Overcoming Stress and Pressure (8)
Proven Strategies That Help You Feel Better and Live Longer
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(…continued from last week)
The 4 Ways Emotions are Created
As you are taking better control of yourself, you need to think about how to manage these emotions. How do you manage these reactions. How do you keep yourself on the eustress track instead of on the distress track?
Medicine and psychology say there are four core ways that emotions are created. Four primary ways that generate all emotions that we have. The first is chemical or hormonal change in the body. The second is damage to the brain itself. The third is your self-talk and the mental images you create in your mind. And the fourth is something happening to your physiology, or the actions you’re taking with your body.
Let’s look at the first one, chemical or hormonal change in the body. Remember, everything you put in your body’s a chemical. Coffee, tea, sugar, water, alcohol, drugs, food—everything you put in you is a chemical and affects you on some level.
Hormonal change. All hormones are fluctuating up and down all the time. They get used up. They get old. They have to be replaced. You get sick. You have a mood swing—many kinds of reasons. Hormones go up and down continuously and it can affect us.
Second, damage to the brain. Now I guarantee you, if you were to lower your head, stand back about 20 feet, and run as fast you can head first into a brick wall, it’s going to change how you feel really quickly.
Okay, damage to the brain. You don’t even have to bruise the brain much, even shake it up. But things like strokes, aneurisms, putting your head through the windshield of a car, getting hit in the head with a baseball cause drastic emotional swings. That severe damage to the brain, or jolting it really hard, can cause your emotions to rise and fall, without you really having any control over it. But it’s rare that that happens to us.
The third way emotions are created is from your self-talk and your mental images. Inside your head you have this little voice ‘Gabby’ that chatters at you all the time. ‘Gabby’ never stops talking. ‘Gabby’ is a beta brainwave function. You need to pay attention to what you tell yourself, because your self-talk can lift you up or pull you down.
The mental pictures you think about, the memories you recall, the good and bad images in your mind can boost you and strengthen you, or they can knock the props right out from under you. Self-talk and mental images are a major factor in emotional state control.
The fourth one is how you use your physiology. I mentioned this earlier when we talked about the types of stressors. If you’re way to hot, if you’re way to cold, if somehow you have gotten yourself twisted up into a pretzel and you’re extremely uncomfortable, or if you are experiencing physical pain. it’s going to affect your emotional state.
Get Control Over Your Self-Talk
But of these four things, chemical or hormonal change, damage to the brain, self-talk and mental images, and your physiology the third one, your self-talk and mental images contribute to 65% to 75% of all emotions you experience.
What that means is you’ve really got to manage what you’re telling yourself. You’ve heard someone say, “They made me mad.” Oh ‘they’ made you mad did ‘they’? Well tell me, how did ‘they’ do that?
“They swore at me, they called me names.” Well tell me then, did those words, #1 chemically or hormonally imbalance you? No, not unless they shot you up with testosterone at the same time. Or, not unless they poured a gallon of tequila down your throat while cursing you.
Did they #2 beat you about the head, neck and shoulders with a baseball bat while they were saying those bad words and swearing at you? No? They just swore at you? Well, then ‘they’ didn’t brain damage you. So you’ve got to scratch that one off too.
Self-talk is #3. Well the only way they could really change your self-talk, or make you have self-talk, is if they were somehow to plug electrical wires into the brain and turn microelectrodes on and off to shock the brain. Then you could say ‘they’ could create your self-talk. But other than them doing neuro-stimulation of your brain with electricity, your self-talk is the result of what you think.
How about #4, did they twist you up in a pretzel, and shove you in a two foot square box? No? Well then it isn’t the physiology either. They just swore at you, called you names, and made fun of you.
Your self-talk is what upset you, NOT what they said! You must get a handle on what you think. Yeah, sometimes people aren’t nice, I understand. Sometimes unfair or unkind things happen. Accidents occur. Sometimes people just don’t pay attention and they’re just unaware of the affect they have on others. I get it—and it’s up to you to manage the response and jabber within your mind.
Direct Your Internal Dialogue
You have to control your brain. The way you think about your experiences makes a giant difference. Because if you choose to tell yourself angry thoughts, well guess what—you’re going to feel angry!
If you tell yourself scary things, you’ll feel afraid. If you tell yourself shameful things, you will feel guilty. If you tell yourself sad things, you’ll feel down or depressed.
If you tell yourself exciting things, you feel more motivated. If you tell yourself a bunch of goofy stuff, you get some humor out of it. If you tell yourself calming, quieting things, you feel a little more relaxed and at ease. So you’ve got to watch what you’re telling yourself, and guide it where you want it to go—on purpose.
It is your choice of focus. Focus your brain in the direction you want it to go. Don’t let it go just wherever it will. Focus it on purpose where you want it to go. Make that conscious choice.
Every moment of every day, you can send your brain in the direction you want it to go, or you can let it run wild on its own. I guarantee you, that if you don’t take control of your brain, it will go places you really don’t want it to go—won’t it. Anger, guilt, fear, overwhelm, sadness are all examples of your brain just roaming and not being directed to a more positive or neutral state.
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Break The Old Patterns
Do you ever mumble and grumble to yourself about things? Sure, everyone does at occasionally. Every time you allow yourself to do that though, you are sending your brain down a track to put you in distress. Do not forget that the primary way distress occurs is because of your self-talk thinking pattern and your mental images.
If some son-of-a-gun at work doesn’t do what they’re supposed to do, and you get in trouble, every time you picture that guy and think, “Oh boy am I going to show them! I’m not gonna let them get away with this!” Every time you tell yourself that garbage, it creates more distress in your mind and in your body. Don’t let them take control of your brain. Don’t give it away to them.
Don’t let them jerk your chain. Don’t let them do that to you. Take control of your own mind. Don’t give your power away.
When you let somebody else upset you like that, you just gave them control of your mind. Do you really want them controlling your mind? Well if you let them jerk your chain like that, that’s exactly what they’ve done. They have control of you. Manage yourself. It is a choice. Every moment, every day, manage yourself.
Use the ‘seven down to one count breathing’. Quiet yourself, change your mental focus, watch your self-talk. Breathe a little bit. Make sure that you stay on the eustress side of the hill. Keep being positive, encouraging, excited about life, working out, having fun, take vacations, seeing friends, laughing hard—make your life, come alive!
Do the eustress activities and thinking patterns that boosts your body, and takes you mentally where you want to go. Focus on the positive and release the negative. Because that will help you to live longer, live healthier, have more fun, and overall diminish the stress in your life.
This concludes “Overcoming Stress and Pressure”. Please stay tuned next week for an all new program that can improve your relationships, your success, and your life for good!
The best of success to you!
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Posted: July 8th, 2015 under Audio Programs.
