Unstoppable Body and Mind

Episode # 29- You Are Not Your Thoughts

In this episode I talk about what we make our thoughts mean about ourselves- especially our negative ones.  But as humans are brains are programmed to be negative.  If we don't expect that or allow for that, it is easy to feel frustrated with ourselves or feel like we are doing it wrong.  But just like life is 50-50, we will have good thoughts and bad thoughts.  And that's OK.  

I talk about becoming an observer of your brain, a watcher of your thoughts.  This is just as important for thought work as it is for healing chronic pain. 

So listen, and learn ways to be more gentle with yourself and your brain.  You are NOT your thoughts.

 

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Transcript:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind. Episode Six- How to Get the Results You Want. 

 

In this podcast we learned to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.  Become unstoppable, body and mind.

 

Hello, today we are going to talk more about the model. So if you want to review the model, listen to Episode Five. 

 

But basically, it's a way to break down any situation into the circumstance, thought, feeling, action and result. 

 

Now really looking at our problems in the model allows us to see what the circumstance is.  Which is basically something objective that a court of law would find.  

 

We learn how much is coming from our thoughts, and how our thoughts create our feelings.  

 

Feelings cause our actions, usually not showing up the way you'd want to. 

 

And the result is what your actions cause. Our results always prove our thoughts true. That's just the way our brain works. 

 

If you find that you're trying to do a model, and the result is not proving your thoughts true, it's probably because you have mixed models, which is very easy to do when you're first starting to do models. 

 

Remember, you have 60 to 70,000 thoughts a day. So it's very easy to get sidetracked on a different model. 

 

So now that you can understand your problem and the role you play, and where you have the power to change, how do you solve the problem?

 

It's tricky.

 

In life, we want an easy answer. So I warn you this does sound deceptively easy, but be patient with yourself in the application. Remember, the brain is programmed to be efficient. And there are lots of strong neural pathways that are activated with these thoughts that you've been thinking for decades possibly. And the cells even are used to getting certain neuro chemicals. 

 

Joe Dispenza explains this is how we can get addicted to certain emotions like anger, or judgment or shame. To make a change in our brain requires energy. Most of our models are based in the past our brain is very efficient and sometimes has even formed these models when we were children, trying to make sense of the world. 

 

But remember, that past is gone now. The only thing that is left from the past is the stories that we retell in our brain. And you know what happens to stories that get retold over and over and slightly morph over time. 

 

I watched a program on Netflix called Memory Explained. They said that 50% of the details about a memory change with each passing year, yet people are still convinced they're 100% right. 

 

Thank you brains. 

 

But we all do this. So if you've been telling a story from your past, over and over again for years or possibly decades, chances are that it's kind of a super glossed over photoshopped, almost social media worthy story.  

 

Sometimes we call it story fondling, which is just what our brains do to make sense of what happened and how it fits into our context. We might mold the story so that we are put in the best light, almost like using a filter to reflect what we believe and want to portray back into the world.

 

Maybe thinking this way we can continue to be a victim or blame someone else. In fact, one good way to know if we're living in the past is that we have a lot of stories of victimhood. When we blame someone for making us feel or do something, we have a model that is based in the past. 

 

If you also are having an emotion in your model that is guilt or shame, that is a model from the past. 

 

Another example that I like to use in every situation is the model with pain. Pain would be a model that's based in the past. Joe Dispenza says we wake up and remember our pains each day. So it kind of makes sense that the brain's programming is just reliving the story of the pain and this kind of background program that it runs efficiently over and over and over. 

 

In fact, research has shown that brains become more hypersensitive to pain and have a lower threshold of what's needed to register pain when pain becomes more chronic. 

 

What if we could Question each model from the past that has been causing us pain?  If it's from very long ago, the thing that we may be calling a circumstance may not even be 100% true, or really what happened in reality? 

 

If you're noticing that something from the past is causing you pain, can you accept the thought that things happened just as they were supposed to? Remember, Byron Katie's observation, that the only times we have pain is when our thoughts are in contrast to what happened in reality. 

 

If we could tease out each model, like a knotted up ball of string that we untangle one string at a time, and the more conscious we become, the more we can begin to choose and shape our future. 

 

Speaking of the future, you've probably already guessed now that the way to solve any problem using the model is by putting what you want in the result line? 

 

Really, you could put it in any line of the model because it's like a building with floors. And the model is like an elevator you can take up or down. 

 

But let's start with the result line, because that's the best way to show how you can get what you want with the model. So imagine what you want in the result line. Do you want more money? Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to start a business? Do you want to learn to play an instrument? Do you want to find love? Do you want to play tennis again? 

 

You can literally put anything you want in the result line.  Do you want to make a million dollars? Put it into a model.  

 

What actions would you need to take to make a million dollars?  Working back from the actions, what feelings would you need to have to generate those actions? And what thoughts would you need to think to feel those feelings? 

 

Let's get more specific with a model about pain. 

 

So the result that I may want is to sleep through the night.  Then I think, what are the actions I might need to take in order to sleep through the night?   I would probably start by journaling, just letting my mind go into a receptive mode and writing down whatever I might think of. 

 

One way I might start is to ask my body what it would need to do to sleep through the night without pain, then just grab some paper and start writing without a filter without thinking.  Just fill up pages. 

 

Maybe I might decide to drink some herbal tea, or not to drink liquid past a certain time. Maybe I might think to listen to some soothing music, or try a meditation app. I could try some yoga nidra which is sleeping yoga, which is restorative and has comfortable positions. Or I could think of taking a bath. Maybe I might try reading a book like Divided Mind by John Sarno, that looks at pain in a way different to what I'm used to. That is how I can help my brain rewire. 

 

If you want to have some fun you could look up the books by Louise Hay or her explanations online for why a certain pain or ailment in your body is manifesting in you. Like sciatica, she says is related to being hypocritical, fear of money or fear of the future. And neck pain is because of inflexibility or unbending or stubbornness. 

 

So those might be thoughts of things you can journal about. Maybe they relate to you and you can apply it maybe not.  But just a springboard of ways to get you thinking a little bit differently.

 

Maybe I could look into joining a pain coaching group which is something I do plan on starting. So we'll look forward to that in the future. There are apps like Curable that can teach you modern neuroscience, and how the newest research is suggesting a whole new way of looking at and treating pain. 

 

Gaining information is the first step and helping your brain rewire. You cannot continue to think the same way and create change. Here is an example of some information that might cause you to question your thinking about how you've been taught to view pain. 

 

MRIs are traditionally used to determine if there might be a cause for the pain or a physical need for surgery. But research has been showing that MRIs really should just be used for red flags for things like cancer or infection or tumors because they're not reliable and showing a structural cause of pain. 

 

A study I learned about from 2015 performed MRIs on people who did and didn't have back pain.  47% of the people who reported back pain had no abnormalities on their MRI findings. They had no signs of disc degeneration. 32% of the patients who had no lower back pain did show abnormal MRI results. They had clear signs of disc degeneration but had no

back pain.

 

They were tracked over the next year and 13 of the patients who had no back pain initially started experiencing back pain. But when they did another MRI, they did not see any physical changes that could show why or explain this onset of pain. 

 

Dr. Tim Flynn who hosts the International Spine and Pain Institute's podcast says that changes on imaging are just common with age.  We get “wrinkles on the inside”. These are normal age related changes, but we give them nasty names like “degeneration”, and “torn”, and “herniated”.  

 

For the majority of people and chronic pain, these structural abnormalities are unrelated to the pain they are experiencing. The action of learning more information could help with rewiring the way you conceive of your pain. 

 

And remember, this is not just for pain. This is for other body maladies like skin disorders, gi issues, allergies, or even asthma.

 

So back to our model, what other actions could I take to help sleep through the night?  I could brainstorm and list maybe pages of things that I might be able to do just in my imagination to help me sleep at night. 

 

Now, how would I need to feel to take those actions?  I would say I would need to feel trusting. I really like that emotion. For me, it really embodies hope and belief, empowerment, and letting go. 

 

You could look on an emotion chart to see what emotion you like the best. Try to feel it in your body.

 

What would I need to be thinking to feel trusting?

 

I like the thought, “I'm rewiring my brain and taking control of my health.” 

 

The thought is really important though, it has to feel true to you. If you don't believe that you can rewire your brain, this will not generate the feeling of trust for you. 

 

So just pretend and get creative here. Future models can be fun. We often don't even plan our futures with a purpose like this. Also, most of us start to think we are at the effects of our circumstances, or the all we're capable of doing is things that we've already done in the past. 

 

But what if you had a magic wand and you could pick out a result? Most of us don't spend any time thinking about the results we want. Once we're adults, no one is asking us what we want to do and where we want to go. We just settle into our routines. And we don't think about our plan, what we want to do or where we want to be in five years. 

 

We worry about the future. We want maybe something to be different in the future, so we can feel differently than we do now. But I think we should spend more time thinking about the results we want to have in our lives, and what we would need to do to achieve those results on purpose. 

 

In Becoming Supernatural, Dr. Joe Dispenza describes his walking meditation.  Where you totally embody how the person you want to be would talk or walk or even think by choosing, imagining, and visualizing details of the life you want to have, and the way you want to feel. This is the way you can achieve that reality. 

 

Just like a method actor, you could play the part of a wealthy person or the calm person, or the unlimited person you want to be. 

 

Your beliefs about yourself are all of your thoughts about yourself. So try to think of yourself more in these ways you want to become, or imagine how it would feel. Don't forget to pick an emotion that really moves or motivates you. Changing our brain takes energy. So the fastest way to create change and rewire our brain is to add the power of an emotion. By choosing with intent and purpose. Your mind can control your body rather than your body, controlling your mind.

