Can You Learn Your Way Out Of Fear?

daddy's leg

When you’re learning something new, the parts of your brain involved with emotions are stimulated along with the information filtering parts. The type and amount of emotional stimulation depends on how confident (or not) you are that you’ll be able to remember the crucial information you’ll need to perform adequately at the appropriate time.

Doubts about your ability to both learn and perform will create the fear of embarrassment. This adds a layer of emotional distraction to the learning process.

And if you pile extra pressure on yourself, requiring that you perform perfectly every time, then even more fear can interfere with your learning. Your fear might escalate to the level of losing your job, your relationship, or your health. Continue reading →

We’re Human Beings, Not Beads

work-life balance

I recently heard a famous self-help guru insist that balance is impossible, so we must give up the idea that we can have it. With all due respect to my esteemed colleague, I couldn’t disagree more.

He defines balance as a state where nothing is happening. He’s referring to the motionlessness that happens after you pour an equal weight of beads into the bowls on both sides of a scale.

While this is one form of balance, it’s not the only one. And more importantly, I don’t think it applies in this case.

The form of balance you and I can strive for—and attain every day—is the balance exhibited by a downhill skier or a ballet dancer. This is an elegant, exquisite form of balance in motion. Continue reading →

How Adept At Adapting Are You?

May 3, 2012 in Personal Development
darwin fish

You’re familiar with the theory of evolution: survival hinges on the ability to adapt. This applies to every species on our planet.

The ones who are the most adaptable—the most able to quickly respond to changing conditions—are the most healthy and the most likely to thrive over the long term.

Have you connected this theory to the effect that your thoughts have on your ability to adapt?

Building on last week’s topic, fear-based irrational thinking makes adapting to your ever-changing world harder and more stressful.

So the more adaptable attitude you can have is to embrace—not resist—new situations. Facing new issues head-on is more adaptive and therefore more beneficial to you over the long term than running away from, minimizing, rationalizing, or ignoring them. Continue reading →

How Often Do You Fall Into This Trap?

April 26, 2012 in Personal Development

I recently ran across a word I haven’t heard for a while: irrational. Like so many terms coined by psychiatry, it’s been misunderstood and misapplied. I used to think that someone who behaved irrationally was crazy. Not so.

A thought is irrational when it’s illogical or unreasonable AND triggers emotional stress. This definition clicked for me.

I took it to mean that not only do you feel stress when you react with an automatic thought pattern that triggers fear, but you’re also stressed when and BECAUSE your thoughts aren’t logical or reasonable.

Wow. I never thought about it that way before. If this is true, then I can use logic and reasonableness as additional tools to identify and unplug the stress component of negative thoughts that roll around in my head. Continue reading →

A Shocking New Revelation About Your Genes

DNA, dice

Three hundred years ago, Isaac Newton proposed a radical new theory: the human body is a biological machine that responds solely to physical stimuli. Thus, the health of your physical machine is improved with nutrition, exercise and drugs.

Accordingly, the mechanistic Central Dogma of molecular biology (circa 1958) states that your DNA was preset before your birth, so your health has been almost entirely pre-programmed.

The theory was that genetic information flows in only one direction: from the DNA to the body. Essentially, your genes tell your body what to do, and your body complies.

However, quantum physics and recent discoveries in genetics have revealed a much different picture. Your body is more than just a physical machine.

And you’re not merely a servant to dictatorial genes. You actually have a tremendous ability in every moment to affect which genetic traits are being expressed (or not), and the extent to which each one is expressed. Continue reading →

The Neurology of Worry

chain breaking

Did you know that chronic stress causes physical changes in the size and activity of many of your brain structures? When they’re swimming in the stress neurochemical cortisol, the prefrontal cortex (the CEO of the brain), and the hippocampus (houses long term memory) actually shrink in size.

Other parts, like the amygdala, swell when they’re over-stimulated. The result is an overactive stress response and impaired memory and reduced ability to plan and act. Sound a little like you?

Is it comforting to know that there’s a concrete physical cause for this experience? On the other hand, there’s a downside to knowing that your thoughts are causing the shrinkage. Unless you do something about it, your brain will keep shrinking. Numerous studies have linked dementia with reduction in brain mass.

Neurologically speaking, worry is the emotional by-product of your amygdala activating the flight response. In previous posts, you learned that the amygdala recalls scary past events. Here’s the neurological cause for that distraction. Continue reading →

Easier Choices

April 11, 2012 in Enjoying the Ride

We all want customized experiences and products — but when faced with 700 options, we freeze up. With fascinating new research, Sheena Iyengar demonstrates how we can improve the experience of choosing. She studies how we choose and what makes us think we’re good at it. She says: The key to getting the most from choice is to be choosy about choosing. A little Dr. Seuss-y, but enlightening. I loved it! What do you think?

 

Click here to watch How to Make Choosing Easier

 

Is Worry Destroying Your Self-Confidence?

Businesswoman pain

You’ve known for years that mental preparation plays a major role in success. However, most of us don’t prepare powerfully.

In our society, there’s a pervasive false belief that it’s a sign of maturity and responsibility to worry about things. That it’s normal to get nervous when the stakes are high, like 10 minutes before you give a big presentation. Or when your teenager gets their driver’s license.

I’m making a case for the opposite.

I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that worrying is the adult version of a temper tantrum. It’s an acid that eats away at your confidence. The best way to handle it is to go sit in a corner with your nose against the wall until you can distract your amygdala, calm down, clear your mind and focus on evaluating your options for getting what you want.

Let’s connect the dots between your amygdala, worry, and your self-confidence. Continue reading →

Page 1 of 2012345...1020...Last »