Clear The Mind

Our entire experience and quality of life hinges on our ability to clear and control the mind. Many of us believe that our happiness is dependent on outside factors and on what happens to us. This however is not true. Rather, our happiness depends on the way we react to what happens to us. And the same goes for every other aspect of our experience too: your stress levels are a result of the way you react to events, and your ability to be productive depend on your reactions too.

Don’t believe me? 

To prove it, let’s imagine that you’re in a caravan and it’s hanging over the edge of a cliff. If you move too much then it’s going to topple over the edge into a ravine. If you are aware of this situation, then in all likelihood you will be riddled with fear. Your heart rate will increase, your blood vessels will dilate, your muscles will contract and you will start breathing quickly. You’ll sweat and your mind will be all over the place.

But now let’s imagine that you’re in the very same situation but you believe that you can fly. In that case, you’ll probably sit happily reading and not worry all too much about your precarious position! As you can see here, your belief about the situation and about the events is what is in control of not just your mood – but your very physiology. And guess which person is more likely to survive this situation without letting the caravan fall?

Now don’t get this twisted: I am not here to tell you that holding completely deluded beliefs is the way forward! And nor should you convince yourself you can fly. But this is merely a demonstration of the power of the mind and of your beliefs. 

Now if you imagine yourself in another more realistic setting you can see how your beliefs can change the way you react. Let’s say you’re standing up on stage and you’re about to give a speech in front of lots of people.

Some of us don’t believe we can fly. Some of us think that we’re going to say the wrong thing, that we’re going to stutter and that people are going to laugh at us! We thus begin to panic and guess what? Our blood vessels dilate, our muscles contract and our heart rate goes up. Our mind begins to race which makes us more likely to make mistakes and our throat becomes dry and hoarse.The irony is that the speech is much more likely to go wrong simply because we’re worried that it might! 

And now imagine the same scenario but where you believe it’s going to go well, or where you just aren’t bothered about what other people might think. This kind of calm mindfulness is going to help you to act as though there isn’t even an audience there!
Again, it is your reaction to the event that is going to keep stress at bay. And it’s not just these acutely stressful situations that can benefit from mindfulness and calmness either.

Imagine for example that you come home from work and you can’t stop thinking about the last thing your boss/client/colleague said to you.

Then you wonder if you sent that important last email… 

How present are you going to be when you get home? How much are your family likely to enjoy spending time with you?

Imagine that you are on a great holiday but all you can think about is whether or not you left the oven on at home. How much do you think you’ll enjoy the incredible views of mountains going past your window?

Imagine that you’re in the gym and your mind is thinking about the computer game you were playing last night, or X Factor. Do you really think that you’re going to be capable of exerting maximum force in that workout?

My aim is to help you to take back control over your mind and in doing this, you’re also going to be taking back control over your emotions and your feelings. The end result is that you’re going to be able to become completely present in any given moment and completely ‘mindful’, thereby abandoning unhelpful concerns, stressors and emotions. 

Mindfulness meditation means that you are meditating in such a way as to become more aware of your own thoughts and feelings. In other forms of meditation – such as transcendental meditation – ask the person to try and completely clear their mind, often by focussing on a single point in space, or perhaps a sound or a word (this is called a ‘mantra’ and it is why we imagine Buddhist monks to hum as they meditate!).

The difference with mindfulness is that you aren’t trying to eradicate your thoughts but rather you are trying to simply ‘watch them’ as they float past you. The idea is that you are becoming aware of the kinds of things you normally think but you aren’t engaging with them and you aren’t letting them affect you. The description is often that you should watch them pass by ‘like clouds in the sky’. Do this for a while and then write down the content of some of those thoughts. Look at the things you stress about and worry about on a regular basis and reflect on them in an objective, disconnected manner – nonjudgmentally.

Some of these will be things that you are going to worrying about and stressing about and which are going to stop you from enjoying yourself in the moment. You’re going to practice dismissing them but to help, you’re also going to disassemble them using restructuring techniques. One example of this is called ‘thought challenging’ which is going to teach you to challenge the validity of your worries or your distractions.