 

So I want to share with you three different brain hack strategies that I found. 

 

One is by BJ Fogg. I learned about him from the Untangle Podcast by Muse. BJ Fogg wrote a book called Tiny Habits, which I'm reading right now. It's awesome. It's based on 20 years of behavior research. And he created a behavior model, which explains our behaviors, in terms of a few different factors so that we can not blame our behaviors and inability to change them on us having character flaws or problems with our self discipline.  But we can look at it more objectively about what all is going on. 

 

So what I want to tell you about from him, though, is kind of a brain hack to forming new habits. He says the best way to create a new habit is to break it down into the tiniest possible steps, like the tiniest step, like flossing, one tooth Or just putting on your walking shoes. But creating this habit that you do consistently and making it part of your routine, or a prompt that you're consistent with. 

 

So for example, if you're flossing your teeth, when you put your toothbrush down, you start by just flossing one tooth. And then the most important part is that you celebrate doing this first baby step. I found this part of it so interesting. 

 

So in a few days, you can start flossing all of your teeth but you start by just building the habit, putting your toothbrush down, flossing, one tooth, and then in a few days, if you want to start flossing all of your teeth you can, but if you go back to just flossing the one tooth, you still celebrate that when you start seeing success that you have with these tiny habits. Then the motivation that you have to change really snowballs. It's kind of like a life hack to get your brain breaking out of the models from the past and starting to see yourself as a more confident, dynamic person that can change. 

 

Then you start to naturally want to change and take on new challenges without needing to rely on willpower, or resistance or force. 

 

The other thing I found interesting is that if you want to decrease a bad habit, like stop eating sugar, you don't even focus directly on stopping the bad habit initially. He starts by having you build positive, tiny habits. So maybe you would build some habits around starting an exercise routine, or making your bed something where you can be successful and build that power. 

 

I love this.  I really think of David Hawkins and the vibrations of the emotions and how much more powerful you'll be if you're coming from a place of courage, or even neutrality than  if you're starting from a place of disgust or being critical of yourself.  Most of the time we start our habits in a place where we're not liking where we are kind of disgusted with ourselves and already negative. 

 

I love how in BJ Fogg’s model, the power of change is coming from success and positivity. So remember to start tiny, and celebrate the little changes. 

 

Life Hack number two. I also found from the Untangle Podcast, they interviewed the author MJ Ryan, who wrote a book called Habit Changers. It's not on Audible yet, and I've ordered it and I haven't gotten it yet. So I might be sharing more from this brilliant author. It sounds like an amazing book. But at least from her interview, I was able to understand a few of her main ideas, and I think they're valuable and habit change. 

 

She talks about how up to 90% of our behaviors throughout the day are automatic So our brain wants to be very efficient. It learns things like how to pour a glass of water or how to drive or how to believe certain things. And those behaviors are housed in the basal ganglia where habits live, and they just run and they're hardwired and they are hard to change.

 

So you really need to bring a lot of intention to changing a bad habit or forming a new habit. She says you end up doing the same old thing, not because you're weak, but because you're on automatic pilot. 

 

She has 81 game changing mantras in her book, which are mantras that help override the autonomic nervous system. So they're not mantras like I am calm, I am calm, where you might not feel calm, necessarily, when you say them.  She combines the statements with a few other key things. You have to have a “strong why” .  You have to pick one thing that you want to work on changing.  Pick one thing that you have the most motivation to change first, and to have a “strong why” you have to have a reminder of what you want to do. 

 

You might put it on a card that you hold in your wallet, or have a bracelet or something that reminds you of this phrase that you want to say. Now the phrase or a mantra should be directive. It should tell you what to do not I am calm, I'm calm, but something that's directive, like, “reach for a better thought.”

 

Now, this I thought was super interesting.  She talks about pairing your mantra with an action.

She references Amy Cuddy, a researcher who found the Wonder Woman pose or standing in a powerful position with your hands on your hips and your feet out wide. If people would stand like that for two minutes, it would significantly increase their testosterone, it would decrease their cortisol They would have more risk taking behaviors.

 

And in other studies, they found that similar positions, increase the pain threshold caused you to think more abstractly, and have helped people perform better in interviews when they're seated in a power position. 

 

I think that's so cool because I've been a physical therapist for 16 years working with pediatrics. So I know that the way that children learn first is through their motor actions. So think of maybe clapping or pointing you might see a child do something like that before they would actually say the word or speak. In fact, a lot of kids learn to do finger plays or things like patty cake before they would say the words. So learning a motor action like a sign for sign language usually ends up that that is one of the first words that that child also says the one they've learned the physical sign for.  So she suggests if you're working on patience or being more calm, you might want to touch your heart.

 

So this way, you're pairing a visual, if you have the reminder on a card, and audio hearing yourself, say the mantra, and a physical gesture, and that is much more powerful for change.

 

One of the mantras that I thought of when I was listening to the one she gave as an example, is “become curious, not critical.” 

 

I would like to do that with my hand on my heart. I think that's the place where I feel the vibration of gratitude. And she also says that when you touch one or both hands to your heart, you increase the production of oxytocin, which is the feel good or the love hormone. 

 

Here are a few other mantras that she suggests. “My response is my responsibility.” “Stop, breathe, rewind”. “You're on your own path.”

 

This one is one of my favorite favorites. “People do what people always do.” Isn't that great? It just relinquishes you from any power of trying to control anyone or judge anyone. You're letting people do what they do. And you're not surprised when people might disappoint you or not follow through, because that's part of what people do, right? 

 

I think of this with kids, kids do what kids always do. And that might mean sometimes siblings are fighting or sometimes kids are drawing on the walls, or sometimes they're disrespecting you, (according to you.) And that's what kids do. 

 

I think of this also, with our brains with all that we talk about. “Brains do what brains always do” when you catch yourself obsessing or worrying or going back to the past. You can just think up there's my brain. Again, it's working brains do what brains always do. 

 

The last Life Hack is from Brooke Castillo from The Life Coach School. This is called the urge jar. I love this idea. It's so simple and brilliant.  If you're working on changing a habit,

then anytime you have an urge that you don't give into, you put a bead in the urge jar. 

 

So usually when we have an urge, we just try to resist it. And that's kind of like pushing that beach ball underwater. You can only do that for so long and have so much willpower. But with the urge jar, it's like a little hack for your brain, where you still get a reward, even though you haven't given into the urge. It's really fascinating how your brain likes this reward system. I really liked the urge jar and encourage you to try it. 

 

So I challenge you to think of a result you want in your life. Try doing a model work backwards from the result line. Don't worry about how you're going to get it exactly. You can brainstorm at this point. 

 

But if you could pick anything for yourself in the future, what would that result be? What actions would you need to take? What feelings would you need to feel? And what thoughts would you need to think? 

 

If you can get to the place where you can think and believe a thought on purpose, it won't even matter what the circumstances of your life are.

 

Thank you so much for listening.  I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review. And of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know that wants an unstoppable body and mind.

 

Episode # 28- The Cause of your Suffering

In this episode I talk about the cause of your suffering and how to eliminate it!  The concept is straightforward, and it comes from this formula: pain x resistance = suffering.  

Pain is part of life, but suffering is optional.  And suffering is amplified by the amount of resistance we have.  

Listen for examples of resistance and how to decrease your resistance by acceptance.

 

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Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com

 

