Glass Half Full
Glass Half Full
Craig Meriweather on Hypnotherapy, Anxiety Solutions, and Mind Rewiring
In this weeks episode, Chris talks with Craig Meriweather. Unlock the secrets of your subconscious mind and discover effective strategies to overcome anxiety and build a confident future with our special guest, Craig Meriweather. Craig’s journey is nothing short of mesmerizing—growing up in a religious household, exploring Zen Buddhism and Sufism in Santa Cruz, and battling depression. His personal struggles turned into a mission to help others, leading him to become a certified clinical hypnotherapist and expert in medical hypnosis and neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).
Join us as Craig demystifies hypnotherapy and sheds light on how it can be a faster, more direct path to resolving deep-seated emotional traumas compared to traditional talk therapy. We’ll unravel the complexities of the subconscious mind, discuss its role in holding onto past traumas, and understand why these protective mechanisms exist. Craig also shares his experience at the Hypnotherapy Academy of America, emphasizing how hypnotherapy can access these survival instructions and reset the nervous system.
But that’s not all—you'll also gain actionable insights into managing test anxiety and resetting the nervous system. We discuss effective techniques like the 3-2-1 Reset and deep abdominal breathing to activate the parasympathetic response, inspired by the practices of the Soviet Union gymnastics team. By incorporating mental rehearsal and visualization, you can reprogram your mind for success. This episode is loaded with practical advice and inspiring stories that will leave you with a renewed sense of possibility and tools to transform your outlook on life. Don't miss this enlightening conversation with Craig Meriweather on Glass Half Full.
https://aceanytest.com/
https://arizonaintegrativehypnotherapy.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@aceanytest
https://www.facebook.com/AceAnyTest
https://www.instagram.com/ace_any_test/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-meriwether-44286718b/
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening wherever you are in the world, and welcome to another episode of Glass Half Full, a podcast and a safe platform where we talk with a variety of teachers, entrepreneurs, spiritualists, uplifters, givers, shakers and serenaders. Everyone has a lesson to learn and a lesson to share. Let's use our life experiences to enrich someone's heart, mind, spirit and soul. Through sharing our experiences, we can be a learning inspiration for one another. I'm your host, Chris Levens. Let's welcome today's guest. Today's guest is Craig Meriweather. Craig Meriweather is a certified clinical hypnotherapist, medical hypnosis specialist, neuro-linguistic programming, nlp specialist, helping people eliminate negative emotions and trauma so they can reach their full potential. Craig has created ACE Any Test, the most comprehensive course for test anxiety relief so people can eliminate anxiety around exams, auditions, job interviews and public speaking, as well as increase confidence and self-esteem. Let's give a warm welcome to Craig Meriweather.
Craig:Thank you, Chris.
Chris:Hello, hello.
Craig:I've been looking forward to this for a while, so I'm excited to be here.
Chris:Well, thank you for taking some time out to be a guest here. On Glass Half Full, we are happy to have you today.
Craig:Thanks, yes, can you tell everyone where?
Chris:you are? Oh, I'm sorry. Can you tell everyone where you are in the world and what time it is, please?
Craig:I'm in Flagstaff, arizona. We're a little bit east of Sedona, a little bit south of the Grand Canyon, way north of Phoenix. We're up in the mountains, we get snow, we get all sorts of season changes. In fact, a couple of years ago, over the course of about three months, we got 13, 14 feet of snow, wow. So we get all the seasons. It's a beautiful. I don't know that it's a little town. It's about I don't know 60, 70,000 people, but it's a beautiful town up in the, up in the forest of trees, and it's just gorgeous up here.
Chris:I love it.
Craig:Oh, and what time it is. It is 10 PM at night.
Chris:Yes, Thank you for having this this late chat.
Craig:We appreciate it I was telling you, as we're going back and forth about a good finding a good time, I was telling you I'm good until about midnight and then I'll start going off on weird tangents.
Chris:Well, we got you in the goods. We're still in the goods. We're in the goods hour for sure. Well, we're going to jump right on in. I like to ask all my guests this first question I believe that our lives are in spiritual design. Can you share your life layout or blueprint with everyone? This is how you grew up where family, lifestyle.
Craig:And I love this question and I love that you asked this on your podcast and my spiritual design is not too unusual. Spiritual design is not too unusual, but I did grow up in a very religious-based background, although I wouldn't say my family was religious. It was just a thing you did. I was born in 1967, and it's just what you did. You went to church on Sundays.
Craig:The church nearest our house was an Episcopal church, so it's this kind of Catholicism light and, as you can guess from my name, craig Merriweather, protestant English background. And so we went to the Episcopal church, but I'm guessing we mainly went there just because it was four or five blocks five blocks from our house. If it was a methodist church or something else would have been methodist, but we went to a pistol church. I actually like the episcopal church. I like, I like the candles, I like the, the robes with the acolytes and and um and uh communion, like I like the real ritualized aspect of that. But starting in the sixth grade I started going to a privately run school that was Baptist-based. So Monday through Friday I was at a Baptist school. Weekends most of my friends were with the Episcopal Church and the youth group and things.
Craig:And so Saturdays and Saturdays and Sundays I was doing Episcopal church youth group stuff and so I had a real religious upbringing and that's what I knew. In fact there was a certain point in my teenage years where I thought maybe being a priest was the way to go. I got involved in the charismatic movement as an outside activity and so that really informed the first 20 years or so of my life. Once my friends, all you know, we all graduated high school, we all started going off to different colleges and things, they all kind of broke apart and eventually with my then girlfriend, now wife, we moved up to Santa Cruz, california.
Craig:I was born and raised in san diego but I tried zen, buddhism and I tried, uh, sufism and I tried all sorts of different learning, all sorts of different kinds of music and learning about dance and all sorts of things, and of course there's all sorts of wonderful communities in san jose, california, san francisco and marin county, and so I did a lot of exploring in that time and I really felt like I moved apart. My parents, you know, again nothing too dramatic or even that interesting Growing up. I have an older brother, three years older than me, and you know it's fine, not awful, not great, but we I, I guess like each other okay, getting getting older. We're gonna go visit in a little bit and my dad's in 93, my, my mom's in her late 80s, they're getting up there oh wow.
Craig:And in terms of my, my education I say religious-based up until about college and create peace. And it's not that, again, anything was relatively wrong. It's just I couldn't say that anything was really really right. I struggled with depression growing up. Maybe it's a genetic thing, maybe it's just the way I grew up, maybe I don't know, Were you diagnosed with something or just something that you were just dealing with?