For example, let’s say that you’re worried you didn’t send an email at work. Thought challenging is going to help you overcome this.

First, you ask yourself if there’s anything you can do about it. If not, then what is the good in worrying? In fact, it is more important that you relax and enjoy yourself so that you can be fresh and well to handle the challenges tomorrow. Next, you ask how much it really matters. What is the worst case scenario? Everyone makes mistakes and in all likelihood, your boss isn’t going to be furious – they’ll be understanding.

Does some small part of you think that you’re going to get fired? Then just remind yourself that this is incredibly hard for any business to do legally and it would be worse for them than it would be for you. And after all, if your workplace would fire you so readily, would you really want to be there anyway? Are you worried that people will be mad at you? You made a mistake! So what? And since when do you need to be best friends with your work colleagues?

This is the logical and reasonable reaction to this concern and once you can learn to deconstruct your worries this way, it will allow you to simply forget them and go back to enjoying whatever you’re doing – or remaining calm when you’re under pressure.

Use the Body Scan Meditation

Generally meditating is one of the most important ways to promote mindfulness, calm and self-control.
In his book Tools of Titans, Tim Ferriss looks at the habits and routines of the world’s most successful people. What he finds is that they have a lot of things in common and one of the most prevalent of these commonalities is that they all meditate!

Everyone from Arnold Schwarzenegger, to Tony Robbins, to Elon Musk describe meditation as being a key tool that helped them achieve everything they did. When you meditate, you learn a method to forget your worries and to simply let your mind ‘be’. More importantly though, you develop greater concentration and greater focus which prevents your mind from getting into an anxious mess to begin with!

So how do you begin meditation?

One useful strategy is to start with the body scan technique. To get started, sit somewhere comfortable with your legs crossed and your hands on your knees. Keep your back straight, your chin up and forward and your eyes closed – but make sure you aren’t in a position where you can fall asleep!
Now you’re going to simply ‘scan’ your body by focussing on each part one at a time and then making a note of how it feels and relaxing it. Before that though, you begin with your senses. Listen carefully to the world around you. You’ll find that there are sounds that you have completely blocked out until now and you’ll notice birds tweeting, cars honking, children playing and wind howling.

Feel the temperature of your skin, notice if you’re on a slight gradient and even look at the light as it dances through your eyelids.
Okay, now focus on the top of your head and start to take your attention downward to your cheeks, jaw and then neck and shoulders. Stop at each point and make a note of how it feels: are you carrying any tension? Are you feeling any pain? Release tension in the muscle and then keep moving.

Eventually, you’ll reach the very bottom of your body. At which point you can begin to concentrate on your breathing for a while. Breathing should be ‘belly breathing’, which begins with the gut expanding and then fills the lungs all the way up. Breathing steadily and rhythmically will slow the heart rate via the parasympathetic nervous system and put you in an even calmer state. Finally, bring your attention to just below the navel and hold it there.

This is your center of gravity and concentrating here will ground you.Throughout this process, you might notice your thoughts start to drift from time to time. If this happens, don’t let it concern you. It is normal and not the end of the world – just quietly dismiss those thoughts and then return to the focus.

Finally, repeat the steps in reverse order and bring yourself back around. That was a body scan meditation! This is a powerful tool because it is forcing you to direct your attention and to ignore the outside thoughts. More importantly, it is engaging you with your own body, physicality and surroundings. And when you do this, your sensations become richer and more vivid. Eventually, if you keep practicing this skill, you should get to the point where you can begin to become more mindful and more present at will – even while moving and engaging in other tasks.

That means just taking a moment to actually look at the world around you. Pausing to see what you can hear. And fixing your posture. It means not getting so caught up in your own thoughts that you let life pass you by, or that you live in a constant state of stress and anxiety. Once you can do this, then you will find that nothing can stir you in quiet the same way unless you want it to. You can always just enjoy being in the moment and forget the past and the future for a time.

You can enjoy living and taste the amazing taste of that chocolate biscuit while that email sits there in your outbox completely unsent.

This is the key to happiness: you can choose to react positively instead of negatively. You can choose to view things as a challenge or an amusing hiccup instead of a serious threat. But it is also the key to unlocking your full potential so you perform better and achieve more!

