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3 Words To Instantly Get Rid Of Anxiety

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When I first started to take professional coaching I had never heard about a concept my coach called “Instant Acceptance”.

He explained that it is a great little routine to let negative emotions go almost instantly. Now I was listening and I decided to give it a try.

He told me to use a very simple method: Every time I would feel insecure, nervous, stressed out, or be in any other not so desirable state, I should make a conscious effort to realize I have the feeling and then say these 3 magic words to myself:

“IT IS OK”

Not very spectacular right? It doesn’t have to be spectacular to be useful. What’s important is that you don’t just say the words but also make sure that you internally feel like it’s ok. Logically run through the situation and realize that in the grand scheme of things it really is ok.

Here are a few ideas on how you can use it:

  • You get rejected by a girl. — IT’S OK. It’s not great, and you feel terrible for a bit, but it’s not the end of the world. You are still alive and physically well.
  • You made a bad joke and feel like an idiot because no one laughed. — IT’S OK. The feeling will fade and you didn’t hurt anyone.
  • You spent two salaries on PUA workshops and videos. — IT’S OK. At least you now know what doesn’t work.
  • You had a good connection with someone you met at a party but then got nervous and chickened out from asking for her number. — IT’S OK. You’ll meet other awesome women throughout your life and, who knows, maybe you’ll see her again someday.

I think you see where I am going with this. As soon as you acknowledge in your mind that something is not great but IT’S OK something magical happens. The negative feeling slowly fades away. Not entirely but that’s ok as well.

Noam Shpancer, Ph.D. explains it beautifully in his article for Psychology Today:

 “… acceptance is implicitly akin to saying, “This is not that bad.” Which is the truth–negative emotions may not be fun, but they won’t kill you; experiencing them as they are–annoying but not dangerous–is eventually much less of a drag than the ongoing (failing) attempt to avoid them.”

 I know what you must think now: “Seriously, it’s ok are the magic words that will help me relief all my bad feelings?” You are 100% right to do so, that’s exactly what I thought as well.

But let me tell you something, it’s not about those words! As a matter of fact, you can replace them with whatever you like.

So if it’s not in the words what is it that helps you?

What I found was that there is magic in the combination of, one, consciously noticing there is an undesirable feeling, and, two,  realizing it’s human to feel that way and accepting the feeling by gaining perspective and realizing that it’s not such a big deal.

It sounds somewhat new age and esoteric, I get it, but just give it a try! If it works, great! If not, nothing lost.

How can this get you closer to being with the woman of your dreams?

Imagine you are in a bar. You are talking to a gorgeous woman and you are not only interested in her looks but you also get drawn in by her personality.

Everything goes great but suddenly these thoughts of whether she is interested or not kick in along with the feeling of insecurity. You start to sweat, you don’t know what to say, you stop to listen closely to what she has to say because you are so consumed by those feelings.

You wonder if she notices it and before you know what happened she excuses herself and “has to say hi to a friend”. Game over.

Similar incidents used to happen to me over and over but in contrast to me back then, you now know what to do!

Next time those negative feelings and thoughts kick in, stop for a moment in your mind, get conscious of your feelings and thoughts, and say to yourself, “It’s OK!”.

Accept the feelings and continue without her noticing anything.

In case she notices you didn’t pay attention to the conversation (she won’t but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared) just tell her the truth. Tell her you have this little trick to get rid of negative emotions. I bet she will want to know everything about it. If she asks why you experienced negative emotions then tell her the truth again. Guys, I can’t emphasize this enough. Just tell the blank truth and make yourself vulnerable! This is so uncommon that it will separate you from almost every guy out there!

I am confident the three magic words will help you as much as they’ve helped me. Just remember that it is like every other skill; you need to practice to become great at it. So don’t be discouraged if you use it a few times and don’t notice a big change. It took me about two or three weeks of consciously reminding myself to say, “It’s ok” whenever I noticed a negative emotion before I could really claim that it made a difference for me. The reason for this is that you need to first learn how to be mindful of when negative emotions arise and this takes a bit of time to get used to. But this is the same mindfulness that meditation teachers always rave about so it can’t hurt to practice that as well, right?

Have fun testing it out!