Chris:You know?
Craig:recently, for my 50th birthday, I got diagnosed with bipolar 2 disorder. What is that? And the difference between, well, bipolar, that's that manic, depressive thing Okay, so you have the highs and you have the lows, but it's not bipolar one. Bipolar one is that really crazy one where you get super, super depressed and then you get super manic. And that's when you take off to Vegas and you blow all your money on hookers and blow and you know, gamble away, and now you owe the mafia money and you're running for your life. That's that kind of manic stuff where you just going, you know, crazy, trying to ride that high and that happiness.
Craig:What I have is kind of a low grade bipolar two, which means my manic is anxiety, and so it was just. It's just this kind of back and forth between depression and my kind of upside is anxiety, and that's what I've been struggling with. And that's kind of where I came to this work that I do as a hypnotherapist, neurolinguistic program, just to deal with my own issues. To deal with my own issues, um it, and, and you know, if I had gotten that diagnosis this earlier, maybe, you know, maybe things would change, but I'm not that. I'm thrilled to have gone through what I went through, because there were some really low lows, but it I learned the tools, I learned the strategies to manage this and deal with it. And it really came about because when my son was born in the year 2000,.
Craig:You get to that point where it's like I got to get my life together. I got to get it together, if nothing else, then for him, and maybe a lot of your listeners and maybe you, chris, can get to that that idea of this is just the way it's going to be. This is just the way I'm going to feel and you know, just like some people get to be happy. That's not my calling in life. I just get to feel like this and it just becomes this is a comfortable coat, has some holes in it, but that's all right. I know this coat and it's a comfortable coat, so this is what I wear and you just get used to it. It's sort of like trying to describe color to a blind person. What, how do you? How do you do that? How do you describe being happy all the time to a depressed person?
Craig:I don't get it. What all the time to a depressed person? I don't get it. What do you mean? You can feel it Because certainly I felt joy and happiness in my life, but the malaise was the more foundation, the melancholy was more foundation of my life, until again that year 2000 when my son was born and it's like, okay, I got to get it together and it took a little bit, but I did the research and this is luckily right around the time the internet was getting going.
Craig:Uh, you know, when I was really trying to work on it in the eighties, uh, 1980s, when I was a young man, you know you had talk therapy, the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the SSRI medications that didn't come out. You know Prozac and things like that that didn't come out until the 90s. So in the 80s, early 90s, there wasn't a lot you could do and you couldn't get your hands on the research like you can now with Google and some of the other places. Occasionally you'd find a book at the bookstore, but again, it's not like you could research it if. If you're lucky enough to have a library, uh, that uh had books of that topic, if you're lucky enough to have a bookstore that stocked uh, those kind of books, then yeah, that was all right. But other than that, you're just kind of hoping your talk therapist could help you through it, and if that didn't work, then you just were kind of stuck.
Craig:Now, when I was finally ready to deal with this, I wasn't that interested in medications. Some stories were coming out about the side effects and that scared me a little bit and so I thought I wonder if there are other ways. Scared me a little bit and so I thought I wonder if there are other ways. And you know I started working with the techniques and the strategies and the exercises both physical, mental and emotional stuff and I found what worked for me. And afterwards I realized you know I had this toolbox and you know my longer biography.
Craig:You know I wrote a book back in 2011, I guess, called Depression 180, because you know I had all these tools and I worked with that for a while. And then I got so excited about this work and working you know, talking with people about it. I thought, well, what if I could go one step further and help people in the ways that helped me? And one of the ways that really helped me was hypnotherapy, and so I went to a great school, hypnotherapy Academy of America. It's a great school three months of just 9 am to 6 pm Monday through Friday, plus study groups on the week, and you just immerse yourself in this work can you break this down, because we know the name of what?
Chris:but what? What is defining as a hypnotherapist? What? What do you do? We thinking of you holding a watch in front of someone's face and swinging it back and forth, follow it with your eyes. It's getting heavy, you know like so. This is what I think. I'm sure the rest of the people listening probably think so too. So can you educate us about what happens? What did you learn for three months? What was the process? What did you come out with?
Craig:So there's a lot of great information out there about hypnotherapy, about this work and research showing how and why it works, but basically I'll give you hopefully, hopefully just the five minute rundown. Um, the the. The big issue that a lot of us deal with is that the hurt and pain and the trauma is held within the subconscious mind. Okay, this unconscious part of mine is holding onto it for safety and protection. Your subconscious mind is for you, it's not against you. It's for your safety, it's for your protection, it's for survival. That is main job. And, yes, it runs your immune system, your digestive system, and grows your hair and splits your cells and runs your respiratory system. It does that. It holds onto those habits that we have, like tying our shoes and riding a bicycle and walking and all those things we don't have to think about. But its main job, the foundational aspect of our unconscious mind, is survival Keep us safe, keep us protected, which does not necessarily mean happy and joyful. It means it wants to keep us alive. Happy and joyful, it means it wants to keep us alive and one of the ways it does this is by holding on to past hurt and pain and trauma, because it doesn't want to experience it again. So it's almost like you have this filing cabinet in your mind of all these files, of the things that have caused fear and anger and anxiety and trauma and hurt and pain. And as we experience the world, our outside world, and we bring in all this information through our five senses what we see, hear, taste, touch and smell, we're bringing in all this information through our five senses. If anything what we're seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling, anything triggers one of those files of hurt and pain, we'll get a warning signal Because, again, it doesn't want to experience it again. Now, you know, someone pulls a fire alarm in a building, the sirens go off, the strobe lights go off, warning everybody that there's danger. You need to get to safety right away. Well, we also have a warning system in our bodies, but instead of lights and sirens, we have feelings, and the feeling state of anxiety, the feeling state of fear, the feeling state of anger. These are warnings that there is danger in your external environment because one of those files got triggered, even maybe just slightly. One of those files got triggered and so it's trying to protect you. So your brain chemistry changes. It starts creating that adrenaline, that cortisol. It starts, uh, creating these neuropeptides, these molecules called neuropeptides, that signal the body with emotion. That's why you feel differently. You can differentiate between fear and anxiety and joy and happiness and anger. Because of these molecules literal molecules of fear, molecules of anxiety coursing through your body. And this warning signal is there to keep you safe and protected. Unfortunately, sometimes you just don't know what the problem is.