Written by Yola Bastos Co-Founder of Women Flix and Founder of Beautifly Digital https://msha.ke/yolabastos/ 

Women Flix Limited, is a company limited by guarantee, was incorporated in England and Wales (company no. 13047578 ).

Mind Power Mastery: Time to Change Your Mind

This is all very good and well, but how exactly do you go about changing your mindset? How do you take back control, reclaim your happiness and start living a fulfilling and inspiring life again? The thing to do is to diagnose the problem. What exactly is wrong with your mind, to begin with? And how can you fix those issues? Well, not to alarm you, but there’s probably a lot wrong with your mind.

Don’t worry though: it’s fairly common and it’s very much a sign of the times. I can guess that you aren’t completely happy with where you are right now. Maybe you don’t like who you are right now. I know this because you’re reading this article. If what you’re doing right now is working for you then great! But if it’s not, or if it could be working better, then something needs to change.

Here are some starting points that can help you see precisely what you might need to change.

1 Responsibility

The first problem that many of us have is that we don’t take responsibility for our actions and we don’t want to take responsibility for our actions. Now we all know people who don’t like taking responsibility – they will blame others and they will make excuses for what they’ve done. These are the people with the external locusts of control that we have already discussed.

But while this might seem like an irritating problem for people around them, the reality is that this is a much deeper issue that affects them more than it does anyone else. Because a complete refusal to accept responsibility means that you also reject your own autonomy and your control. If you believe that nothing is your fault, then you also really can’t take credit for anything that goes well.

Moreover, it means that you don’t have any power over your life and it means that you can’t choose to change things.

It’s not up to you, it’s up to chance!

It gets worse too. If you are too used to avoiding responsibility, then chances are that you will avoid taking responsibility for other things in your life too. That means you’ll avoid making commitments to people, which might make you feel ‘free’ but ultimately means you get left behind as those around you settle down into relationships and find fulfilling careers.

It means you’ll put yourself forward for fewer tasks in the workplace – at least those tasks that have any major consequences. And if you aren’t responsible for large amounts of money, then you can’t expect to get paid large amounts of money either.

Being afraid of responsibility will even make you less impressive, decisive and confident in a day-to-day scenario. When someone asks you to make a decision, you won’t want to because you won’t want to be responsible for what happens if you get it wrong.

And unfortunately, life has made it all too easy for us to learn this lack of responsibility. We are sheltered by so much technology and for the most part, life has become much easier. Our childhoods have also become extended to a massive degree and especially in the current generation of youths.

These days many of us will stay at school until we are 18 and will then attend college for 3, 4 or 6 years after that depending on the number of qualifications we obtain. Throw in a gap year and sometimes ‘finding our feet and many of us don’t begin our careers until we’re in our mid-to-late-twenties.

This was exacerbated by the economic crash of the last decade. Many people leaving college struggled to find work, which left them without workplace responsibilities and very often still living with their parents. Generations previous were likely married homeowners with children at this point.

And it’s hard to ditch this mentality. It’s hard to stop being a perpetual child. And while there are positive sides to this (it’s good for creativity, for dreaming and for enjoyment in the moment), ultimately life will catch up and we won’t be prepared. We are too soft mentally to cope with the challenges that will come our way. We’ve lost the ability to be decisive, strong, action-takers.

What can you do to fix it? We’ll explore this in more depth in some of the other reports but the key to acknowledge is that you must learn to accept the possibility of a less-than-perfect outcome. Accept that there will be times when things go wrong and it’s your fault.  And when that does happen, be willing to put your hand up and admit it. That’s what it means to be an adult. And that’s what will give you the strength to start taking more chances and making more bold decisions.

#2 We Care Too Much What Others Think

Ultimately, number one comes down to doing away with fear. This is another topic we’re going to address more over the coming reports but for now let’s hone in on one very specific example of fear, one very specific cause. That is that we care too much about what others think.

This is something that occupies a lot of our thoughts for many of us and something that can actually be quite tiring. Many of us will simply not do something if we think it is going to make us look unusual. If we think it will elicit stares.

