• more controlling
• meaner
• less mood
• feeling less good about myself
• less productive
• less motivated

I’ve worked with lots of socially anxious clients. Some of them suffer from generalized anxiety, more generalized anxiety, or simply poor mental health as a result of their poor lifestyle habits.

Which in turn…

• Leads them to having a ton more worries, negative thoughts and feelings
• Causes them to take less tapping action cause they “don’t feel like it”
• Makes them worry about socialising more
• Has them feel more hopeless about the future

So the pretty easy conclusion I came to is that poor lifestyle habits can worsen your Social Anxiety. Good lifestyle habits can reduce your Social Anxiety.

Now, this is not news to you, right?

But you’re used to hearing only about tapping from me. Tapping is one of the things that I talk about the most because it is an essential ingredient compared to just changing your thoughts, facing your fear, and being mindful.
Tapping is the key, the essential missing piece, if you ask me. That’s why I talk about it a lot.

You need to have these other pieces in place as well. Otherwise, you’re making things so much harder for yourself. Here are the essential keys, and I’ll go over them in rapid fire:

1. PROPER SLEEP

It’s a well known fact that poor sleep disrupts your stress response system, your emotional regulation, your emotional well being and your overall well being. That leads to more difficulties managing your anxiety and stress levels.

Some quick tips:

– get your regular seven or eight hours of sleep
– go to bed at the same time
– wake up at the same time
– make sure your room is as quiet and as dark as possible
– don’t eat any big meals before going to bed
– no sugary drinks
– no screens up to an hour before going to bed because that messes with your melatonin levels, which interrupts and disrupts your sleep.

2. EXERCISE

This one is very important. You have all of that worry, stress, and anxiety. That’s because all of this energy inside doesn’t have an outlet.

When you exercise, it’s proven to release endorphins, which are your happy hormones. It reduces your stress level easily. What you want to do is:

– start small
– start with just two or five minutes a day
– follow these videos that you got on YouTube

3. DIET

Basically, you want to avoid EXCESSIVE sugar, caffeine, and alcohol. If you have too much of caffeine, it’s going to make you jittery. That will interfere with your sleeping pattern. We’ve gone over sleep before.

Too much sugar spikes your blood sugar levels. That can have you up and down in your mood. It also affects the balance of gut bacteria, which also impacts your mood.

Finally, alcohol. Well, we’ve kind of talked about this already. While you might get the liquid confidence when you’re having a couple of drinks, you’ve got the problem with the hangover the next day. You’ll be worrying about, “Oh, did I make a fool out of myself?”, and “What if I’m going to run into them again?”, and so on and so forth.

Here’s a real comment from someone inside our Social Confidence Club who posted the following in our WhatsApp group:

“My confidence is improving quite a bit lately. I’m 104 days alcohol free. If you drink and suffer from social anxiety, I recommend taking a break from booze and let your brain reset.”

BIG TIP. Everything is okay in moderation. It’s okay to have sugar, it’s okay to have alcohol, and it’s okay to have coffee.

But if you have 10 coffees a day, you’re snacking on two big ice creams just before going to bed, and you’re getting drunk all the time, there’s a problem.

You might want to do a cleanse of some sort. Do not take any of that particular thing for an extended period of time so that your system gets rid of the addiction to it. It doesn’t take too long.

Alcohol is more challenging. If you have alcoholism problems, you are going to need some assistance for that, most likely. A clean break will kind of reset things. From that place, you can have a healthier relationship with that particular thing.

If a lot of your lifestyle habits are out of whack, here’s something that I suggest doing:

– start small
– start with one thing
– create one new positive habit
– do not try to do everything at the same time because you do not have the willpower for it.

Trust me. I’ve tried it. I’ve done it for years, and I’m still messing up in that area quite significantly.

I’m like, “Oh, I want to do this”,  “I want to wake up at that time” and then “I want to do this meditation and then yoga”, all of these things.

When you focus on one specific thing, do that for 21 days, 30 days, two months, or even 90 days, depending on how difficult it is or how difficult the activity is.

When you commit to one particular thing, it becomes easier to do that rather than everything at the same time.

So there you go. I’ll leave you with this bonus tip.

Meditation and Yoga.

Very, very powerful. Both have a lot of science backing them up, which is why they’re so useful.

– It reduces stress.
– It improves your sleep.
– It improves your mood.
– It improves the way that you think.
– It makes you stronger inside.
– It makes you more resilient.
– It helps you better deal with Social Anxiety.

All of these things are basic. Everyone talks about them all the time. I haven’t talked much about them myself because everyone already talks about them.

I want to make it clear that it is very important to cover the basics. By covering the basics, you can already reduce your Social Anxiety.

From that place, you’re reducing anxiety, and you have more motivation to actually take the steps.

Take the tapping steps in order to neutralize and overcome your Social Anxiety completely.

If you want to learn how to do that, go to https://bit.ly/socialconfidencenow.

Talk to you soon. Bye.