Craig:But that's the main job of the subconscious mind. It's this emotionalized part of mind, it's this heightened awareness for your safety and protection. That's the subconscious mind. The conscious mind, that's the logical mind, the analytical mind, the part of mind that creates your goals, the plans to achieve those goals, the willpower to achieve those goals. That's a conscious mind. But what neuroscience says is that conscious mind only makes up 5% of the mind. Subconscious mind makes up 95 percent of my. So whenever there's conflict, whenever there's conflict between the logical mind and the emotional mind, the emotional mind wins every time. And this is why you know you can logically try to analyze your problems and still be experiencing the hurt and the pain and the fear and the anger and the anxiety, even after you logically analyze it over and over and over again and see what the issues are and try to work them out, but emotionally, those files are still in that filing cabinet. And so what hypnotherapy does and does so well is that by relaxing the mind and body, even just slightly, you can bypass that conscious mind kind of that gatekeeper, and you can access the subconscious mind and deal with those files.
Craig:Now, the big problem is that the mind can't tell the difference between what's real and what's imagined. Now, this is most noticeable when somebody's having a nightmare. Now, chris, if you've ever had a nightmare or anybody listening has ever had a nightmare, you know what I'm talking about. It doesn't matter how crazy, how ridiculous, how stupid. You know a gigantic cheeseburger is chasing you on the street with his two hot dog friends throwing rocks. That's just stupid, ridiculous, not going to happen.
Craig:But your body reacts in a way, your brain reacts in a way to try to keep you safe. Or it could be something super realistic, maybe like a war veteran, a veteran having a PTSD, dream about being on the front lines, even though the war was 30 years ago. Both situations you're cozy, comfortable, safe in bed. Your mind thinks you're in danger and so, even in deep sleep, you'll start creating that adrenaline and that cortisol, those hormones within your brain and you know that. You've heard the crazy stories of grandmothers lifting cars off of babies and things like that. That's adrenaline doing that. That's now coursing through your body. Hundreds of millions of these neuropeptides, these molecules of fear, of anxiety, anger, moving through your body. 300% more blood is moving to the big muscles of your arms to fight. 300% more blood moving to your legs to escape. And all this is happening while in deep sleep, because your mind thinks you're in danger. It has that shoot first, ask questions later aspect to it, and so, through thought alone, you change your physiology due to potentially hurt and pain that you've had in the past.
Craig:Now, with hypnotherapy, by relaxing the mind and body, you can access the subconscious mind in this very suggestible state. There's nothing magical or mystical about this. Nothing is done in therapeutic hypnosis that you're aren't already doing already by moving into an altered state of consciousness, and that sounds fancy and weird and scary. But by moving into altered state of consciousness you can access the subconscious mind, but you're doing that all day.
Craig:Anyway, if you remember, back in school, maybe there was a class that you didn't like so much and so you're taking notes, it's going to be on the test coming up and then all of a sudden it's so boring for you. You just start staring out the window and you move inward and you think about the weekend and how fun it's going to be hanging out with your friends. And you don't hear the teacher anymore. They're still talking, the kids are still acting up or whatever, but you've moved inward. You started daydreaming about something else. You've just altered your state of consciousness and then maybe your eyes start getting heavy and your head starts nodding down. And now you're moving into a deeper altered state of consciousness and pretty soon you might even be fast asleep. But instead maybe I'm in high school math class. The teacher sees me. Hey, craig, why don't you come up here and do the problem on the board?
Craig:yes and I jolt back awake and and I'm looking at the board I don't know how to do the problem, and now I'm really nervous. So now I've altered my state of consciousness once again and so, really, what we're talking about here is brainwave state and how fast the neurons are firing in your brain. So we have, you know, whatever something a hundred billion neurons in the brain, and whenever you do anything think a thought, feel an emotion, perform some sort of action you know, writing with a pen, or typing, or drinking a glass of water walking down the street you're firing neurons. And how fast those neurons fire determines what brainwave state you're in. And the famous ones we learned about in school beta, alpha, theta, delta, beta is what you and I are in, chris, right now, having this discussion, having a conversation, listening to each other. We're firing about 18 cycles per second, and a wave moves from the back to the front, to the back again. That's one wave, 18 of those per second.
Craig:Now I'm back in high school math class. I'm listening, and then all of a sudden, I move into my imaginative daydreamy mode. Now I've just slowed down to about 12 cycles per second. I'm in the alpha brainwave state. I'm starting to fall asleep. My head's nodding, I'm not really asleep, I'm not really awake. The theta brainwave state. I'm starting to fall asleep. My head's nodding, I'm not really asleep. I'm not really awake. The theta brainwave state. I'm firing about six cycles per second. Soon I'll be fast asleep in delta, one cycle per second half cycle. But then the teacher says you know, craig, come up here and do the problem report. Now I'm in the stress response. I'm firing at a high rate of maybe 25 cycles per second. So just in a matter of six, seven, eight minutes I've altered my state of consciousness three or four times. And so this is a natural way of moving through the world, whether you're at a boring meeting, you're just driving home, you're riding on the subway, you're riding on the bus, you're watching a movie. Even watching a TV show or a movie puts you in the alpha brainwave state, and that alpha and theta brainwave state are what's known as the hypnagogic trance state a fancy term, but it means it's just a very suggestible state, which means TV is a very suggestible way of programming your mind, hence the news, hence the advertisements and things like that. And so what hypnosis does is just take advantage of what you're doing already, and doing it on purpose for healing. Now the word hypnosis I know that has a lot of baggage to it because of the comedy shows and comedy clubs or Las Vegas shows or wherever, and of course movies and TV but really the word hypnosis comes from Greek mythology and the Greek god, hypnos, who is the Greek god of sleep.
Craig:And back in the 1850s Dr James Bard was a doctor in England. He was a surgeon. And you know, back in the 1850s they don't have fancy hospitals, they don't have fancy anesthesia and so if you have to have your leg amputated, you're biting down on a stick. You know you're, you're, you're getting a blow to the head to knock you unconscious. So what dr james bard started using was a deep, deep, deep trance state, putting people so far into trance it looked like they were in a coma. Then he could do amputations, he could cut people open and take out tumors and sew them back up. He could deal with war wounds and injuries and all sorts of things.
Craig:Now Dr James Barth certainly didn't invent the trance state. Certainly over in India and South America and aboriginals of Australia and Greece and Egypt and all sorts of places, they're using trance in their healing and their spiritual work, thousands upon thousands, upon thousands of years ago. But in 1850, dr James Barr started using trance and needing a word to describe this altered state of consciousness to his colleagues and to write about it, he decided to name this coma-like state after the Greek god of sleep and called it hypnosis. And over the last whatever 170 years or so, this word has grown to encompass all sorts of altered states of consciousness and trance states to the very, very, very light trance state all the way to the deep, even coma-like states, which they still use today. If somebody's allergic to the anesthesia, they'll use it in surgery. You can go on YouTube and watch all sorts of videos of people having root canals using only hypnosis because they're allergic to the lidocaine or the Novocaine or whatever they're using.