Not only that but caring too much about what others think is what makes it so hard for us to take responsibility for things: we don’t want to seem to be weak or to lose the trust or respect of other people. Do you know what the biggest irony of this is? It is the refusal to take action and take responsibility that actually makes people lose respect. This is what makes us appear weaker.

Many of us also struggle to go after the things that we want in life because we are too busy worrying about pleasing others. We’re so busy saying yes to invitations that we don’t really want to go to and spending money on things that we think we should own, that we don’t have the resources left to spend on things that really matter to us. And this of course greatly limits what we are capable of and the quality of our lives.

Now I’m not telling you to forget other people entirely and to become an ass. That’s certainly not going to improve your life!

But learn the subtle difference:

• Care if other people are happy


• Don’t care what other people think of you

This is the most heroic mindset because it means you’ll do kind things for people without even telling anyone and even be willing to make yourself look foolish. But at the same time, you’ll be much happier because you won’t be living up to the expectations that you believe other people to have.

You’ll be able to take more responsibility for yourself and you’ll have one less huge thing causing you stress.
So how do you make the switch? It is easier said than done of course but the key to getting started is to stop holding yourself to the standards of others and to start holding yourself only to your own standards. Judge yourself on your own terms and by your own code of conduct.

3 We Are Impulsive and Reactive

Perhaps the biggest symptom of modern life is just how badly impulsive and reactive we have become. And this really is something that has been exacerbated by modern technologies and convenience. Did you know that our attention span has measurably deteriorated over recent decades?

The reigning view is that this is caused by time spent on the internet. When we read a blog post we can skip across the headlines and the bullet points and then stop reading. Often we’ll get our information from YouTube or Twitter – which is limited to only 140 characters! When we find the piece of information we want, we can close the tab and search for the next thing.

It will be there in seconds! We’ve become very good at quickly skimming and assimilating information but we’ve trained ourselves out of sustaining our attention and concentrating. And this is then made a lot worse by all the other things vying for our attention and all the other immediate gratification we get. We have all the food, all the entertainment, all the gratification we could possibly need right at our fingertips.

Much of it is free. And much of it can be served up in seconds depending on your internet speed. Adverts are designed with bright colours and attractive faces to grab our attention. There is noise everywhere. And thus we have become incredibly reactive. Every one of these distractions that leads to rewarding will trigger a dopaminergic response. Eating a sweet, loading up PornHub, playing a computer game, watching a YouTube video.

This reinforces the same pathways in the brain that are present in addicts. And it completely undermines our ability to control our attention and to decide what we want to look at. How we want to behave. So, when we sit down to work towards a massive deadline, it should come as no surprise that the first thing we do is check Facebook. And make tea. And grab a snack.

How do you get out of this rut? There are a few ways and again, we’re going to delve deeply into all of this. But one of the simplest fixes is to try meditation. Meditation teaches us to take conscious control of our mind, to be more at the moment and to avoid distractions. This can help us to become incredibly more disciplined and focused and can certainly do away with a lot of procrastination and impulsivity.

4 We Are Lazy and Tired

The other big problem that prevents us from achieving what we want and that causes a whole lot of unhappiness is laziness. Most of us know what we should be doing but we lack the effort to do it. When given a choice, we will take the easier route. In the short term, this is great. It means you get to spend the evening on the couch with a bag of chips watching your favourite trashy TV.

But in the long term, it means you lack the stimulus for growth. And guess what? Growth is perhaps the most important thing we need to be happy. Because you are never still and stable. If you are not going forward, you are going backwards. If you are not growing, you are regressing. If you don’t exercise then your muscles atrophy. But likewise, if you don’t use your brain and if you don’t challenge your mind, then your brain physically shrinks.

Worse, you unlearn how to apply effort. But part of this is not laziness. Part of this is stress and tiredness. Because the problem is that we typically lead such busy, stressful and fast-paced lives that we simply have no energy left at the end of the day to do anything about it. Is it any surprise? Most of us commute to work for 30-90 minutes on a train or bus or sit in traffic in the car.

