Episode #5. Wired to be Stressed.
Episode description
The other day I was in a women’s change room after a swim. I overheard two people going over their problems, each reinforcing the other, talking about how they hated their jobs, how forgetful they were becoming, medical problems, going out less etc. The phrase that kept popping up: “Well this is the natural progression of things”. I wanted to scream from the rooftop: “STOP, NO. NO. NO!” Stop shaping your brain’s plasticity with this absolute nonsense. Of course there is nothing wrong with sharing problems and it is important to be heard- but- when it is the only conversation and it slowly escalates into a competition, know that our collective brain health is degrading. Why! The brain learns from negative and stressful things at a 5x rate to positive things. Yes. It has been designed that way to keep us safe from predators that no longer exist in the modern world. We are born stressed out. These internal and external conversations and interactions slowly erode our collective brain health and happiness. We have already inherited a lot of sh** from the past-which is why our attention is fixed on negatives ☺
What we focus on and how we view situations is actively rewiring the brain and body on a daily basis. Because the brain loves the comfort zone and takes in negative information at a faster rate than positive information. It takes a lot of conscious resistance to build new healthy and resilient neural pathways. This is why it feels so hard and why change is difficult. If it were simple to overcome millions of years of brain's survival wiring then suffering and self-help would not be a growing and massive industry. We would all be swimming in the Bahamas.
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