Chris:Wow, that really breaks it In terms of the work we do.
Craig:This isn't talk therapy. We're not going to talk through the problem with your logical, analytical, 5% conscious mind. We're going to bypass that by using and that's where you're talking about the stereotypical watch and sleeve, because you're trying to bore people, just like that math teacher for me back in high school and there's other ways of doing it beside besides that way, but that's the stereotypical movie way of doing it. But by accessing that subconscious mind you have access to that filing cabinet. And what's fascinating about this is and it's not to blame the victim or say it's the person's fault. It certainly wasn't fair that that trauma, that hurt, that pain that happened, that it happened to them, certainly wasn't fair, and certainly not blaming the victim, but that person. Because of that trauma, because of that hurt and pain, they entered into their subconscious mind these instructions on how to keep them safe. I think that's very empowering, because if they're the ones who created those instructions, that means they can change them. And who better to know what the problem is, not even a problem, but the problem? Who better to know what the real problem is than that person, of course. And so that's what's so empowering about this work and that's why it doesn't take a lot of time.
Craig:You're not going to see 80, 90, 100 sessions of hypnotherapy over two years, like you might with talk therapy, and you're still working on the same problem. You're talking three, four sessions to deal with deep hurt Because, again, you know what the problem is. And to deal with deep hurt Because, again, you know what the problem is and, more importantly, you know what the answer is. You know the solution, but maybe not with your conscious mind. It's all within the subconscious. That's how powerful you are. Your subconscious mind is beating your heart 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's running your respiratory system.
Chris:So the answers are already lying there.
Craig:Yeah. So why wouldn't it know how to heal this hurt and pain? It's just, you may be using the instructions set up by a child, but that, that, that trauma, that hurt, that pain, that happened when you were seven, eight, ten years old, those instructions on how to keep you safe were implanted by a child and maybe those instructions did keep that child safe. But that's not going to work. When you're 20 or 30 or 50 years old, you're 70 years old, but until you change the instructions, why would anything change?
Craig:No, this is good, and that's why you can beat your head against the wall with talk therapy and I've done my share of talk therapy. It can be very healing, very useful. It's always great to have a second pair of eyes on something. Any gold-winning, gold medal-winning Olympian has a set of coaches, right. Any master of anything you know. Even Pavarotti, one of the world's greatest opera singers, saw a vocal coach every year. So you always need that second pair of eyes. So talk therapy is great, but maybe not if, like two, three years later, you're still talking about the same thing. You're still feeling the hurt and pain. So that's what's great about this work is by helping you disassociate from the pain and disassociate from that trauma, you can then heal it and it's not that hard to do.
Chris:And if I can Wait, craig, before you get too deeply, because you're running on the avenue. We got to stay on track. We got to stay on track. So let me bring you back because I want to get into anxiety and test taking. Oh, okay, I want to really talk deeply about that because I have lots of viewers who are dealing with this kind of thing, about dealing with nerves and anxiety, Sure. So I want to change a little bit and I want to know why do you think people get anxiety or fear about taking tests?
Craig:Generally with the people I work with, and this is just a general way of explaining it. But a lot of test anxiety comes from fear of failure or fear of being judged. And somewhere along the line something happened where they were punished for not doing well. And that's the real unfortunate thing about the Western educational system is that, yes, sir, you're rewarded if you do well, but oftentimes this is new material, we may not understand it and so we don't do well. So instead of it just being a marker of what you know and don't know and where you need help, it's a marker of you didn't do well, so you're going to be punished with an F and failing and parents are going to be upset and no consequences for all of this, yes.
Craig:And so there's this nervousness that you're going to get punished or something's going bad's going to happen because you're not going to do well, and because your subconscious mind is trying to keep you safe and protected, it's trying to warn you that there's danger coming up. Mind can't tell the difference between what's real and what's imagined. So is that real danger? Certainly something like war, or being a refugee, or being a natural disaster. That's real danger. And you really want the stress response happening, that adrenaline, that cortisol pumping through your system. But for a test you don't need that. You don't need 300% more blood in your muscles to fight off an attacker.
Craig:And so the unfortunate thing with test anxiety creates so many physiological changes that are not conducive to taking a test. A big part of that is even just the breathing. You start to shallow breathe because you're tightening your stomach muscles. The ribcage is for the heart and the lungs. The only thing protecting the vital organs of the abdomen are the stomach muscles. And by tightening the stomach muscles and by tightening the stomach muscles you can't get those big belly breaths, those big abdominal breaths which flatten out the diaphragm which then allows air into the bottom of your lungs, which are of course, larger than the very top of your lungs.
Craig:Your brain takes 20% of the oxygen you breathe in and so you're denying your brain the actual fuel and nutrients.
Craig:You need to do well to think clearly, because you can study for weeks and weeks and weeks.
Craig:You know the material backwards and forwards, but you start getting nervous because, well, that test I took back when I was 10 years old, or the report I gave in front of class and everybody laughed, you know, you now have this apprehension and this fear about you know, being embarrassed again or being humiliated, or the fear of getting in trouble with your parents because you don't do well, even though maybe you're 25 years old and getting your master's degree. And that anxiety starts because it's trying to protect you from that hurt and that pain again. And so you start shallow breathing. You're now not giving your brain the nutrients, the to fuel, the oxygen it needs for rational, calm thinking. You get that tunnel vision where you start seeing your peripheral vision and start just seeing what's right in front of you, the danger, and you start second guessing yourself and all of a sudden you find yourself in this loop of anxiety and so it really comes down to maybe somewhere along the line you didn't do well.
Craig:Something from their past, you didn't understand it and, instead of you know, being supported and encouraged like okay, well, it sounds like you need a tutor. It sounds like we need to go over this in a different way than the way it's being taught, because you don't understand it. Maybe you're more of an auditory or a kinesthetic learner than a visual learner, but instead you were punished for not understanding and learning in the way that it's being taught.
Chris:How would you say?
Craig:what would you?
Chris:say, the definition of anxiety is when someone says what would? You say the definition of anxiety is when someone says that what?