We then fight our way through a busy street into the office where we sit in a cramped, stuffy room and get shouted at by clients and unhappy customers. We work to urgent deadlines and end up staying late, then we make the precise same commute back home. You can add malnutrition on top of this for many of us. Halogen lights too. Loud noises. Air pollution.

All these things upset the body and cause physiological stress. These put us further into the fight or flight state and the body simply can’t tell the difference. This exhausts us. And that’s what makes us choose the fast food in the cupboard and it’s what makes us skip the workout. It’s also what causes us to argue with our partners and not have time for our kids. And it’s not even time that’s the issue here so much as energy.

Your psychological energy is a finite resource. So, the first thing you need to do is to start buying yourself more energy. That might mean looking into easier ways into work, or it might mean swapping to an easier job. It means finding space in your life so that you can stop reacting and being in fight or flight. You can start to become proactive and make your way onto your inspired path.

Written by Yola Bastos Co-Founder Women Flix yolabastos@womenflix.org https://linktr.ee/yolatvbastos Women Flix, Supporting Women all the way to Success! Women Flix Limited, a company limited by guarantee, was incorporated in England and Wales (company no. 13047578 ).

Mindset and Emotions – How to Control Your State of Mind

If you could genuinely master your emotions take complete control over the way you felt at any given time – then that would be the ultimate technique. I’m serious. If you could do this, then you would become unstoppable in a fight. You would become relentless in the gym. And you would be able to apply yourself to a task in a way that would previously have been impossible.

I imagine that you’re probably rolling your eyes at this point. You probably think I’ve been reading too many hippy blogs. Maybe reading a little too much fluffy self-help. But I’m serious. Most people seriously underestimate the power and influence of their emotions. So, allow me to elucidate you and then demonstrate how you can get your state of mind back under control. At least to some degree.

Unlimited Strength, Perfect Focus, Incredible

Creativity and Social Skills

That’s quite a bold heading right there and you might already be shaking your head in disbelief. But hear me out.

Emotions and Strength

Want strength? Some of the most feared fighters in history were known as the Berserkers. These Norse warriors were so-called because of their ‘berserker rage’ – a mad fit of anger that they would fly into on the battlefield. In this heightened and agitated state, they would become almost invulnerable and would also be able to accomplish feats of incredible strength.

There have been more recent accounts of something similar too. Hysterical strength is a term used to describe more recent scenarios where individuals have seemingly been able to dig into an immense reserve of strength at will. This is where the stories of mothers lifting cars off of their children trapped beneath come in. Likewise, there is a story of a rock climber who managed to bench press themselves free of a huge boulder likely 200KG or more.

Think it’s just a myth? Turns out there is a solid scientific explanation for how this might be possible. Under extreme stress, it seems likely that the body produces excess amounts of testosterone, adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones increase the heart rate, focus, awareness and muscle tone and that is where the extra strength comes from.

Actually, it goes a little deeper than that even. You see, all of us have limits to our strength imposed by our minds and our biology. When you go to lift a weight, you do so by recruiting muscle fibre little bands that make up the muscle and contract in order to give us our strength. The most muscle fibre that the average person can recruit at once under normal circumstances is around 30%.

The most that a highly trained athlete can recruit is closer to 50%. So, a highly trained athlete is only capable of tapping into roughly half of their maximum strength. This is what we mean when we refer to a ‘mind-muscle connection’. Ever seen someone get electrocuted in a movie (think Jurassic Park)? As you know, the idea is that the individual will get flung across the room into the far wall.

What throws them? Their own muscle. The electricity causes all the muscles to contract at once, which creates such a jolt that the person goes absolutely flying. Imagine if you could harness that power and use it to leap up onto a roof!
The reason we can’t access so much of our strength is a) that it would likely cause us injury as we would break a muscle, pull a ligament etc. and b) that it would fatigue us.

If we were to use that much of our muscle power in a single movement, we’d have no energy left for anything else!
But under the right circumstances, being able to dip into these huge reserves of strength is incredibly useful. And adrenaline and other hormones under the right conditions allow us to tap into that power.

Studies show that yelling in the gym can actually increase adrenaline and thereby enhance muscle fibre recruitment, resulting in strength improvements! Now imagine if you could tap into even just 80% of that power at will? Simply by harnessing your emotions?