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Transcript-Automatically Generated:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, episode 28, The Cause of Your Suffering. In this podcast, we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.
Become Unstoppable Body and Mind.
Hello, my friends. Today, we are going to talk about the cause of your suffering and how to eliminate your suffering. Now, if you're thinking, you don't know me, you don't know what the cause of my suffering is.
And it's true, I may not know the specific examples in your case unless you work with me as your coach. And then we can go through this specifically for you. But in general, I can tell you what causes suffering and how to stop it.
I think I talked about this equation in the episode about clean pain versus dirty pain. But in Buddhism, they have an equation that pain times resistance equals suffering. The first point that I want to make is that pain is a normal part of life.
I believe that about 50% of life is positive and about 50% is negative. And in that negative part, there is pain. There's mental pain, emotional pain, or physical pain that's kind of just part of life.
We should expect that that's there because if we didn't feel those negative emotions, we wouldn't even know what positive emotions are. We wouldn't have that contrast. And remember, pain actually does serve us.
If we have physical pain, that can warn us of danger. If we have emotional pain, it might signal that we need to make some kind of a change in our lives. If you think about all of the things that were invented in the world, it's because we wanted to somehow decrease our pain or we wanted to prevent pain.
The person who invented TVs with remotes wanted to make life a little bit easier, not have the pain of having to get up and change the channel or ask your kids to do it. The people who invented a sleep number bed wanted to decrease the discomfort of having a mattress that's too hard or too soft. Cars, phones, all of the great things that we have in our lives have been thought of by people who wanted to make life easier, make life less painful.
So just realizing that pain is going to happen no matter how much we hate it or don't think it should be there, pain is a part of life. The part that we do have control over in the equation is how much resistance we have to the pain. So if pain times resistance equals suffering, then the more resistance we have to the pain, the more suffering we will have.
If our resistance is zero, then pain times zero equals zero. There's zero suffering. So pain is a part of life, but suffering about that pain is optional.
So if you tell me you have a lot of suffering in your life, then even if I don't know the specifics, I know that you are resisting something. You are resisting some pain. So what is resistance?
What does that look like? It could look like denying what is. It could be wishing things were different.
It could be trying to control things that are out of your control. So that includes other people, acts of God or the universe. Basically anything other than ourselves and our thoughts, if we're trying to control them, can lead to some resistance.
It's like a tightening up. It's like a withdrawing. It's an emotion of fear and of scarcity, and it's uncomfortable.
You could have resistance about things that happened in the past. And this is so, so common, right? When something painful in the past has happened, we have that 2020 vision of the past.
We think we could have done it differently. We should have done things differently. They shouldn't have happened that way.
And these are normal things to feel. Our brain wants to learn from the past and make different changes for the future. But our primal brain also wants to keep us in fear and wants to keep us always on the lookout for danger.
And so we interpret the past through this lens of things have gone wrong. How do we change this for the future? Why did this happen?
And a lot of times blame ourselves. But I really like how Byron Katie looks at the past. She is a lover of reality.
And so whatever the reality that happened, she accepts it. In fact, she says things were supposed to happen exactly that way. We know that because that's how it happened.
So be really careful when you're looking at things in your past. Are you looking at it with a mindset of this is something that I can learn from? Or are you looking at it like this shouldn't have happened?
This is unfair. Why did this happen? I can't accept this.
This was wrong. And that's for sure not easy to do. I can use something that happened to me this week as an example.
I was dropped from my car insurance because of having a couple of accidents. And the new policy that I had to get is significantly more. And so I was going through each of those incidents and thinking of all the things that I should have done differently or that basically it just wasn't my fault.
It was the other person's fault. So I had a lot of resistance. About things that happened in the past that I couldn't change.
And it made me pretty mad. And I definitely spent some time this week suffering every time I would think of the past and how it shouldn't have happened that way. I've heard of this happening a lot when there's a death.
People will say, I should have called to check in on this person, or I should have checked my rear view mirror, or, you know, all of these things that seem so rational. If you look back at the situation, I could have done this differently. But the fact is, in that moment, things happened exactly as they were supposed to.
We know that because that's how it happened. And maybe if that seems too fatalistic for you, then think of it like there were multiple things involved, other people's models, other people's decisions. And if you could somehow make some kind of equation or algorithm out of all of the moving parts and pieces and factors that could not be controlled by me, well, that's how it ended up in that moment of time.
So the more you can let go of things that have happened in the past, the more you can accept that that's the way they happened, and it was for learning or it was for some reason, or maybe that's just how life is, then the less resistance you have to the pain and the less suffering. It doesn't mean that there won't be pain, but you could eliminate the suffering. It's totally what I talked about in the clean pain versus dirty pain episode.
There's some clean pain, and then when you add resistance and their suffering, that's the dirty pain. That's the pain that you're causing yourself. You could have resistance to what is going on in the present moment.
And again, it's like a denial of reality. This shouldn't be happening. I don't like that this is happening.
I can't handle this. I'm too weak. I'm too overwhelmed.
And then often in the present moment, we tend to think of the future and have some thoughts of resistance about that pain in the future. How long will this pain last? What does this mean about what's going on?
So for example, if you hurt your knee and you've had knee pain before, you might think, this is like pain I've had before. And it might mean something about the future. It took me three months to get over this pain before.
So does that mean I'm going to have pain for three months? Did I damage something that is irreparable? Am I going to have to spend a lot of time and money trying to fix it?
Is it possible that I won't be able to fix it and I'll have to live with pain the rest of my life? What if I'm not able to hike the mountain I wanted to hike next year? I mean, our brain can give us endless resistance about things in the future.
A lot of what ifs and worst case scenarios. And part of it is because our brains are designed to like stories and to like having completion of stories. So Brené Brown talks about how there's actually some dopamine that you get when you have something that makes sense to your brain and kind of completes this question in a story form.
So if your knee hurts and you don't have an explanation as to why, your brain goes to work on trying to figure out all of these things, what it could mean, having some kind of story to go along with it that explains it, even if it ends up causing you a lot of suffering. I see a lot of resistance when we reject the emotions that we have. And this ties in so closely with the work on chronic pain and disease.
Dr. John Sarno talks a lot about how trying to repress the emotions that we have that we find unacceptable is actually what causes our physical pain. So one example that I can totally relate to is a new parent with an infant. Of course, you love your child, but there are times that are very, very difficult.
You could be sleep deprived. You might have a cranky child. There are times that you feel less than loving towards your infant, but you don't want to hate your baby.
You don't think that that is something that a parent should do. And of course, deep down, you have love for your child, but there are moments where you might really wish that you didn't have that baby in your life right now. And then when you have resistance to that thought, then you create a lot more suffering for yourself.
And again, with those stories, you kind of try to make it mean something. How could I have a thought that I don't like my infant right now? That's a horrible thing for a new mother or father to think.
That must mean that I'm a horrible person. I really have problems. How could I hate my child?
You don't want to acknowledge that that frustration or regret might be there. And so you stuff it down. You repress those emotions.
You have a lot of resistance. And that can literally cause you to experience pain in your body. That emotion that you're not feeling could show up as pain in your back or pain in your neck or GI issues or autoimmune disorders.
So resistance to the emotions that we have as normal humans that have the whole spectrum of emotions, and sometimes they're not pleasant, can definitely lead to more suffering. When we beat ourselves up, that's another form of resistance that adds to our suffering. And this is, again, a very natural thing that we want to do.
It's normal for our brains to want to go into this critical mode. It almost feels like we're going to be better people if we can just beat ourselves up enough, if we can criticize ourselves enough for our negativity, then that will inspire us to be better people. But in this case, two negatives don't make a positive, two wrongs don't make a right.
So when we tend to layer on the negativity on top of what we're already feeling, that's a good example of resistance that leads to suffering. So be on the lookout for times that you guilt yourself for feeling guilty or you're angry at yourself for feeling angry, or you feel ashamed that you have so much shame. Realize this is your primitive brain in its default mode.
So nothing's wrong with your brain when this happens, but we're going to try to evolve our brains here to be the watcher of what's going on, to notice it, to press pause, to see what is really happening, and to make different choices and think thoughts on purpose. So be on the lookout for this. It can happen with emotional pain.
It can happen with physical pain. It can happen where there is some emotional pain, and then you add resistance to it, and then the suffering ends up being a physical manifestation of that pain. Our emotions cause physical changes in our bodies.
Think of crying. There's something physical that happens in response to an emotion, and it can happen just the same way with chronic pain and disease. So what are the causes of your suffering?
Think about how you suffer in your day to day life, and then think about the resistance that could be causing that suffering. Remember, if the resistance is zero, you can still have pain, but the result, the suffering, will be zero. And if you would like more help with this, with your specific examples of your life, because often we have blind spots to ourselves, it's easier to see in other people how they have resistance, but it's sometimes hard to see in ourselves.
But if you're looking to dive deeper, to evolve your brain, to uplevel your life, then check out my website, bodyandmindlifecoach.com, where you can sign up for a free consult call with me, and we can talk about specifically in your life, how this applies to you. And if you've been enjoying this podcast, please go over to iTunes, give it a quick rating that can take just 30 seconds or less. And if you can carve out just a few minutes of your time, please leave a review too.
It helps this podcast be found by more people, and I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me.
Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review. And of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know that wants an unstoppable body and mind.

Episode # 27- Sneaky Little Thoughts

It's easy to identify thoughts that are obviously negative.  Some thoughts sound pretty and nice, but come from emotions of fear or scarcity.  Thoughts like, "I just want everyone to get along" or "I want to be a better person" are examples of thoughts that are well meaning, but don't create positive emotions when we think them.  And of course, we will talk about sneaky little thoughts that are common with chronic pain and disease.

 

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Episode # 26- Somatic Tracking, a Meditation for Self Healing

This is a special episode where I take you through a 15 minute somatic tracking/meditation exercise.  

 

Chronic Pain is mainly neuroplastic pain (pain created by the brain and felt in the body).

It is usually interpreted with certain thoughts or emotions

-fear, frustration, uncertainty, despair, sadness, 

There are thoughts like what did I do? How long will this last? How can I get rid of the pain? How can I avoid it?

We may think there are certain positions that are safe and some that are dangerous.

 

These thought and feelings reinforce to the brain that there is something to be scared of, which strengthens the neural pathways that produce more pain

 

Somatic tracking is a way to reframe the sensations in your body from a lens of neutrality or safety.  It helps you change understanding of what the actual sensation is.  In chronic pain the brain is over reacting to perfectly neutral totally safe sensations.  When pain is no longer dangerous, the brain stops making more pain.

 