Craig:did you say, yeah, you're feeling anxious? I would say it's a physiological reaction to fear. And so to me. And people experience anxiety in all sorts of different ways. But of course there's people who feel nauseous and they feel upset, they feel like they may even throw up, they may get to sweats, they may get shakiness, they may feel nervousness, they may feel a shortness of breath or their heart racing.
Craig:There are all sorts of ways, but again, the anxiety, a lot of it's being caused by the brain, creating that adrenaline and that cortisol, by the brain creating that adrenaline and that cortisol and then pumping that adrenaline and cortisol through the bloodstream, to the muscles, to the cells, as well as creating those neural peptides, those literal molecules of anxiety, to send the message of anxiety to all the cells. So all the cells now get the message that we need to be on high alert because we're under attack. And again, that's great if you're in the middle of a natural disaster, if you're in war, you're a refugee, you're in a fight somewhere, but not if you're taking a math test or a history test or giving a report, a sociology report, or doing a foreign language test or something. You're not being attacked.
Craig:But again your mind can't tell the difference between what's real and what's imagined.
Chris:Is there any way that we can eliminate this before?
Craig:it comes into play. Yeah, yeah, what do you think about me teaching a quick little way to turn off the stress response and change brain chemistry?
Chris:I can do this in like five minutes.
Craig:Let's do it. This is a really simple exercise you can do. This was taught to me by Dr.
Chris:Nunga, you said to turn off the brain response.
Craig:Turn off the stress response and change brain chemistry. Okay, let's do it. So what we're going to do is reset the nervous system. So the two aspects of the nervous system we're talking about in this conversation, the two aspects of the nervous system we're talking about in this conversation is the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is a stress response, the fight or flight response. The parasympathetic nervous system is the relaxation response. Body, respiratory, immune, digestive they're all getting the right amount of nutrients, fuel, oxygen, blood supply needed for optimum operational levels, for what they need. At the time. When you're in a stress response, all that energy is being diverted again to the big muscles to fight or to escape. So we want to be in the parasympathetic.
Craig:This exercise is going to do that. It can easily be done in about five minutes, okay, and it incorporates three different aspects of body and mind and emotions. Actually it's called 3-2-1 Reset. This was developed by Dr Richard Nongard, one of the people I have studied with, and the 3 stands for 3 Slow, easy, gentle Breaths. And so we're just going to breathe deeply into the abdomen, into your belly. So get those big belly breaths. And now I know it's cliched, I know it's obnoxious to tell somebody you know dealing with anxiety, dealing with panic and fear, to just take a deep breath, but that's literally what you need to do to reset your nervous system. You've been given everything you need to reset your nervous system. The breath is a big part of that, because not only is that cleansing and clearing of all the toxins and the carbon dioxide in your body, it's now filling you as you inhale all that oxygen you need to send to your brain for rational, calm thinking. So a deep breath into your belly, so you get that air into the bottom of your lungs. Another big aspect of the breath is the vagus nerve. Now, this has been talked about a lot over the last few years, if not last decade or so. But we have these nerves, of course, that come out of the back of our head. A real quick biology reminder. That's that thing.
Craig:When you touch a hot pot on the stove, signal goes up a nerve, up your arm, into your brain. Your brain says oh my God, touching a hot pot, let it go. Signal goes back down to your hand and you let go of the hot pot. All within a millionth of a second. The it goes back down to your hand and you let go of the hot pot all within a millionth of a second.
Craig:The vagus nerve is the 10th cranial nerve. Vagus is Latin for wanderer, because it wanders all over the body. It attaches to the eyes, to the ears, to the muscles around your jaw, goes past your vocal cords, attaches to your heart, to your lungs and to your gut. The vagus nerve is a big part of the parasympathetic nervous system, the relaxation response. It's attached to your lungs. By breathing slowly, gently, easily and deeply, you stimulate the vagus nerve, therefore activate the parasympathetic nervous system. This isn't hard, this is super simple, super easy. And this is it for a lot of people.
Craig:If you're struggling with anxiety, if you get into panic at times, deep breathing may be it for you. That may be the only thing you need to do to reset your nervous system. Slow, deep breath into your belly. Now again, the problem is when you're stressed, you want to tighten those stomach muscles to protect yourself from that one-two punch to the gut. But if you ever watch a baby breathe, babies just breathe into their abdomen so they get air into the bottom of their lungs. That's a lot of growth between day one and two years old and so a lot of air needs to get into those tiny little lungs. So they're doing a lot of belly breaths and guess what, right around going to school, going to preschool or kindergarten, they start getting nervous. They start getting worried Mom and dad aren't around, all these new people, what is happening? So they start getting nervous, so they start holding in their stomachs and they start upper chest breathing. Until pretty much by the teenage years it's all upper chest breathing.
Craig:You're just breathing into that top little part of the lungs. And what you practice you get better at. We know this from riding a bicycle, from learning foreign language or dance or martial arts or a musical instrument what you practice you get better at. But if you can practice, maybe even just not now, and especially if you're listening to this while driving a car.
Chris:I know y'all be safe. Y'all be safe right now.
Craig:But at some point, when it is safe for you and you don't need to, you're not concentrating and focusing on something important, just lie down on the floor in a comfortable place, maybe with a yoga mat or something, and just practice belly breathing. It's very odd if you haven't done it in a while, because you really have to, with your mind, learn to release those abdominal muscles if you've been holding them tightly for months, if not years, if not decades, so it's an interesting little practice. Of course there's all sorts of breathing practices. That's not what we're. You know the show's about right in this episode, so you can go on YouTube and you know yoga classes are great for breathing, and even martial arts and Tai Chi and Qigong.
Chris:It's all about the foundation of that.
