REWIRE YOUR BRAIN

Coming out of this strange state of ‘lockdown’, not knowing whether we’ll be ‘sent back into it again’ or able to keep moving into a more familiar state of being and living, the significance of the brain and how our past experiences have ‘wired’ us for resilience, becomes key.

As I have mentioned in Blogs before, the part of the brain often referred to as the Executive Brain, that top-heavy front part called the Pre Frontal Cortex, defines us as humans. It is gradually developed from birth up to the age of about 24, and is shaped to a great degree based on our experiences (and responses to them), and to the 'programming' we receive. This part of the brain gives us a multitude of abilities, including contributing significantly to our 

resilience and our abilities to;

• Stay calm under pressure and manage fear
• Manage our impulses
• Motivate ourselves – be able to generate positive emotions under stress and stay on course, even with setbacks
• Adapt and be flexible – be able to roll with the punches
• Have transparency – act from our values rather than just having a trendy vision statement
• Develop Emotional intelligence – to understand and self-regulate our emotions in order to gain the best, most insightful perspective
• Have ‘big-picture’ insight –to be aware of the present, look backward at the past, and have a vision of the future, simultaneously (mental time-travel J)
• Feel empathy – be able to step into someone else’s shoes and see their viewpoint without your own agenda getting in the way
•  Become attuned to other people – ultimately making them more likely to feel trusting and loyal towards us
• Act according to values and ethics – imagining and in-acting the greater good, above and beyond our own personal satisfaction
• Trust intuition – be able to process gut feeling and heart-felt sense and use in an appropriate way to inform decisions

Of course we’re not necessarily automatically good at any of these – for most of us it takes a bit of effort and quite frequently, a lot of work! SO what are the most recent findings that can make all this easier, to both understand and apply?

1. First of all, your personal (and professional) growth work can change your brain! 

It can be helpful to know that neuroscience and psychology have significant overlaps with each other as well as with ancient contemplative practices – (Mindfulness being a ‘modern’ version and the most commonly quoted). When you apply techniques such as the Applied Emotional Mastery (AEM) techniques and practices, you are not only helping yourself and your actions or relationships short-term, you are also actually changing the very structure of your brain, thereby impacting your life long-term. Neuroscientists can now shows us clearly that repeated emotional and mental activity entail repetition of neural (brain) activity which builds actual neural structures. It is said that neurons that fire together, wire together. This means that the more you for example feel compassion for yourself and others, the more you will be inclined to feel compassionate in situations when you previously might have found it difficult. Conversely, the more you allow yourself to feel put upon or resentful (and justify feeling that way), the more hardwired this becomes and the more predisposed you become to feeling this way in response to a variety of situations.

2. Secondly, all humans have a bias towards negativity. (It’s not just you!) Our ancestors, trying to survive cave life, would understandably place more importance on avoiding sticks than pursuing carrots. The result is that our brains are wired to pay most attention to anything that feels even remotely threatening or disturbing. In our memory bank there is a preferential ‘coding’ that makes us learn faster from pain than pleasure and be more motivated by fear of loss than by desire for gain. (This explains a lot!)

To make positive changes that give lasting benefit and become permanent traits it is not quite enough to merely think positively. We need to download it – (think of it as just like installing or downloading a program onto your computer versus just viewing a link) – and that involves emotions. To ‘download’ or install anything positive requires both repetition and prolonged experience, allowing the integration of the ‘new’ emotional experience or perspective in your brain to become traits –the desired change to become ‘hardwired’– making increased resilience, inner strength, and other desired qualities permanent.

SO: here’s a couple of tips/reminders to help you install an increased state of well-being:

TAKE FIVE!

A short, 5 minute meditation integrated into your daily routine (you can find several in the Multi-media section of our website or on our YouTube channel) will activate the ‘Executive’ circuits in the brain.

RELISH!

To recover from too many stress-hormones and build resilience, we need to generate those hormones that give us a much-needed balance, including endorphins. We do this best by RELISHING the good feelings and experiences we have. When you are enjoying something, savour it. The longer you keep that feeling of appreciation or relishing going, the more the neurons keep firing together and the more chance there is of the neurons wiring together. For example, on your way to work and enjoying the blue sky and sunshine, keep enjoying it. Stop your wandering mind by bringing it back to how good it feels to really appreciate the sunny morning, RELISH AND ABSORB THE GOOD FEELING!  Install it!