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Transcript- Automatically generated:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, Episode 26, Somatic Tracking, A Meditation for Pain. In this podcast, we learned to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.
Become Unstoppable Body and Mind.
Hello, my friends. We have kind of a special podcast episode today because I'm gonna take you through a meditation for pain. Hopefully, that didn't deter anyone.
We're not going to try to increase our pain. It's a meditation for when you feel pain. It's also called Somatic Tracking by Cureable.
That's where I learned of that term. And basically, we'll be addressing the neuroplastic pain or the pain that the brain produces that's felt in your body. This can happen especially with chronic pain.
Most of the pain that people feel is coming from the brain where it is interpreting safe signals of the body as if the signals were dangerous. Pain is a danger signal. So if you have your hand on a hot stove, you're gonna feel that pain so that you remove your hand and don't cause more damage.
But with chronic pain, the brain begins to interpret these danger signals where there is none. Especially over the last five to 10 years in neuroscience, they've found that the majority of chronic pain is not caused by structural problems in the body, but by neural pathways in the brain. So many MRI studies have been done that they have taken healthy people, that when they do MRIs in certain areas of their body, do see that they may have arthritis, even bulging discs or a torn rotator cuff or meniscus, and have no sensation of pain.
So there's no evidence that there is cause and effect relationship between a structural abnormality in your body and the feeling of pain. Chronic pain is basically a false alarm. When pain becomes chronic, the brain becomes even more hypersensitive to pain.
Like it's always on the lookout for anything that might be dangerous or trigger it. There was a study where they played an annoying sound for people like nails on a chalkboard, and the people who had chronic pain, their brains reacted 25% more to that sound. So people who have chronic pain signals have a hypersensitized brain for any kind of danger.
Usually people who have chronic pain have certain thoughts or emotion patterns. Fear is one of the biggest ones. There could also be frustration or uncertainty or even despair or sadness.
There could be thoughts like, oh, what did I do? How did I hurt it? How long will this last?
How can I get rid of the pain? How can I avoid it? How come it's not getting better?
Is it always going to be like this? There may be thoughts about what certain positions are safe and which ones might be dangerous. And all of these thoughts and feelings reinforce to the brain that there's something to be scared of, which strengthens the neural pathway that produces more pain.
It's like the brain is always on the lookout for anything that could be dangerous and turns up the volume signal for any of those things that could cause you damage in order to keep you safe. So what we're going to do here is pay attention to the sensation you're feeling in your body while you're in either a curious or a positive emotional state. So looking at it through a lens of safety and not coming from fight or flight will allow your brain to rewire how it perceives the pain.
Our goal is to change the understanding of what that sensation actually is. Your brain is overreacting to a totally safe sensation that's perfectly neutral. The more you can practice feeling the sensation with a neutral or curious emotion, you can rewire your brain to make less pain.
Your brain realizes the sensation is no longer dangerous. It's totally safe. And so the brain stops making more pain.
So find a comfortable spot. You could be laying, sitting. You could have your legs up on a wall as you lay on the floor.
You could be in a recliner or laying on your side or even standing if that's most comfortable to you. But get comfortable, and we'll start.
I want you to start by noticing your breathing. Start trying to take deeper breaths if this feels comfortable to you. And pay attention to how easy it is for you to breathe deeper and deeper.
Deeper and deeper.
Where do you notice your breath most? In your nose, in your throat, in your chest, in your stomach?
Allow yourself to breathe a little deeper and a little slower.
And just notice how breathing is safe.
Breathing more deeply and slowly can help relax your brain and your nervous system and your body. Unstoppable Body.
Now, notice any sensations in your body. Do a body scan. Where do you feel any sensation?
And what do you feel there?
If you have sensations in multiple areas of your body, then pick one to focus on.
Describe that area.
Is it on the right side or the left side? Is it in the middle? Is it widespread or is it localized?
Is it deep or is it where you could touch it on the surface?
Remember, your brain has been interpreting this sensation as dangerous, but it's just a sensation in your body. Maybe it's not dangerous.
Imagine if you could describe this sensation to someone else, maybe an alien that's never experienced what it feels like. How could you describe it? What is it?
Is it sharp or dull? Is it tight, aching, burning, tingling? Does it feel like pressure?
Does it stay in one place or does it move?
Is it constant or does it come and go?
Keep paying attention to the sensation and watch it. You don't need to get rid of it or run away from it. You don't need to be scared of it.
Think of a feeling of pressure. You might get a massage and feel pressure that does feel good. It's not dangerous.
What if the feeling is burning? Have you ever had a burning that feels good like in a hot tub?
So it's not the sensation that's negative or disruptive. It's our brain's interpretation of the sensation as being dangerous. That's what makes it uncomfortable.
If you've had pain in this area for years or decades, then there is neurogenic pain, pain produced by your brain because it does not feel safe.
So imagine that part of your body that has sensation. Imagine that part is not in danger. It's your brain overreacting to the sensation.
You feel some sensory input. You can feel it right now. But your body itself is safe.
Imagine watching the sensation like you would if you were a passenger on a train. You're just watching what's going on and not reacting to it. It's effortless.
Explore it with interest and curiosity.
Think to yourself, even though I am feeling this uncomfortable sensation, I accept myself and honor how I feel.
I am safe.
If the pain moves around, follow it, like that passenger on a train that is along for the ride.
Give yourself permission to feel the sensation wherever it goes or whatever it feels like.
Give yourself permission to relax and notice.
Think of it like a firework show. You can watch it and be intrigued and curious.
But your brain is like a dog that reacts to fireworks with fear, thinking the world might be ending. This is how your brain is used to thinking of pain.
But you can imagine you are a human that knows that you can watch these fireworks from a safe place and they cannot hurt you. And you can observe calmly what is happening in your body.
Think to yourself, even though I have been so frustrated or scared by this pain, I accept that there is sensation right now and honor how I feel. I can feel curious about this pain.
If my brain wanders, I can let it wander. I can just follow it and see where it goes, just like the pain in my body may be moving or changing or lessening. I can open up to it and continue to breathe calmly as I notice the feelings.
Breathe in lightness and energy.
Exhale anything toxic, anything dark or anything not serving you.
As you breathe in, let the breath go to the area that you have sensation. Imagine it like a flashlight illuminating the area, so you can see what's in there.
Keep breathing air into the area and let it flow inside your body. Release any negativity when you exhale. Maybe you can listen to your body.
It's safe to listen to this pain, to address how you're feeling, and let it go.
Maybe focus on the breathing and add some movement to your body. Stretch your arms up or straighten your legs. Feel the muscles in the joints, stretch and relax.
If there's a way your body wants to move, to stretch and to feel good, experience the positive sensations of movement.
Think to yourself, what is it about my pain that stresses me out the most?
If there was an emotion in this part of my body, what would it be?
Would you feel anger, anxiety, stress, disappointment, frustration, sadness, grief, overwhelm?
Do you remember when you first started experiencing this pain? What was going on in your life at that time?
Think back, like you're watching a movie of what was going on in your life when you developed this pain. If it was an accident, replay that accident in your head.
Try and feel if there was something else going on in your life at that time that might have been causing tension or stress.
As you replay the movie, think of what was going on.
Notice how you can release some of the tension and stress at this time. As you acknowledge these emotions, you begin to let them go.
Keep breathing and relaxing as you replay this movie and think of that time in your life.
Can you acknowledge any negative emotions you had at the time?
Begin to let them go.
Notice that when you play this movie, you may feel some sensation.
When you acknowledge the pain behind the pain, it begins to lessen. Your body begins to relax.
Think to yourself, this is how I felt. This is what I've been holding on to. This is what I'm letting go.
Your body begins to relax more and more step by step as you let go.
Check in with your body now, and notice if the sensation has changed.
Enjoy the movement of the breath. Know that right now, you are safe.
Even if the pain is still there, you can focus on your breathing and feeling safe. This is literally healing your brain, rewiring the signal to be less responsive and to create less pain.
Feel whatever sensation, if there still is some, from this calm state.
The pain may subside or it may come back at times, but that's okay. The goal is not to prevent the pain from ever coming back. The goal is to change the way you respond when it does.
Reacting with fear or panic reinforces to the brain that there's something wrong and keeps the pain cycle going.
But no, it's not dangerous. It's just a misinterpretation by the brain. You can still breathe and feel safe.
Choose to breathe and relax.
We will end with some positive affirmations. You can either repeat them in your mind or out loud after me. When you say these words, bring them to life.
Bring the meaning of these words into every cell of your body.
All right, you guys, great job today. Think of how you felt before you began this and how your body is feeling now. And remember, this meditation is only 15 minutes.
So in your 24-hour day, this will only take you a short amount of time. And the more times you are focusing on this and doing this work, it will rewire your brain faster. And if you want one-on-one coaching with me to figure these things out a little deeper for yourself, then head over to my website, bodyandmindlifecoach.com, or email me at info at bodyandmindlifecoach.com.
Thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review.
And of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know that wants an Unstoppable Body and Mind.

Episode #25- Healing Back Pain with Matt

in this episode I interview Matt, who had debilitating back pain for 10 years.  He just finished my 6 week coaching program and has some amazing results.  

Not only is he pain free most of the time, he learned mental tools to improve the relationships, and spirituality in his life.  He learned emotions can be felt and processed instead of repressed and felt as pain.

Matt is actively pursuing new goals, now that his mind is free of the mental preoccupation with and fear of pain.  He understands the importance on investing in his mental capacities, just like we know a healthy diet and exercise is good for the body.  He sets aside time daily for mental work and focus.

Matt feels like he has been on "maintenance mode" for the last 10 years, and is now able to live hope for a future he is in charge of.  Amazing results!

 

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Transcript:

This is Betsy Jensen and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind—Episode 25–Healing Back Pain with Matt.

 

In this podcast we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life. Become unstoppable, body and mind.

 

Hey, Matt, good to have you here. 

 

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

 

Oh, my pleasure. Matt just finished coaching with me for six weeks. And we're going to talk about some of the things that he learned and how it went. Matt, could you start by just talking a little bit about your history of back pain?

 

Yeah, so I've had debilitating back pain for a little over ten years now. And I've tried everything. I've been open to trying everything: every physician, holistic medicine, full therapy, acupuncture stem cells, I mean, the list goes on and on. So I really have been on a long journey of trying to deal with my issues.

 

Yeah. And what was your activity level? 

 

I couldn't do much at all, which was very frustrating. I was very active before, very athletic, played some sports in college—a big way I dealt with stress. When my back started acting up, I couldn't do really any physical activity and so it was very, very difficult for me from an emotional standpoint as well.

 

Yeah, I remember you saying you couldn't lift more than about twenty pounds.

 

No, yeah. And I just had to be really careful. Anything I lifted had to be pretty light and I couldn't bend over day to day, things were difficult. I mean, I even went through periods where like, I couldn't put my socks on. I had to have my wife help me put my socks on. So yeah, it was pretty bad.

 

Yeah. And I think there was a lot of fear involved too, right? Like there was fear about exercise or doing too much.