Emotions for Calm, Collected Focus

But there’s only so far that being able to leap tall buildings and punch through walls will get you. In the real world, physical strength isn’t really what matters. This then is where the ‘flow state’ comes in. A flow state is often described as a state of calm, focus, bliss. It is what happens when the world seems to slow down because you are so intently focused and engaged in what you are doing.

Have you ever opened a cupboard and seen everything fall out but move in super-fast motion to catch it? That’s a flow state. More often we hear about it in extreme sports – athletes finding their flow and being able to pull off incredible stunts at incredible speeds. Outside of physical activities, it is seen in music. When the entire band synchronizes during a jam, this is a type of flow state.

When you have a conversation with someone that lasts all night, that’s a flow state. When you’re writing a book and you write so long that you don’t even notice the time passing that is a flow state. Studies show us that executives in flow management are hugely more productive than those that aren’t. The same goes for startups.

So, what is flow? Essentially, it’s another emotion. Another mental state is triggered by the release of hormones and neurotransmitters. In this case, it is a subtle variation on the fight or flight response, a subtle variation on stress and panic. Here, you believe something is just as important as preventing yourself from getting injured, it is just as compelling as fighting for your life but it is also fun rather than scary.

You have the entire attention of your body and mind which brings about a release of excitatory hormones along with calming ones and those related to bliss such as anandamide. This actually suppresses activity in the prefrontal cortex, triggering a state known as ‘temporary hypofrontality’. This prevents us from worrying, from second-guessing or from over-thinking.

We just do. It’s the opposite of how most of us live our lives today and that’s why many of us are filled with anxiety, frozen with fear. Imagine being able to talk up to a woman/man in a bar and deliver your wittiest conversation ever. Imagine being able to talk in front of an audience with passion and conviction and enrapture them completely in what you’re saying. Imagine being able to work on the projects that matter to you for hours on end without even looking up.

No fear. No doubt. No bursts of anger or unwanted emotion. And this is when our best work is done. This is when we are happiest. Many people try and live their lives in flow as much as possible. The problem is that most of us are full of anxiety and busy with chores and things we need to do.

These limitations leave us stressed, anxious and busy and they take our minds out of the moment. Our entire body and mind cannot possibly be in-sync when we are worrying about debt, or what our boss said at the office. Entering flow means being in the moment which not only makes you happy and confident it makes you unstoppable.

Creativity

Changing your emotions can even make you more creative. The opposite of a flow state is something called the default mode network. This is a network of brain regions that spring into action when you are engaged in boring repetitious work or when you are just relaxing. This is what happens when you allow yourself to become completely at ease and let your mind wander.

Now many people give this mental state a hard time. They say that this is when your ‘inner Woody Allen’ chirps up. This is the opposite of ‘living in the moment. But in fact, this is also when your creativity kicks in. This is the state that Einstein was in when he came up with his special theory of relativity (while working in a patent office!).
This is daydreaming and that is when we come up with plans, ideas and more.

No emotion is a bad thing. The answer is just being able to tap into the right emotion at the right time. It’s about emotional control.

Social Skills
And finally, the obvious power of emotion: social skill. If you want to seem confident, then you need to stop worrying about what others think. If you want to be a leader, then you need to be able to take command, not second guess yourself and not get upset and visibly riled when things go wrong. If you want to engage others and make friends and partners, you need to be charismatic, engaging and entertaining.

All these things are based once again on having control over your emotions. But the thing is: most of us don’t have any control. Most of us sulk when we don’t have a good day and put ourselves in even more of a funk. Most of us are scared when things are wrong. When we’re stressed, we argue with our partners and avoid important work in the office. We sabotage ourselves, undermine ourselves and struggle to get things done all because we can’t control our emotions.

Taking Control

So how do you take back control over your emotions? There are multiple ways, but let’s address two important points: physiology and mindset. Physiology refers to the fact that your emotions are really an extension of how you feel. Emotions describe things like happiness, sadness, anger, fear. We think that these emotions are born from our minds but a lot of the time, that’s not the case at all.

