How are you coping, and how would you like to cope?
What are your dangers, and what are your opportunities in this time of change?
What strengths would you like to grow, and how will you do that?
We need to be proactive on all levels of our being ~ physical, emotional, mental and spiritual, and you need the right tools to thrive and change with the times. With the right tools you and your family will come out of this stronger than ever, but without the right tools you risk flailing and suffering more than you need too.
Thinking Tools:
You’re always thinking, but is it productive? If you organize your thinking you’ll have a better outcome. One of the best ways to organize your thinking is to ask good questions.
What dangers do you and your family face for the next month? What can you do to avert those dangers?
What opportunities do you and your family have in the next month? How can you avail yourself of those opportunities?
What strengths do you and your family need to augment over the next month? How can you do that?
Emotional Tools:
First: Recognize your negativity bias. We humans are hardwired to see danger more than we see opportunity. It’s part of our genetic heritage, and we need to be aware of our bias. In most situations things are not as bad or dangerous as our feelings would lead us to believe. If we simply recognize our negativity bias, we can put our feelings in context, and avoid being carried away by exaggerated fear or worry.
Second: Take a few minutes each day to notice what is going well. Write them down.
Third: Take a few minutes each day to notice your worries, and then contextualize those worries with “it could be worse”. The “it could be worse” comparison activates a process in your brain that creates a bigger perspective and eases your tension.
Physical Tools to Maintain Your Center:
First: Your physical body, and especially your autonomic nervous system, form the foundation for your emotions, thinking, and your experience of the world. Take care of your body, and take care of your autonomic nervous system, and everything else will go better.
Physical exercise is one of your most important tools to regulate your autonomic nervous system. You give it a work out when you exercise because your autonomic nervous system is responsible for your heart rate and blood flow, as well as for the stress response in the base of your brain. You’ll handle stress better if you exercise.
Second: Use conscious breathing to regulate your emotions. Most of the time you don’t think about your breathing, because it’s under the control of your autonomic, or autonomic nervous system. When you’re feeling stressed, your breathing gets shallower and faster. But you can take conscious control of your breathing with slow, deep breaths, and send messages of relaxation back to your brain.
Take a minute or two several times a day and take a series of 5 slow deep breaths.
This time is an opportunity for learning and growth.
Change is stressful (on physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual levels), but along with its dangers, stress and change bring the opportunity for learning and growth. Stress is only harmful if we can’t handle it. More often we grow through challenge and stress. Exercise is stress for our muscles. Emotional challenges can make us wiser and stronger. Mental and spiritual challenges can strengthen our resolve and clarity.
So how do you create the conditions to learn and grow and come out of this stronger?
Use the tools we talked about every day, and listen to BrainTime. This combination supports your brain in two important and complimentary ways.
The physical, mental, and emotional tools point your brain in the direction of growth, and BrainTime increases your brain’s ability to learn and grow. You get faster changes in your brain and more complete learning and growth from the physical, mental, and emotional exercises when you listen to BrainTime for 5 minutes two or more times a day in addition to doing the exercises. (You can also listen to BrainTime while you do the exercises.)
Take advantage of this time in history to become stronger, wiser, and more loving.