 

Yeah, for sure. I got to the point where I felt like I could manage things, like keep things from getting worse. And in my mind, there were certain things that would make it worse. And so yeah, I would say I had a huge fear of doing anything outside of the safe activities. I would stay away from them as much as I could. And any time I came close to doing something that I thought would mess my back up, I would just be very anxious and just nervous and yeah, huge fear component for sure.

 

So it was really affecting your life in a lot of ways. 

 

Yeah, definitely. And then your wife is a coach, and she reached out to me, and you had just gotten John Sarno’s book right before we started coaching,

 

My wife let me know about you. I had never really entertained the idea that part of my pain could be associated with the way I'm thinking about it and essentially stem from my mind, my subconscious, my emotions. Before I went on our first call, I picked up John Sarno's book, Healing Back Pain and read it. I read it in like an hour. I read it cover to cover. It was really exciting. 

 

That's awesome. 

 

Yeah, I remember my first feeling when I was reading the book was it was never on my radar. I don't know, even if it had been on my radar, if I would have been open to it. But I remember feeling for the first time when I was reading that book for like the first time in ten years, like hope, I guess a little hopeful that I wasn't stuck with these back issues for the rest of my life that hey, maybe there was a light at the end of the tunnel for me. It was really exciting actually.

 

That's awesome. And I know he talks specifically about personality traits, like perfectionism and people pleasing being highly correlated with back pain or chronic pain in general. And how do you think that resonated with you?

 

I felt both of those described me well, as we spoke about it. I really felt like a lot of my emotional anxiety had to do with my desire to people please. One of the other things he talked about was anger and kind of subdued anger. And I thought I had no issues but even diving into that to realize that, hey, I was repressing things and not dealing with things and thinking I didn't have issues, but really did. I just wasn't dealing with them.

 

So how do you feel like you started to unrepress those emotions to get them out?

 

So there are a few things. And honestly, this is where you were so helpful, right? So I read the book and really, John Sarno was like, okay, you know, a lot of this chronic pain is in your mind. So just go out and exercise. You're fine, basically. Right? And I'm thinking okay, for me, I couldn't just flip that switch. And so, you know, you gave me a lot of tools to help get me there. One of the first things was the journaling or the mind dumping, right, so just kind of writing down emotions. And it was helpful for me to just focus on a certain emotion and just kind of write down everything I felt and kind of let myself almost be a child again in that sense, and just feel the raw emotions and write down what I was thinking no matter how bad I thought it was. And it was really, honestly, it was a really great emotional experience to do that. And to feel those things, let myself feel them.

 

It's interesting, because I think we don't talk about a lot of emotions in our society, and especially for men, that's kind of frowned upon almost to be emotional or to acknowledge that you have emotions, right? 

 

Yeah, for sure. I think there's that stigma, right? The strong man doesn't cry, or, you know, in my case, I should be this nice, calm person. So I don't get angry. That's kind of who I built myself up to be. I think a lot of people when they do think about letting some of those emotions out, they're kind of worried that rage is going to just take over then or that they are going to become this angry person if they start validating that they have anger. 

 

Did you experience any of that?

 

I experienced that feeling initially. Right when I first started, I had the thought, Well wait, I can't write this down because that makes it real, right? And then that makes me a bad person, but I just kind of pushed through it, like per your advice, and I just went for it. And if anything, it all kind of spilled out. The first session, I went for, like 30-45 minutes. I had just pages of these raw, raw emotions and then you had me do a little meditation exercise afterwards and it felt so peaceful and calming. And I felt like I was just kind of getting the gunk out of me and I felt like cleansed, if anything. It didn't hang around and have the opposite effect.

 

I think a lot of people, like I said, are just kind of worried about once I open those floodgates, then what's going to happen, you know, I've been containing these things for so long and it feels more safe to not acknowledge the emotion. Yeah, it's good that you had that experience. And I think at some point, you can kind of just allow the emotions and let them flow through you and not bottle them up.

 

Right. Another thing that was really helpful was realizing that our emotions aren’t scary, right? I mean, they're just these feelings in our body and when we're able to recognize them and pay attention to them, we realize, okay, what does that emotion mean? I mean, it's nothing crazy. Maybe it's a slight tightness in my chest. But honestly, if I pay attention to it, it goes away pretty quickly, and it causes no harm or anything. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it's a pretty minor thing.

 

Do you feel like you've noticed how emotions do correlate with sensations or maybe even pain in your body?

 

Yeah, for sure. And then another thing that has been really helpful for me during our sessions is being able to focus on the pain. You took me through exercises where I kind of just felt the pain almost from a neutral position where I wasn't scared of it.  I wasn't anxious. I just almost looked at it as a third party and just kind of observed it. That has been super helpful from the pain standpoint. But also from an emotional standpoint, I found myself doing the same thing. Whenever I had emotions pop up, and I'm like, “Okay, let's just observe what this feels like in my body.” And yeah, I felt like I haven't had the tools to better deal with the things that have popped up on a day to day basis. Even taking away all the pain stuff, just from an emotional standpoint. Those two, yeah.

 

Yeah, the pain is sometimes viewed as a gateway to kind of this bigger expanse of knowledge that you're able to access and really, how do you feel like it's affected your life to have this new view of emotions and pain? 

 

Yeah, huge. It's been like a huge, huge thing. And again, something I don't think I would have been open to before. I think it's not talked about as much in our society where we're very conscious about our physical health, right. And you know, we diet, and we exercise and we do all these things, but we're not super proactive about our mental health unless something's really wrong, right? And then we maybe go see a counselor or a therapist or take some medication, but I realize I need to be as proactive with my mental health as I am with my physical health. And it's been super eye opening and super helpful that way.

 

Yeah. Because these tools, I mean, you can apply them to pain and healing. But you can also apply these same tools to, you know, getting results that you want in your life achieving goals. Just that mindfulness is so important, right?

 

Yeah, I agree 100%. Yeah, you can apply it all over the spectrum.

 

One of the things I really was impressed with with you is that you did a lot of studying on your own when I would suggest maybe reading something or listening to a podcast, you would do that and you tried the Curable App. Were there some things that you found helpful outside of the coaching as well?

 

Yeah, I think one of the great things about going again through it with you is you had a lot of tools for me. So yeah, the Curable App was really helpful, very well put together. There's a lot in there and so much to choose from, but they obviously are experts in their field and really sound like they have a passion for helping people with chronic disease and pain and so that was really helpful. You recommended a tapping app that was helpful as well for some meditation practices. So yeah, I felt like you had really great tools, but it was very helpful to be able to walk through using the tools with you and not just on my own.

 

Ah, great. Thank you. I think the one on one sessions really add a lot too. Of course there are a lot of resources that are available. To do things on your own, but having the guidance just as that little extra addition to really help get things going quickly and see some results faster. I was thinking about one of the times that we started working on having you imagine yourself doing activities. Do you remember that? People might find it interesting to hear how that went for you. When you were sitting in a safe place. You weren't moving your back at all, but you were imagining yourself doing things. What happened for you?

 

I think you asked me to imagine jogging and I couldn't bring myself even to imagine jogging, like I couldn't picture myself doing it—my mind almost felt like I had a block there. And yeah, just with me, I almost had the sensation that my mind was trying to protect me like okay, that's so harmful that you don't even want to think about it. And it was a super enlightening process for me to realize, hey, my mind is this powerful, but at the same time, it's holding on to some things that aren't true. And I was able to kind of, you know, work through them again, with help. And it wasn't like right away. It wasn't like flipping a switch. We had to do some exercises to get to the point where I could even imagine myself doing some smaller things. But yeah, in the end, I was able to get past and even imagine doing that. 

 

I think you said your back muscles were tightening up just sitting there and imagining that, right?

 

Yeah, I did feel that. When we were talking about it I remembered. Yeah. So I got some of that same tightness and pressure that I would get from trying to do an activity that I knew I “shouldn't be doing.” 

 

It's fascinating. It just goes to show that the brain can produce pain signals that you feel in your body. Even though there isn't a physical stimulus causing that to happen just purely by imagination, you are creating pain in your back.

 

Right? And then conversely, I mean, when you had me observe the pain and they do the same thing on the Curable App, as you know, if you're able to kind of be totally neutral and observe your pain, it just almost like melted away and not every time, but a lot of times, you know, and it would just kind of go away and it was really eye opening for me and made me realize, hey, this pain isn't 100%. You know, this pain isn't structural. I don't have some structural damage going on to my back. This has been generated by my mind.

 

I think that was a fascinating experience to probably realize that connection is so strong, because I think a lot of times we assume pain means something's gone wrong with the body that we need to fix physically.

 

Yeah, I know for sure that was a big, big eye opener for me.

 

So how is your activity level? Now? It's been a couple of weeks since we talked actually. So maybe there's some new things you've been trying?

 

I'm actually doing well. I'm doing things I haven't done in years and years. I'm back to, you know, swimming, which I hadn't been able to swim for a long time. And that was one of the things I did enjoy as a form of exercise. I'm back to doing some kind of yoga/pilates type things. That again, I haven't done because I didn't think I could do it. I was just too scared of what I would do. Yeah, been more active in general, with the family, hiking, things like that. So a lot of things that I haven't been able to do in a long, long time. I've been able to do very quickly, you know, considering this has been going on so long, and it's just been, you know, less than a couple months, right? 

 

Yeah. That is amazing. I think you told me about like on a Saturday where you were helping some people move and you are lifting heavy things. 