Stay safe and well!  - and may your self-mastery increase by the day J

Jennifer

Why Can't We Just Get A Grip?

Twitter rants, Facebook bullying, political knee-jerk decisions, and reactive behaviour - all driven by out-of-control emotions. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get a handle on some of this? I wonder how many people are aware of how much out-of-control emotions run our lives? Most people know that emotions are powerful, but I’d go so far as to say they are THE most powerful force we have. They drive everything of significance. And while they are powerful when you are aware of them, emotions wreak havoc when you’re not. Why is this? How come emotions are so powerful that they make us say and do things we later regret? Why can’t we just get a grip? 
Well, you cannot always ‘pull yourself together’ (as my mother used to say), because emotions are often triggered without our conscious knowledge, they are literally physical changes that occur in the body when you register signals from your environment which you may or may not be aware of.

A typical scenario might be if you smell something that reminds your subconscious mind of a strong childhood experience, which will rekindle the same emotion you originally had. When this is a positive experience, (i.e. the smell of pastries your mother baked for celebrations) it may trigger the release of dopamine – a ‘feel-good’ hormone that reinforces reward. Conversely, if the association and resulting emotion is negative, (i.e. the whiff of pastries that your mother baked when she left you to cry yourself to sleep as a baby) it will rekindle the feeling of abandonment you felt, as cortisol is released in your conditioned but subconscious stress-response (no matter how illogical this may seem to an adult who doesn’t consciously remember being left in the crib). Changes like these occur instantly and many times a day. Whether you are conscious of them or not, they impact what you think and believe and consequently, how you act.

But these signals from our surroundings need not always involve memory –and sometimes our responses are designed for a purpose. For example when a mother breastfeeds her baby, the stimulation releases oxytocin (often referred to as ‘the bonding hormone) in her breast tissue, which makes her milk flow. Importantly, it changes her emotional state: her anxiety levels drop and she becomes more calm, patient, and able to meet her baby’s needs. Until recently oxytocin was only associated with reproduction, but it has now been also shown to play a far more significant role in our behaviour and all our relationships than previously thought. Dr Paul Zak of Loma Linda University Medical Center in California, has conducted hundreds of studies with oxytocin, worldwide. His research found that Oxytocin is released in all of us when we trust someone or when we feel trusted. It makes us pro-social, more generous, honourable, and even moral! His research has also found that although there is no correlation between happiness and income level, there is a tight correlation between happiness and trust; that living in a society where there is a high level of trust makes people happier.

This is great information indeed! But could it help prevent all the rants, the bullying, and knee-jerk reactions we all so want to see diminish?
I think it could – first and foremost, by making us more self-aware about how the negative, stress-producing emotions impact us. As it turns out, the stress hormones that are released when we experience strong negative emotions actually inhibit the release of Oxytocin, which in turn leads to a lack of empathy and reduced care and concern for others. So now we know that not only do stress-producing, out-of-control emotions reduce our ability to think clearly and compromise our immune system, but they also block Oxytocin, the purpose of which is to increase our ability to connect with, trust and be trusted by or even care about others. This helps us understand even better why we sometimes rant or behave in knee-jerk ways that are defensive, inappropriate, unkind or thoughtless (literally). It also gives us yet another reason to try to be more self-aware and take charge of our previously out-of-control damaging emotions, and is one more argument in favour of practicing generating the ‘feel-good’ factor!

SOME WAYS TO GENERATE OXYTOCIN & THE FEEL-GOOD FACTOR

Smile to the next person you see
Stroke a pet
Give or get a massage
Dance
Create music with others
Appreciate something – anything!
Give someone you care about a nice surprise
Show your appreciation - to anyone!
Phone or write to an old friend or teacher
Forgive someone
Meditate with a focus on appreciation or compassion
Share a meal with a friend
Watch a feel-good movie
Play with the children in your life – face to face
Make someone laugh
Go to the theatre or a concert with a friend
Join a club or activity group
Socialize – in person!
AND
HUG SOMEONE (Paul Zak’s favorite)
To hear Paul Zak's TED talk, click here