Craig:But, um, the three, three, two, one reset is there's three slow, easy, gentle breaths. The two is we're going to create bilateral stimulation, and bilateral stimulation is moving the body, uh, left and right, because the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body. Left side of the brain controls the right side of the body, and now when somebody's feeling anxious or panic or deep-seated fear, you're lighting up a portion of the right side of the brain. Now, probably remember from science class, energy cannot be created or destroyed. So that means to get that energy necessary to light up that part of the brain for fear, anxiety and panic, it has to vacuum out away from the other parts of the brain the blood supply, the oxygen, the fuel and the nutrients, and so other parts of the brain go quiet, they go dark. So it lights up this one part of the right side of the brain for panic, anxiety and fear. So how do you undo that? Well, you light up those other parts of the brain. So then all that energy for the panic and fear gets vacuumed away and that feeling state of fear and panic diminishes. So how do you just light up these other parts of the brain when you're feeling anxiety and panic, you move your body, and a great way, and I'll just describe this for an audio podcast. But I'm going to grab a little squeezy ball in my hand. It could be a tennis ball, a racquetball, it could be a pen, it could be a water bottle, something that, if you drop, you're not going to be bummed. Like you know, don't use your phone or don't use a glass or a ceramic mug, but grab a little something that, if you drop it, you're not going to be bummed. Hold your not getting bummed. Hold your arms out in a cross or a T, and then move your arms forward right in front of you, pass the ball to the other hand, or the pen or whatever you're using, and then make a T again. And so you're just crossing the ball right in front of you, because the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, left side of the brain controls the right side of the body. You're now operating on both sides of the brain and you're forcing your brain to work in different ways and by now moving blood supply, oxygen, fuel and nutrients to other parts of the brain that feeling state of anxiety, dementias, you may know, uh, you know, chris, and probably your listeners, have seen somebody, maybe back in school, maybe at a meeting, at work or something somebody's drumming on their knees. They're tapping their knees and they're not hyper, they're not ADHD. They're nervous because that left right, left, right, left right of drumming on their knees, tapping their knees is bilateral stimulation. They're nervous and they're trying to calm themselves up. They don't know they're doing that. They just know that by drumming on their knees they're feeling better.
Craig:You can do this in all sorts of ways. You can just do it with moving your eyes from all the way to the left, almost like you're trying to look behind your head, all the way to the right. You look all the way to your peripherals and to the right. You can do it with pretending like you're tap dancing while you're sitting in a chair. Walking feels so good because it's bilateral stimulation Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, nice.
Craig:So what we're going to do for our bilateral stimulation is we're going to grab our shoulders. So you're going to make an X with your arms and you're going to grab your shoulders and you'll instantly notice that you are hugging yourself and you can squeeze your shoulders. You can give yourself a big bear hug, as we say in america you can do the havening technique. And the havening technique and I'm saying havening h-a-v-n oh, I'm sorry, h-a-v-e-n havening technique which is rubbing your hands from your wrists up to your shoulders, then back down to your wrists, so you're just kind of rubbing your arms. It feels very soothing. This hug you're giving to yourself is healing, nurturing, loving touch.
Craig:The body is now sending signals back up to the brain and your brain is now creating GABA, the hormone. Gaba eliminates and dissipates the adrenaline and cortisol in your brain. So that with this hug, you're now filling up your brain with oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine, the hormones of joy and happiness. And now we're going to supersize this by thinking of somebody we want to give a hug to. So now you're lighting up.
Craig:So not only are you lighting up the kind of kinesthetic, physical parts of the brain by giving yourself this hug, all the while breathing deeply and stimulating the vagus nerve, you're going to light up the visual parts of the brain by thinking of somebody you want to give a hug to. This could be somebody in your life today, a good friend, it could be a pet, a dog, cat Maybe you saw a nature documentary about elephants and you fell in love with a baby elephant. This could be someone who is no longer with us, your grandmother, your grandfather. This could be someone you've never met before. Mother Teresa, joan of Arc, somebody like that.
Craig:Imagine somebody you want to give a hug to, a pet. I mean it could be your spirit animal, a power animal. Imagine somebody you give a hug to and remember the mind cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined. And so, while feeling this hug even though you're hugging yourself, you're feeling this hug. While imagining hugging somebody you're now flooding your brain with the hormones of oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine, dumping hundreds of millions of molecules of joy, happiness and love into your bloodstream. And in just five minutes you'll have reset your nervous system and changed your brain chemistry.
Craig:And it's not hard. You can teach your friends, you can teach your children how to do this. You know later on today, and so it's not appropriate to practice this now, because I know people are driving and you know maybe doing important things around fire and supervising children on the swimming pool. But when you have an opportunity later, come back to this part of the podcast, remind yourself or write it down. It's really simple Three, two, one reset, three slow, easy, gentle breaths. The two is you're going to take your two arms and hug yourself. There's your bilateral stimulation. And then you're going to think of somebody you want to give a hug to, a pet, an animal, somebody you love. That's it, I love that, that's it. I love that Higher exercise. And you know that's not five, six minutes.
Chris:That's not something hard that you say like we have to be sucked out of the day and to be able to do and with it I mean ideally joy and fear can't be in the same place at once, so you know once this overtakes the mind, you're done, you're out. You know, once this overtakes the mind, you're done, you're out.
Craig:You know, yeah, you can't be grateful and be upset and be fearful.
Chris:Yeah, you're right, I love that. Oh, that's cute. Quickly, I wanted to change a bit and I wanted to talk about how can parents and teachers support students who are dealing or experiencing these test anxieties or just anxiety in general. Do you have any tips about that?
Craig:Yeah, and I think we went over a little bit about this and I think it's just taking away the fear aspect of doing poorly.
Chris:This is from the parents and teachers aspect. This is going to happen in life, okay, yeah.
Craig:If the teacher and parent, if they can take away that fear of failure, um, and, and and you look at tests as just an arbitrator of do you understand the material? And if you don't understand the material, why not? Is it because of the way it's being taught? Now, that's probably the way you understand, and and now that would require, I guess, probably change in the entire educational system.
Craig:If you're having a child who's really struggling with test anxiety, I would say the first thing is just listen. Listen to the child and find out why that may be happening. Has there been a time in the past where maybe they were embarrassed or humiliated? And talk about it in a safe and gentle way and teach them the 3-2-1 reset exercise. Yeah, that's really good. I mean children can learn how to do that. How simple is that exercise? And especially man I know teenagers, especially teenage guys, are probably not going to want to hug themselves and stuff but if you can show the tool and say, look, just do it privately, nobody cares, just do it privately and you can literally reset your nervous system. Imagine, you know walking into school, you know having done that in the morning before you left for school, or while you're sitting in the car. Or find a private place you can find. Go in the car or find a private place you can find, go to the bathroom or something and do this exercise and reset your nervous system and remember that during the test. If the nerves because oh my god, these are questions I don't understand, these are, uh, this stuff maybe I wasn't aware was going to be on the test breathe deeply into your abdomen. That will do immense work in resetting your nervous system and calming you down Again.
Craig:I know it's obnoxious, I know it's cliche to tell someone to take a deep breath when they're anxious and nervous, but that's literally one of the best things you can do. Practice deep breathing and probably even the best thing to do is practice this before you know the test is coming up. You know a lot of people don't think about this until they're at a level nine or 10, you know, zero to 10, zero being the most peaceful, 10 being the most panicked you've ever felt. People wait until they're a nine, nine and a half before they decide to do something about it. You know, catch this stuff when it's a two or a three, and it's so much simpler to deal with, of course.