 

And we're actually building a shed for someone's Eagle Scout project. And I remember in the past and even then I didn't like to go to these things because I wanted to help. But also, I felt embarrassed that I couldn't do things, right. Like, if someone's like, “Hey, can you grab this for me?” And I'd be super embarrassed. You know, I'm a young, from all outward appearances, healthy guy. And I can't lift this up for you, right. And so, you know, there was maybe an element of pride there. But I would often avoid like things like helping people move and helping people with outdoor projects. But we went and again, I was a little nervous. And one of the first things someone said, “Hey, can you grab this for me?” And I'm thinking, ah, that looks really heavy. And I was nervous. But anyway, I ended up spending like six hours there and did stuff I hadn't done in a long time. And I remember leaving, and I was super sore all over the place, but not my back. My back wasn't sore. I had all kinds of sore muscles that I hadn't used in years and years, like a good sore, right, like I worked out. So yeah, it was it was great.

 

How would you describe your pain level now?

 

Honestly, I don't, you know, it's not completely gone. But I feel like when it does come, I'm able to, again, right away I go back to our exercise and I just try to observe it. And most of the time I can, you know, get it to relax and it feels okay. And so I mean, most of the time I'm running pain free.

 

That's amazing. Yeah. And what I teach a lot is to have people when they do have a sense of pain, to look at it as you know, kind of a time to check in what could be going on emotionally or mentally, of course, physically too, but most of the time, I think, you know, instead of thinking what's the physical cause of this pain, we can start to think the other ways too.

 

Yeah, no, and that's actually one of the things I've changed just in my daily life. I didn't really spend a whole lot of time on my personal well being and improvement and so I've set aside some time and I've made a goal to kind of every day I have a little bit of time where I'm kind of focused. On the mental and the spiritual aspect of things, and that's been really helpful. And so I'm trying to be really proactive there and not just try to respond to like, Oh, hey, my back's flared up what could be going on? I think that's been helpful for me staying on top of it that way.

 

It sounds like you really have been able to expand in different areas of your life as well. Now that you're not in fear of the pain and focusing on pain. It's really opened up a lot for you.

 

Yeah, I think just emotionally I mean, I'm feeling a lot more peace, but too I'm just hopeful for, I guess, more possibilities in the future. I always thought, okay, I'll work as long as I can. And eventually, maybe I'll retire early because my back won't be able to take it and then you know, after that, I guess I'll just kind of maintain but you know, now I almost got a whole different hope and viewpoint that hey, I mean, all these possibilities are open for me. So, for me, that's super exciting.

 

That is exciting. Do you have any new goals now?

 

Yeah. I mean, I've set some different business goals and some goals that I'm working on with my wife. I've got exercise goals. Yeah, I feel like I have all these huge goals that I set, maybe I had before. And then were on the back burner, because I'm like, I was just almost in maintenance mode for the last ten years. I'm like, Okay, well, I'll just get through it kind of a thing. And I'm not at that point anymore.

 

Well, and another interesting thing to point out is that this has been a year that's been particularly hard for a lot of people. There's a lot of things going on with Corona and with, you know, riots and with just the state of the world. It's been a hard year for a lot of people.

 

Yeah, that is interesting, because honestly, for me, I'm going to look back at 2020 as a year where I've made so much progress, and that's not to take away I know there's a lot of things going on around us and people are hurting physically and emotionally, you know, but at the same time, what's the quote, I'm a firm believer that, you know, our circumstances don't dictate our emotions and outcomes. Sometimes we think they do and sometimes we let them but they don't need to. Right? And so for me, it's been a great time to progress emotionally, spiritually. And honestly, I was out of work for a few months and having that downtime was super helpful to kind of take a break and just reset things a little bit for me, something I would not have done probably, otherwise on my own.

 

Yeah, that's very cool. Do you have any advice for people who are struggling with back pain or chronic pain?

 

Yeah, it's hard for me. I had to go through all the steps, I think to get to the point where I was open to something like this. And that was just my mind, right? I guess my background going to school and you know, I wasn't going to believe it unless it was scientifically proven. And there's very little science on this, although there's a lot more now. I mean, now that I've been researching and reading, there's a lot of science on it just not as talked about, right? I mean, you go to the physician and “Okay, this is wrong here, here's your pill. And this is going to mask your pain.” Right? So I guess I would hope that people would give themselves permission to be open to this, right? I didn't give myself permission to be open until I had exhausted everything and then almost felt at rock bottom. And sometimes I guess we need to do that. But how nice would it have been for me years ago to give myself permission to explore some other avenues of what could be wrong? So there's no harm in exploring this avenue and trying, right? I mean, we talked at one point and I told you I mean, I spent tens of thousands of dollars easy in the last ten years just with different avenues and nothing really improved it and so for me, this is just a no brainer.

 

I think a lot of people are starting to see the value of coaching just for mental acuity and living with purpose, but especially, you know how it ties into the pain that might be, you know, devastating your life right now or even chronic disease, the connection is just not talked about as much. But definitely I think it's important and coaching I think can be super helpful for just mental hygiene is what I call it where it's like, just like you were saying, we want to be physically fit. We want to eat healthy foods, we know that exercise is helpful for our bodies. And we're just I think, right at the cusp of starting to realize that the same is true for our mental capacities. You know, that we can clean up our thinking and that we can really live our very best lives once we are working on our mental hygiene and mindfulness as well.

 

Yeah, I would a hundred percent agree and I would say as much pain as I was in and as great as I feel now. If you took that whole aspect away, and I didn't feel any physical improvement, just the tools to deal with some emotions and the mental tools are worth it, for sure, just that alone, but add on everything else, and it's, it's a no brainer for me.

 

Fantastic. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time today.

 

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

 

What a great interview with Matt, I think that is going to help and inspire a lot of people on their healing journeys. I do believe that coaching provides one on one feedback and support that can really help with this process. So if you're curious about coaching, or if you've been working on things on your own and you feel like you're just not getting the results that you want, then please email me at info@bodyandmindlifecoach.com and check out my website, bodyandmindlifecoach.com.

 

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review. And, of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know who wants an unstoppable body and mind.

 

Episode #24 - Failure

In this episode I talk about failure.  Why we hate failing, how we "fail ahead of time" by not trying, and how to view failure in a positive way.   Failure is not something to be avoided at all costs, this keeps us stuck and not trying.  Failing is part of living your best life.

 

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Episode 23- Einstein Time

In this episode I discuss the concept that time is relative- Einstein time!  

Do you feel like you are a victim of time- that there is never enough or that your results aren't happening fast enough?  Do you feel like you should be busy in order to be a worthy human?  

Time is actually a neutral phenomenon, so blaming time or feeling like a victim is a powerless place to be.

Take control of how you see time- and learn that you can make time!  

Learn about Einstein time and how it can bring about greater peace in your life and in your healing journey.

 

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Transcript:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind—Episode 23–Einstein Time.

 

In this podcast we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.  Become unstoppable, body and mind. 

 

Hello, my friends, this is Episode 23, where we are going to talk about Einstein Time. If you haven't heard of that, I first heard about it in The Big Leap, the book by Gay Hendricks and he talks about time in a way that he said Einstein explained. So basically, time is relative. So just like there is Newtonian physics and quantum physics, there's also Newtonian time. Which would be that there are sixty seconds in a minute and twenty-four hours in a day and seven days in a week.  That's very quantifiable and measurable, and Newtonian. And then Einstein time is based more on our perception of time, which can be different from person to person or situation. 

 

So if you think about putting your hand on a burning-hot stove for a minute, that could feel as long as an hour. But if you are with someone that you love, and you're enjoying your time, an hour might pass by and feel just like a minute. Basically, when you're trying to escape from your current experiences, like with your hand on a hot stove, you're contracting away or you're fighting for what's going on. It makes time go more slowly. But with your beloved, you're completely open and time essentially disappears. 

 

You've heard the term “Time flies when you're having fun” or I think too when you're busy doing something, time can go faster. I've had a job before where I did not have much to do, which I thought would be awesome. But time would just drag on and it felt like forever. But when I was more busy, then time seemed to go by quite quickly. Or if you think about taking a timed test, or sometimes I think about those shows where they have to like bake a cake for a competition in an hour, and how quickly an hour can go by. Also, when you're in the zone, you know, when you're in flow time, it's like time almost contracts. 

 

I think for most of us, I know definitely for me, time has almost seemed like an enemy. There was just not enough time. There's always too much to do. Those were some of my main core beliefs in life that I didn't even realize I had. When I saw myself in relation to time I was this helpless victim and I would blame things on time that I just didn't have enough. I didn't get that done because I ran out of time. But really time is neutral. If you think about the model, time would be on the circumstance line. So it wasn't time that was good or bad, or abundant or scarce. It was just my thoughts about time that created a negative relationship that I had with time in my mind.

 

In Episode 18, I talked about silencing the inner critic and I talked about the main first thing to start with is not saying negative things about yourself out loud, and noticing how you speak about yourself out loud. So I also want you to start noticing how you speak about time. Do you find yourself often saying that you're too busy, that you don't have enough time? It's fascinating sometimes when people ask “How are you doing?” We'll respond, “Oh, I'm busy.” So of all of the emotions available, you could choose fantastic or wonderful or amazing or fabulous. You're going to define yourself as busy. It's almost like a badge of honor in our culture. It's rewarded. 

 

I definitely felt that my worth was based on my accomplishments. And I didn't even realize that I was thinking that but at a subconscious level, I didn't really feel like I was a good enough person, unless I was accomplishing things and there was a numerable amount of things that I had to accomplish. And that's why there was never enough time. I mean, I could never get enough done because what is enough? I definitely had a victim relationship with time. 

 

And have you ever heard that how you do anything is how you do everything. If you have a victim relationship with a phenomenon like time you're probably going to see yourself as a victim in other areas of your life like with relationships, or with money. So really stop speaking like you are a victim of time, try to notice it and try to stop it. So instead of saying, “I don't have time for that,” you could say, “I'm not willing to make time.” You can see why it's kind of nicer to play the victim here. Like you don't want to tell your friend that “I'm not willing to make time to call you back.” It's much easier to say, “I've been so busy. I've just been swamped. I totally ran out of time last night.” It's so much easier to be the victim than to take responsibility, but by saying, “I didn't make time,” you're the one who keeps the ownership. You have the place of power. 

