Hello and welcome to the Calmar You podcast. This is your host, Chloe Brotheridge. I'm a coach, a

hypnototherapist, and I'm the author of The Anxiety Solution and Brave New Girl. And this podcast is all

about helping you to become your calmest, happiest and most confident self. Hello, hello,

hope you're doing well today. And yeah, I just want to say

thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. And I'm really excited to talk to you today about

why you should do hard things. So there's a quote by, I've no idea who this is, but T. Hav Eka, I heard this quote from one of my

coaches and the quote is, if you are willing to do only what's easy, life will be hard.

But if you're willing to do what's hard, life will be easy.

Now, have you ever found that your world can start to feel really small when you're

anxious or really stressed or in a low mood? Stress, fear and apathy can step in and stop us from

doing what we want to do and as a result, our confidence takes a knock. I've had this experience many,

many times myself. In the past, I would try, you know, as a way of calming my anxiety to make

myself as safe, you know, in air quotes, as possible to avoid feeling anxious. So that meant that I'd say no to

social events. I'd steer clear of any new activities that I might fail at. And I decline

opportunities at work that meant taking on board more responsibility or going outside of my

comfort zone.

And this way, I thought to myself, I could be calm. But though we may avoid feeling anxious,

nervous, or maybe experiencing failure or rejection, we also miss out on a lot of what life

has to offer. To protect ourselves, we also inadvertently protect

ourselves from joy, from fun, from learning, wonder, personal growth and adventures. And this is a

really unintentional side effect. Suddenly a friend's birthday can feel like an ordeal since we haven't flexed our social

muscles that much lately. We'd love a new job, but we're out of the habit of putting ourselves out

...