Craig:But if you can, if you see your child or a child, if you're a teacher struggling, you know, maybe is there some way to pull them inside and say, look, here's some techniques, here's some strategies. What can I do to help you support? Do you need extra help learning this material so you feel comfortable? Because a lot of times people get anxious and afraid because they don't know the material and they're not prepared. Fear is a signal that you're not prepared, and you just don't know the material, and that's okay.
Chris:And that's it. Sometimes we're expected that we're supposed to know everything, even though the teacher is up there teaching it, and that's okay. If you don't get it and that you don't understand, stand, you know it's ideally. Somehow something hasn't been connected where the teacher hasn't been aware of that. They're over teaching you or not teaching to your needs, and so, yeah, I think that it's okay. We're not always supposed to get it the first time through for everyone, but, like you say, when you, when the situation arises, if you have some things in your toolbox, you're able to feel like, okay, then let me see what's happening here, to dig a little further, to find a solution.
Craig:So I love that, yeah exactly and you might have to. I mean the teacher may have 30, 35 kids in the class. Yeah, this is true too, and not know that and that's just one class. What if they have five, six classes during the day and so they may just not know? You might have to advocate for yourself.
Chris:This is what it is. I don't understand the material but again there's.
Craig:There's that embarrassment that I don't understand. Everybody else seems to understand and why am I?
Craig:the only, and they don't understand that. Probably 80 of the other kids don't understand either. But everybody's afraid to say something. I don't understand, because there's that embarrassment, there's a humiliation of God. Maybe I'm stupid, I don't get this. Everybody else seems to be doing well and I don't get this. And so you're afraid to ask for help. And then it gets to that you know point where it's too late. This is it. You know. The test is tomorrow and now you're at a level nine anxiety, because you don't understand and you were too afraid to ask for help two weeks ago and it just gets out of control. So if parents, if teachers could just present a safe place, so to speak, to say you know, look, if you don't understand anything, please let me know. Don't wait until the night before the test to let me know. You didn't understand anything I've been saying for the last two weeks.
Chris:And you know this is it. And to me I will call on you if I know that you, if I'm not sure that you don't understand, and to me, as a teacher, you know the people in the class who don't get it Like unless it's a brand new class. You understand the levels that are in there and sometimes the teachers just aren't up to bat for what the needs of the classroom are put to. So it could be, or you know unfortunately there may be.
Craig:There's those one or two kids that are just taking so much energy from the class because they're acting up.
Chris:This is it right.
Craig:And the teacher is spending so much attention. It's like that one kid that one shy kid who doesn't understand and doesn't want to be a troublemaker by raising their hand and asking a question, because now the teacher is frustrated and upset and I know kind of what I'm talking about. Oh, create a safe space and I know that's a utopia version of school and education, but if it's worth a try. And not everybody's home life is up to par with what we all wanted when we were kids.
Chris:Exactly, you're right on that. I wanted to ask about the benefits of visualization techniques.
Craig:Oh, visualization techniques are wonderful.
Chris:Tell us about. Why is it important to help? It can help boost our confidence and reduce anxiety.
Craig:I'm glad you brought this up. It is a great way because I know we're coming up to the end, so this is a great way to to kind of head towards the end of this. Visualization is great because, again, as we've already talked about, the mind can't tell the difference between what's real and what's imagined. There's this great study that was done back in the 1990s. This is right when we're getting all sorts of like we, like I was a part of this, but that right when uh science was coming out with all sorts of great uh sorts of mris and spec scans and all this kind of equipment to actually watch a live brain in real time, because a lot of stuff that we knew about the brain was just done through autopsies and sociological experiments and things like this. So to actually watch a live brain was something very, very new. And in the 1990s a group of researchers got together and they wanted to watch a brain learn something new. And in the 1990s, a group of researchers got together and they wanted to watch a brain learn something new what happens in the brain when it learns something? So they picked piano and they brought a bunch of volunteers in to practice piano. Now they taught them simple little scales and exercise little songs that you learn as a beginning piano player. And these piano players came in to the lab and practiced piano two hours a day for seven days straight, just practice piano.
Craig:They had a second group play piano, but all they did was just noodle around and dink around on the piano. They didn't, they weren't focused on anything, they weren't really learning anything, they were just kind of dinking around on the piano. They had a third group, which was the control group, and when you're doing this kind of experiment you want to compare and contrast. Here's a brain that's learning piano. Here's a brain that doesn't do anything at all, doesn't learn anything new, isn't doing anything new At the end of the week. What are the differences? Compare and contrast. But also what's interesting about this research study is they had a fourth group, and this fourth group only pretended to play the piano, and so they brought them in. They showed them the simple little scales, the exercises, the little songs you learn. But instead of sitting at the piano, they went over to a recliner, to a couch, they closed their eyes and they just pretended they were playing piano, just with their imagination.
Chris:I've done this for years as a kid.
Craig:Yeah, for seven days.
Craig:And so at the end of the week they measure everybody's brain. They look at the MRIs, the spec scan, hook everybody up the control group. They didn't do anything new. They didn't learn anything. Nothing changed in their brain. No big mystery there. They didn't do anything new. So the group that, uh, uh, just noodled around on the piano. They weren't focused on anything, they didn't weren't learning anything. They also didn't develop anything new within their brains. They weren't doing, they were just like pounding around the piano. They didn't learn anything new. So no changes in their brain. Again, no big mystery there.
Craig:The group that actually put their hands on the piano worked the keys with their fingers, learned the scales, learned the songs, learned the exercises, heard the music with their ears, read the sheet music with their eyes. They developed a new neural network in the part of the brain for music. Their brain cells were connecting together. In the part of the brain for music. New neural pathways developed. Again, okay, that makes sense, they're learning something new, they're practicing. No big mystery there.
Craig:But what's extraordinary is the group who only pretended to play the piano only using their imagination, only just sat down in a recliner and daydreamed about playing the piano, also developed the same neural network in the same part of the brain. Their brains looked like they were playing the piano, even though they never touched the piano. And this is what's extraordinary about visualization you can literally rewire your brain. So if you don't have the confidence, you don't have the joy, you don't have the happiness or the peace of mind, or peace of mind and body, what if you pretended you did? You can literally wire your brain, and really quickly. Some of your listeners maybe even you, chris especially if people are fans of the Olympics they may know that back in the 1970s, the Soviet Union was very dominant in gymnastics. They won everything Nani Akomanić and all those gymnasts.