 

Gay Hendricks says that being in a hurry is a sign of mental illness. So I don't think he actually meant mental illness like you would go to a psychiatrist, of course, but he does have a good point. So the mental capacity that you have when you're in a hurry, or you're feeling scarcity around time, is not your clearest, most competent self. How many times when you're rushing to get out the door do you lose your keys or you can't find your phone? I've literally been talking on my phone, and I'm like, “Where's my phone?” Because, you know, when you're flustered and you're hurried, and you're rushed, you're just not thinking clearly. 

 

This example drives me crazy. If I have a busy day planned for the next day, and I'm thinking about it the night before, then often what will happen is I wake up sometime in the middle of the night or 3 a.m. or something—I can't get back to sleep. And I just lay there worried about how much I have to do the next day, and how tired I'm going to be. And I cannot get back to sleep. So frustrating, but totally an example of how our thoughts really create our reality. I'm going to bed thinking, I'm going to be exhausted tomorrow because I have such a big day. And then I end up not sleeping and even starting my day before my big day arrives already exhausted.

 

What other things can you think of that happen when you're busy, when you're rushed, when you're feeling like you are a victim of time? If I'm driving somewhere crazy, I'm actually more likely to get hurt or get in an accident. Sometimes when I'm rushed, I end up having to go back and redo things because I didn't do it right the first time. And then of course, when I'm super overwhelmed with all of the things that I have to do, is when I'm actually more likely to just avoid doing everything all together, and scroll on Facebook for an hour, or I'm more likely to procrastinate and essentially just end up wasting more time. So watch yourself when you're feeling really busy. When you have that scarcity of time, maybe if you're panicked about being late. Are you driving like a crazy person? Are you yelling at your kids? And are you blaming other people for how you ran out of time? 

 

Being busy is really a terrible place to live. You're not using your higher brain, you're in fight or flight. And we know that chronic fight or flight leads to chronic pain and disease. Your body cannot run on high speed. You can't sprint all the time without taking a break, or your body breaks down. Think of a computer that's running with twenty tabs open, how slow and ineffective it is. So being busy is really not a badge of honor. It doesn't make you more awesome or more worthy because you're busy. 

 

I remember a few years back hearing about a study about how multitasking wasn't effective. And I totally thought that I was the exception to that rule, that for other people, I could see how it's probably not effective. But I truly believed that I was a good multitasker. But as I started getting coaching and talking about the results that I had in my life, I was realizing how many unfinished things I had started and never gotten around to finishing, and started to realize that yes, even for me, multitasking is not effective. And of course, I find this so ironic. It's just another way that my brain would prove my thoughts true. So I thought I didn't have time to do everything I needed to. I would leave a bunch of stuff undone and then I would have all of this evidence of all these things I see I had to do, proving my thought true that I am too busy. 

 

If you find yourself not finishing things or even not starting things, if you're procrastinating, if you're creating a lot of mental drama about time, if you're complaining, or feeling like a victim of time, then I really want you to think about Einstein time. Since time is something you can choose how to think about, rather than being a victim of time. 

 

You could also think of yourself as a producer of time.  There's a quote, “You'll never find time for anything. If you want the time, you must make it.” So what if instead of running out of time, you can make time? Wouldn't you rather be a producer of time than a consumer of time? That feels a lot more abundant. To think of being able to make time, I think the first step to get rid of your victim mentality about time, is to realize that all of the things that you're doing are things that you choose to do. So if there are some things that you're doing that you're not actually choosing to do—you feel obligated to for someone else—you may consider telling that person you don't want to do those things for them. 

 

But really think about it. If it's things like, I have to work, or I have to make dinner and then I have to clean up, what if those things or the way of phrasing it isn't exactly true? What if you don't have to work, but you like working because you like money, and you like making dinner because cooking at home might save money or you prepare more healthy meals and you like cleaning up because you like having a clean kitchen. Now it doesn't necessarily mean you really like every single aspect of those chores or going to work, but you like them. That effect, the result that it creates. And so it's still a choice that you're making to do those things. What if you aren't a victim at all in these things you choose to do?

 

I think of life as 50/50. So even in your dream job, or in a relationship, there are going to be positive and negative things. In starting my own business, there may be things I'm super excited to do and super passionate about, like recording podcasts. And inevitably, there are things that I'm not going to find as exciting, but they are part of having a business. So I can still think that I'm choosing to do things without thinking of myself as a victim, and still realize that I don't enjoy some of the things but I'm choosing to do them anyway. And sometimes with those less enjoyable tasks, I can think of some ways to make them fun.

 

One of the things I like to do is to set a timer and try to get the chore done in a certain amount of time. So if I'm doing the dishes, did you know that doing the dishes can like sometimes just take ten minutes? We sometimes put it off and make it into a big deal. But when you actually just get at it, and don't stop and procrastinate and do other things and complain about it, then sometimes it can go actually quite quickly. 

 

Sometimes I'll listen to music or listen to a podcast while I'm cooking or walking, for meditating. Sometimes I'll do a guided meditation, or I like the Muse headband for meditating. It gives me feedback and it tracks my progress each day on an app, which I like. Back when I used to do a lot of driving my kids around places, I chose to look at it as a time that I could spend one on one with a kid and it totally changed my perspective about taking them to a friend's house or feeling like I had to drive them around like a victim. 

 

Now, here's the thing that I thought was interesting. When I started learning about Einstein time and practicing getting myself into a calmer state about time, when I would feel rushed, say I was getting ready for work or to go somewhere, and I started feeling that sensation in my body where I was getting a little bit anxious or tense. Usually my stomach would get tight, my heart rate would raise, I would notice it and I would call myself, usually taking some breaths, reminding myself to slow down that it would be okay. Sometimes I would even say Einstein time in my head, and I would literally be able to get myself to a calmer state for my nervous system. And I felt more abundance than I did scarcity. And I found that time would usually work out. 

 

So even if I thought I was gonna run late for something, I would purposely not check the clock very much. I would do the things I needed to do in an efficient, but timely, way. And any time I started feeling that anxiousness or stress, calm myself down, get to work by driving as I would without craziness and without yelling at people and wishing they drove differently. And most often, I would arrive on time, or within a few minutes, and usually, like the meeting would end up starting a few minutes late that day, or there was still a spot open for me at yoga class, or the person that I was meeting would actually get there later than I would. I mean, I would still try my best to be on time, but having this calm attitude didn't mean that I was getting there hours late, and that I was negligent. But it did make my drive time more enjoyable. When I did get there, I was in a better mood. I wasn't frantic. I didn't lock my keys in my car or forget important things at home. 

 

I would suggest that you try a little bit of Einstein time in your life, because although our brain wants to go to the extreme, like, oh, that will never work and you'll never do anything. If you aren't forcing yourself to be rushed and busy all the time, it's going to turn out better for you. I even hung in my car some flower leis that my daughter had, and I realized that it covered up the clock in my car, and I left them because I really liked not having that time staring right back at me. So if I want to check the time, I just move them over to the side and look, but I found it helpful. Because each time I would look at the clock and start to get a little bit panicked, I would have to remind myself to calm back down and it was easier just not to obsessively check the clock. 

 

Really try to feel these sensations in your body. Try to drop in to what you're feeling, be mindful. Notice when you start feeling anxious or rushed or scarcity or a victim about time, remind yourself that time is relative, try calming yourself and trying Einstein time and see how it works out for you.

 

Now, as always, I like to relate the concept I'm talking about to chronic pain or disease. And I hear a lot about time when people talk about their healing journey and it's usually from that place of the optimization and scarcity. I think every person I've worked with at some point, including myself, have often said things like, “Why is this taking so long? I'm not sure if I'll ever get better. What if this never goes away? I wish I was better already.” And it makes sense because no one wants to be in pain. But remember, as Nicole Sachs says, chronic pain is an epidemic of fear when things don't seem like they're happening quickly enough, especially if we are getting better and feeling better for a few days, and then start to have some symptoms again, or feel like we're getting worse. That can trigger some fear, which of course, makes the healing more difficult. 

 

The time we're feeling pain, it's like our hand on the hot stove. It feels like it's forever. And sometimes it's interesting because we're so focused on the pain that we don't even notice when we don't have pain. 

 

When I'll ask people about their symptoms, they'll describe over the last week, like there was a couple times that my arm really hurt when I moved it this way. And then when I start questioning them, they're not even recognizing, like, 90% of the time that they are feeling good and they didn't have pain. And they don't even think to bring that up to me. But they're so on the lookout for those times that they did have pain and try to put meaning on it. What could that mean? When we're focusing on pain, that makes time expand. So it's also very hard to be patient with ourselves. When we feel the sensations in our body, we definitely try to make sense of it by giving it meaning like, I must have done something. I wonder what's going on on the inside. Is there damage that's permanent? But what if we could think of our healing journey, not as a struggle line, but a path that we're traveling that has some ups and downs. 

 

Because most of the time, that's just how it is. Especially when people start the journey. And they start feeling better and better and better. And they learn about how powerful their mind can be in healing, then sometimes they start to beat themselves up that they aren't healed a little bit faster. But think about the relativity of time here. If you have had back pain for ten years, you know, it might not be something that goes away in just a week or two. But if you could think like, I'm giving myself three months for this process, and I'm really going to keep working on things and if I had it for ten years, three months really relatively is a short amount of time. And I'm not saying that, you know, if it's ten years, it'll be three months, like it's different for everyone. 