Rather, emotions come from our bodies. Emotions come from feelings that include things like hunger, tiredness, hot, cold. The very function of your emotions is to trigger behaviours that will help you to fix the way you feel. When you haven’t eaten enough lately, your blood sugar dips. This in turn triggers a release of cortisol – the stress hormone. This tells you that something needs to change and wakes you up and in the wild, this would have encouraged you to look for food.

When you eat, your blood sugar spikes, you produce leptin and serotonin. This makes you happy and content and encourages you to sleep eventually serotonin converts to melatonin the sleep hormone. So, in other words, the way you feel is often the result of your physiology and that changes the way you think. Do you think you’re angry because you had a bad day? Possibly. More likely, you had a bad day because you’re angry.

And you’re angry because:

• You didn’t sleep


• You’re in mild pain


• You haven’t eaten enough


• You’ve eaten the wrong things

Do you get the gist? So, one way to change your emotions and to take back control is to acknowledge this. Firstly, recognize that if you’re angry, it’s probably due to physiological reasons and it will pass. At least it won’t seem so bad later.

Secondly, seek to change this. Eat something. Sleep. Take the cue. Learn to follow your own rhythms and work when you’re naturally most productive. Follow the rhythms of the day and get your circadian cycles in check.
And at the same time, look at ways you can directly control your physiology. The very best way? Breathing!

If you learn to breathe correctly (using belly breathing to fill the lower portion of the lungs, then the upper portion) and if you use slow, controlled breaths, then you will be able to lower your heart rate and calm your entire body. This will change your parasympathetic tone, taking you out of ‘fight or flight’ and into ‘rest and digest.

Try it the next time you feel overly stressed, overly competitive or worked up after an intense workout – your heart rate will slow and your mind will grow calmer. The other tool you can use is something called CBT. Now we’re looking at the psychological, self-talk aspect. CBT stands for ‘Cognitive Behavioral Therapy’ and this is a popular form of psychotherapeutic intervention used to treat phobias and other anxiety disorders.

The idea is to look at the content of your thoughts. The self-talk that you give yourself to work yourself into a panic, or to calm yourself down. If you are thinking things like “I’m worried I might fall off that ledge” then of course you are going to be scared. If you think things like “I’m grateful for my wife” then you will be less likely to feel unhappy with where you are in life.

It goes deeper than that of course. You can use CBT to challenge long-held beliefs and to break negative self-talk habits by challenging your thoughts and testing your hypotheses. This is called ‘cognitive restructuring’.
In the short term, you can use CBT techniques in order to more honestly assess your state of mind and your emotions and to then change the way you feel about a situation.

So if you were stressed that you had a deadline you couldn’t meet and it was ruining your evening, then you might use cognitive restructuring in order to assess the thoughts making you stressed and replace them with more productive ones.

For example, you might consider:

• What is the point of being stressed? Will it make matters better?


• What’s the worst-case scenario? Would it really be that bad to tell the boss you can’t finish work on time? Are they expecting too much of you anyway?


• When was the last time you did this?


• Are there other ways you could lessen the blow?


• What would you rather pay attention to right now?

Combine this with controlled breathing and bring your focus to the thing that is most useful to you right now. In the long term, you can use CBT in order to bridge the gap between your thoughts and your physiology. You see, your physiology and your emotions are designed to drive you toward desirable states: sex, food, shelter, love, success, social acceptance.

The problem is that the tasks you need to accomplish often don’t get you those things in the short term. In the long term, entering data into that spreadsheet helps you keep your job which helps you pay for food and keep your family!
But in the short term, it just means more boring paperwork.

So now you need to remind yourself why you do what you do. And you’ll do this not only with words but with visualization. Picture where you want to be. Picture the wealth you want to have, the success, the satisfaction. Then remind yourself that the things you do today are actually driving you toward the things you want. This is when your heart and mind will finally be on the same page. And that’s when anything becomes possible.

Written by Yola Bastos Co-Founder Women Flix yolabastos@womenflix.org https://linktr.ee/yolatvbastos Women Flix, Supporting Women all the way to Success! Women Flix Limited, a company limited by guarantee, was incorporated in England and Wales (company no. 13047578 ).