Chris:Yeah, they were good.
Craig:Or the Soviet Union. They were winning the gold, silver and bronze. They were winning all the world championships and nobody could figure out what they were doing to be so far dominant, ahead of everybody else. And then, in the late 70ies, early eighties, some of the athletes, some of the coaches, started to defect.
Craig:And what the world found out is that the Soviet Union gymnastics team was spending at least 50% of their time in mental rehearsal. So they would sit, you know, they'd practice on the mat, they were practicing on the parallel bars, whatever they're doing. And then they would afterwards sit on the couch, lay down in a bed, lay down, sit down in a recliner, and just rehearse in their mind, pretend that they were successfully going through their gymnastics routine. Maybe they're just, you know, maybe they're doing slow motion, maybe they're doing regular speed, maybe just the last 30 seconds of the dismount, whatever they're doing, they were literally wiring that success into their brains. So this goes to make you think what if you're going over and over again to how you're going to fail? What if you're seeing in your mind.
Craig:Oh my God, I'm going to fail the test? Oh my God, I'm going to biff it when I get up and do that presentation or that speech. Oh my God, I'm going to be a loser when I do this, that or the other thing. What if that's going on in your mind? Are you not then literally wiring fear and anxiety and failure into your mind? And so this comes with.
Craig:What you're saying about visualization, chris, is that this is what's so extraordinary about just spending, and I get it. Maybe you don't have two hours every day to just sit and visualize the success you want, whether at work or in relationships, or finances, or health or whatever it is. But what if you could just spend five, 10 minutes here and there, especially as you're going to bed, instead of ruminating about all the failures or the fears of the future? What if you were to, just as you're going to sleep, maybe, do 3-2-1 reset, give yourself that hug, flood your brain and your body with the oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine, and see yourself with all the success, with all the joy, with all the happiness, and literally rewire your entire system. And you can do that just through visualization.
Craig:What is strongest within your mind is what you do over and over again, and so this, hopefully, is a wake-up call that if you're practicing being afraid, if you're practicing being anxious afraid, if you're practicing being anxious, certainly, if it's to the point of being, you know, detrimental to your progress and to your health, your mental health, your emotional health, please go see somebody Again, whether it's a talk therapist, whether it's a therapeutic hypnosis or any, you know, whatever kind of modality you need to seek, go find some help, go find a coach to help you with this. But know that what is strongest within your mind is what you do over and over again. What you practice you get better at.
Chris:We know this from dancing or martial arts or piano.
Craig:So what if you're practicing anxiety? What if you're practicing, whether it's tests or job interview or giving a presentation or a first date, or just that chronic anxiety about life, that things aren't going? If you keep practicing that, you're literally wiring that into your brain and body and hopefully this is, like I said, a wake-up call because you can change that. 3-2-1 reset is a great way to start and by visualizing the person you want to be, you can literally wire yourself to be that person.
Chris:This is it and it's a step-by-step. It's a day-by-day, it's a process that we're able to just you know, and like people say, rome wasn't built in a day, rome wasn't built in a month. You know what I mean. Like it's going to take some time. But I think that if we have the foundation and we have the resources, we can make that step by step and little by little. That's going to happen with us. I want to ask you I'd like to close with this final question Is your glass half empty or half full?
Craig:I would like to say you know, there's that great joke it's not half full. It's not half full, it's not half empty, it just needs to be refilled. I would say that's cute. You know a lot of my life it was, it was half empty, and there are days when I revert to that. I think it's just because I spent decades with that and maybe there's just, it's what I, what was mirrored, what I was mirroring growing up. My mom struggled with depression and so maybe I'm, I'm modeling that from the growing up years. Maybe there's a genetic component, that from the growing up years, maybe there's a genetic component.
Craig:Um, I, like you know, because of the work I started doing, uh, in the year 2000,. Because of my son being born that I talked about at the very beginning, I have a healthy view of life. Most of the time time, and so I'd say 90 of the time, the glass is uh half, uh full. I do find myself in times when, yeah, it's half empty and I, I, but now I know I have the tools. It's called three, two, one, reset, not three, two, one. Do it once in your life is rainbows and unicorns, and so there's, I have the tools I have because I did the work, I did the research, I know what works for me and so when I find myself maybe in that, in that hole, uh, that I fell into, I know how to get out, and I know how to get out pretty quickly this is the key.
Craig:And again, i't know. We could have a long conversation about whether that's genetics, that's me, whether it's nature or nurture or whatever, but I can sense it, I can feel it and I know what to do about it. So I think the very long answer to what was probably a very short question. I say most of the time it's half full and when it's not, I know what to do about it.
Chris:Excellent, that's great. That's a great answer. Can you tell everyone how they can reach you if they want to find out more about you?
Craig:The best way to reach me and the easiest way to remember is aceanytestcom. I do do social media stuff, but I mainly see email most days, so the best way to just find out more about me and to reach me through email is aceinitestcom.
Chris:Great, and that's all one word, and we will have all of that information underneath the podcast as well for them to find it when this is released out. Thank you so much for your time and energy today. We are happy to have had you as a guest here on glass half full. We appreciate your chat time. Thank you, chris yes, you're very, very welcome. Take care, have a wonderful afternoon. Well, it's evening. You should be on almost on your way to bed.
Craig:It's afternoon on my side, well have a wonderful evening.
Chris:Yes, I'm sorry. Go ahead, chris, I appreciate it.
Craig:I was just going to say I'm all hyped up and excited. Now I'll probably stay up and go outside and run a mile or something. I'm all hyped up. I'm having my conversation with you. Oh, I love it. I love it, my pleasure.
Chris:We appreciate you as well. Thank you so much. All right, take care, bye-bye, bye. Hello listeners of Glass Half Full, thank you for tuning in to another inspiring episode of our podcast. I'm your host, chris Levins, and I want to express my gratitude to each and every one of you for being a part of our supportive community. Remember, glass Half Full is not just a podcast. It's a safe platform for everyone to share their life experiences. Your stories and voice matter and we appreciate you for being here with us. And we appreciate you for being here with us. If you enjoyed today's episode and want to stay updated with our future content, please subscribe, follow and rate our podcast on Apple Music, spotify and YouTube. Your support means the world to us and it helps us reach even more listeners who can benefit from these valuable life experiences. As we wrap up this episode, always keep in mind you are blessed, no matter the challenges you face. There's a reservoir of strength within you. Until next time, stay positive and remember the glass is always half full, see ya.