The Neuroscience of Fear and 5 Helpful Tips
This blog is not about influencing how you feel about the coronavirus. It’s not about giving you any facts, numbers, percentages or travel advice. And it’s not about comparing your chances of getting the virus to getting another flu, SARS, or any other disease for that matter. All I want to do is help you feel more relaxed so that you can gain perspective and approach the news with a clear head. Because the news is sensational! It’s about grabbing your attention. And what all reporters know is that nothing grabs our attention as quickly as fear.
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Can Noticing The Sensations In Your Body Reduce Stress and Anxiety?
Did you know that one of the best ways to lower anxiety is to practice interoception; the skill of paying attention to the sensations in your body? This simple practice of shifting your awareness from your mind to your body can calm your nervous system and reduce ruminating thoughts and anxiety. It also strengthens a part of your brain called the insula which is the center of the mind/body/brain connection.
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Do I Practice What I Preach? The answer is...
Besides teaching Your Brain on Mindfulness, I’m doing a video challenge this month. Every day I receive a prompt that I have to answer in a short spontaneous video and send off to my group. Today’s was, what's your guilty pleasure?
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What's Better Than New Year’s Resolutions?
I love to reflect - to look back on where I’ve been and ask myself where I want to go. And the new year or even the new decade is one of those natural transitions when many of us pause and set goals and intentions. But new year’s resolutions can go terribly wrong! There’s just no way we can do “all the things” at once. So this year, instead of making your list, consider choosing a quality instead.
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A Thanksgiving “Anchor Memory”
At the end of the meal, what I was left with was a kind of contentment or happiness that you can't get from food (not even from the absolute best pumpkin pie I've ever tasted in my life). It was the feeling that is born of gratitude. Because it's gratitude that makes us happy - not the other way around.
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Keeping Stress In Check
On Monday mornings, I take a look at my schedule, goals, intentions and to-dos for the week. There are some weeks when I do this and I honestly feel crushed by it. And there are other days when my week looks exactly the same, and I feel great and excited about the challenges in front of me. Why is that? Why do I have such different responses to the same situation?
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Schedule Your Bliss
I am starting this letter with a huge, deep breath because it is October and what that means for me is that I finally get to move into a solid and lasting routine. That might sound boring to you but right now it’s pretty much the most exciting thing in my life.
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Here's to Wilderness and See You Next Year Utah!
I am lying on a bed of soft pebbles on the northern point of Red Pine Lake surrounded by two 10 year olds and two 13 year olds deep in a spontaneous “choose your own adventure” game led by my favorite 13 year old boy on the planet. We are one day into a camping trip that I’ve been anticipating for months.
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