I love quick techniques that can make a big difference to your life. These are low effort, big reward life hacks that can change your entire outlook in a minute and banish negative thinking and anxiety.

If you can really take control of your emotional state in a moment, then you’re on your way to peak performance. This is one way to control anxiety or stress and turn a bad feeling into a good one right away.

The Swish Pattern is great for beating bad moods

Now don’t kid yourself, if you’re hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt then you’re not going to Swish the pain away. Chronic debt can have a real negative impact on your mental health and self-esteem, too. We’ll cover that separately, but there are lots of small problems that can affect your mood on a day-to-day basis and real negative experiences that cast a shadow on other parts of your life.



These exercises will help you with them.



You have to take some positive action, too. But you can use this technique to alleviate anxiety and stress, especially when it’s just a feeling or a mood.



If you can control stress and beat anxiety with a few regular mental exercises, then you owe it to yourself to give it a go. Mental health is a taboo subject among men, but we can do just a few things that will help us control anxiety and avoid stress in the first place.

The Swish Technique, or the Swish Pattern, has been used time and again, by a vast number of NLP specialists. Richard Bandler is credited with creating it, Paul McKenna and Anthony Robbins are both fans and it’s a great way of digging yourself out of a negative headspace.

This is better than the Swish Pattern

But the thing is, I found something better. So I’m going to give you the classic Swish Technique for instant confidence in just one minute. Before you get into that, though, try this.

It’s another one of hypnotist Michael Sealey’s concepts and it’s just 15 minutes. It is a hypnotic version of the Swish technique, taken to the next level. It involves really feeling the emotions and the pain of the bad moment, then just wiping it all out and replacing it with a triumphant vision.

It’s the Swish pattern brought bang up to date with hypnotic suggestion and it is, frankly amazing.

I prefer Michael’s version. But if you just think hypnosis does not work, or it’s too much of a step for you right now, then start with the basics.

This will be tricky at first, it isn’t the most natural thing in the world to do. But it gets easier and you should do it every day, eventually you’ll conquer your fear.

The Swish Pattern

1. Close your eyes, breathe slowly and imagine you’re on the front row of a huge cinema, the screen is in front of you and it’s massive. If you want, you have popcorn…

2. See the scene that is causing you anxiety or pain playing out in front of you in massive, hideous technicolour. Play it like a scene from a movie, it’s disconnected and it’s happening in front of you. If there’s a specific trigger for the anxiety, like a particular person, or going into an exam, then include it.

3. Right in the corner, in a tiny, almost invisible square, put a second screen. In that screen is the way you alternative scenario, the good one that you want. In that version of the movie you get the girl, you say the right thing, you win the gold medal, you strut into the exam hall like a confident little peacock and ace the test in 10 minutes.

Whatever it is, that is your golden moment going on in that tiny screen. It’s your dream scenario and normally the opposite of what you’re actually scared of.

4. When everything is vivid, you’re lost in this moment, then switch the screens. Make it fast, like you’ve clicked a button and the miniaturised version flips with the big one in a heartbeat. Watch yourself kicking ass, enjoy your popcorn for a moment, let this ‘flipping the script’ truly sink in.

An optional extra is to click your fingers, which is another way to reinforce the change of state through touch and sound. It’s an NLP anchor addition to the whole process that I came up with myself, it’s a combination of techniques and a reinforcement for the basic Swish.

5. Try to blank your mind and then start again. Repeat the process at least five times, do 10 if you can.

6. After running this exercise 5-10 times, think about the trigger. Think about the thing that caused you so much anxiety just a few minutes ago. Does it feel less serious now? Do you feel ready to tackle it?

For more serious problems, use this every day and we’ll go into some deeper techniques in the near future. But for minor anxiety, the Swish technique is awesome.

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