 

But what I do know is when you start beating yourself up and feeling really bad about how it's not happening faster, that ironically, that will make it take longer. Emotions are definitely a factor in our healing. And that's why patience and compassion for ourselves and remembering that sometimes things do take time. And the more we try to control the speed in which things happen, and get frustrated and beat ourselves up for them not happening faster than they're happening, then the more difficulty really it's going to create for ourselves. You are feeling exactly what you need to be feeling right now. And remember, life is 50/50, so you're not going to feel good all the time. 

 

So whether you've been feeling better and then start feeling worse again, or you have a new pain symptom come up, think of pain as a teacher for you. And it won't go away until you've learned what you need to learn from it when things don't happen in the time that I want them to. And if it's not a quick and easy fix, then I try to think of things as the long game. Sometimes in life, there are things that are quick, the short game, and sometimes we play the long game. 

 

Like I thought it might be easier for me to learn a song on the ukulele than it was. But it turns out that it took me a longer time than I thought it would. But it's not a big deal. It's the long game. My website took longer than I thought it would to get it looking how I wanted. But it turns out that I just had an expectation that wasn't realistic. And it doesn't mean anything bad about me or anyone else. It's just different than I thought it would be. 

 

We're playing the long game when you're in a rush for things to change, then that's when they usually end up taking longer. So just recognize, you do have control of your perception of time, you can have control with your relationship to time. And rather than trying to control every aspect of time and when things happen, the more easily you'll actually be able to attain your goals. 

 

Thanks for listening to this episode. If you have not yet gone over to iTunes, please give me a rating. Give this podcast a review. If you have a few extra minutes, I would really appreciate it. I want this podcast to be able to be shared and found by other people. And I definitely appreciate your time listening and rating or reviewing it for me. 

 

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review. And, of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know who wants an unstoppable body and mind.

Episode 22- Making Decisions

This episode is all about decisions- why we make the decisions we do and how to make decisions from a more conscious place.  Indecision drains our energy, so learn my best tips and tricks to make decisions on purpose to get the results you want in your life.

 

Follow Betsy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/

 

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Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com

 

*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it  https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6

 

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If you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and review on Itunes  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543

 

Transcript:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind—Episode 22–Making Decisions.

 

In this podcast we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.  Become unstoppable, body and mind.

 

Hello, welcome to the podcast. Today we are going to talk about decision making, why it's important to make decisions and how we can make decisions most effectively. But first, a little reminder if you've been liking the podcast and would be willing to do me a favor. Go on over to iTunes and rate and review it please. Rating it literally just takes a few seconds and a review does take a little more time and thought and effort, but I do read all the reviews and really appreciate them. And it helps the podcast be found by more people. 

 

Decision making used to be super hard for me. I used to even describe myself as someone who hated making decisions. I would much rather have someone else make decisions for me than to have to make decisions. I hated it. And I think part of it is that I thought of myself as kind of an easygoing person, not someone who has a lot of strong preferences and opinions, but I was also definitely a huge people pleaser. I would rather let someone else who did have a stronger opinion, make a decision, and I would just go along with it so that I would be liked. I also had a lot of self doubt. And I was definitely a huge perfectionist. And that can play into decision making too, because once you make a decision, you have to get to work on it. And it wasn't that I was afraid of work, but I was afraid of showing up imperfectly. And so if I could stay in indecision, I wouldn't have to make the wrong choice, or put work out into the world that wasn't totally perfect and be vulnerable that way. 

 

But like the Rush song says, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” So indecision is making a choice. It's a choice not to act. And the worst part about it is that when you are struggling in indecision, it drains your energy. Have you ever had that? It's like part of your mind just keeps cycling around this unmade decision, and you keep weighing the options in your head and you keep thinking of the pros and cons. Mentally, it's draining. 

 

When I started learning about life coaching about five years ago, I realized how important making decisions is for your state of mind. And I got better at making decisions because it is a skill you can develop, and it grows stronger as you practice it. You can learn to listen to yourself and trust yourself and stop doubting yourself so much as you practice making decisions. 

 

First, let's talk about why we make decisions. All of the decisions we make, the things we choose or choose not to do are because of how we think it will make us feel. So if you choose to eat a salad, it could be because you want to feel healthier. If you choose to eat a box of Pop Tarts, it could be because you think you'll feel some satisfaction or pleasure from it. If you choose not to decide right now if you are going to change jobs or not, you may think you will feel more sure of yourself after you weigh out all the options or ask a few more people's advice. We are motivated by our feelings. That's why we make the decisions that we do. And that's how we get the results that we have in our life. 

 

Think of all the results that you have in your life as a collection of the decisions you've made. And your day is full of decisions. You're making them either unconsciously, or you're making them in a way to get the results that you want. How do we make unconscious decisions? Remember, 95% of our thoughts are subconscious. So those decisions could look like habits. Like I get up and I make my bed each morning. Or I find myself checking my phone approximately a million times a day. Like it's totally a subconscious decision. I'm maybe feeling bored, or I'm usually avoiding doing something. And then I find myself checking email that I've checked, like two minutes ago. 

 

Think about the decisions you make each day. Do you think there are some unconscious decisions that you make? The first step in making better decisions is to realize and be mindful of the decisions you're already making. Just like we can become the watcher of our thoughts, we can become the watcher of our decisions, and we can decide if they're serving us or not. Another thing that we can do subconsciously when we're making decisions is to say, “I don't know” Do you find yourself saying “I don't know” a lot? Sometimes it can even feel very true: “Like this is just a fact. I don't know.” Something like, “I don't know how to stop my kids from fighting.” “I don't know how to provide more value to my customers.” “I don't know how to quiet my mind when I meditate.” But the thing about “I don't know” is when you say that, it literally blocks your brain from giving you the answers. It shuts down your inner voice, and it keeps you in indecision, which, remember, drains your energy? 

 

Try and notice when you say “I don't know,” either out loud or to yourself, and question that. You might just be in a habit of saying, “I don't know.” It seems easy. And it seems true. So I'll often say to people when I'm coaching them, when they tell me, “I don't know,” I'll say, “What if you did know?” And then, most of the time, unless they say, “I don't know” again, they actually come up with an answer. So give yourself that option. What if I do know when I'm stuck with an “I don't know.” I like to write things down. I like to get out a piece of paper. And if I'm thinking I don't know how to get my kids to eat healthier, I could write down the things I do know. Maybe I know that if I wasn't buying as much junk food and bringing it to the house, then the kids would not have access to those foods. I know that when I cut up fruits and vegetables and put them out at dinnertime, then they get eaten more than when they're sitting in the fridge. Maybe I do know that I haven't had a discussion with the kids about what they already know about healthy eating and what types of foods they think are healthy, and what kind of foods they're interested in eating that are healthy foods. Once you start opening up your brain to thinking of the things you do know, then you can start filling up the page with things that you know, and have a jumping off point rather than just saying, “I don't know” and shutting it down and feeling helpless. 

 

When I'm making decisions between two options, like if I was thinking of buying a new car or getting my old one repaired, I also like writing. So take out a page and make two columns, one for new car, one for repairing the old car. And I would write down the reasons for getting a new car in one column, and the reasons for repairing the old car in the other column. Then I would suggest crossing out any of the reasons that are fear based. We don't want to make decisions from fear. Remember, when we're in fight or flight, we're not using our prefrontal cortex, we're not using our best judgment and logic. So, for example, if I am thinking I'm afraid of how long it would take me to find a new car, I really don't even know that's true. And I would rather base my decisions on reasons that I like, rather than things I'm afraid of, or I'm trying to avoid. Fear is based in the primitive brain and I want to make decisions from my higher brain, my prefrontal cortex. Then, looking at the two columns, I would pick the one with the reasons I like the most, and you could listen to your inner voice here. I talked a little bit about listening to your inner voice on the last episode, and just like decision making you get better at listening to your inner voice if you practice doing it. Sometimes I like to imagine that there are no wrong decisions. Or what if I knew both of the options would work out? Which one would I choose? If I knew that there were no failures in life, that I was either winning or learning? What would I choose? If I knew that I could find a new car I wanted and I could sell the old one, and I could afford the payments or the repairs, which one would I choose?

 

What if in life, there are no mistakes? What if we're either succeeding or learning but there is no failing? And what if in life, there are no wrong decisions, just decisions that teach you what you don't want to do? Those kinds of thoughts can help with decision making. We already have so much fear of the future. A lot of times as humans, we're deciding a lot of things out of fear. But really, we don't even know how the future will turn out. We're just basing our projection of the future on what we've learned from the past. But most of the times, the things we worry about don't even happen. 

 

I find this a lot when I'm trying to predict how other people are going to react. Like my son might not eat anything if I stopped buying junk food, or my boss might fire me if I tell him I want to cut back my hours, or my friend might be hurt if I don't go to girls night that she invited me to. But remember with the model, what we say or do is just in the circumstance line of other people's models. They are in charge of how they think and feel and act because of what we do or say. So we definitely don't want to be basing all of our decisions on trying to control other people's behavior. I like to make decisions that are most loving for me and loving for all of the people involved. So if my friend planned a girl's night, and I don't want to go, is it the most loving thing for me to still go? Is it loving to her if I go when I don't want to? Imagine if I don't want to go, but I go, because I don't want to make her mad or make her feel bad. And then I go, and I'm resentful. That might not even be the most loving thing to her. And it's definitely not the most loving thing to me. 

 

Now, we talked about how indecision is an energy drain, but also if we make a decision, and we're waiting a while to tell someone. Like if I made that decision not to go out to the girls night, but I waited a week to tell my friend, then that also is going to be draining my mental energy. It can be exhausting mentally if it's still hanging over my head. So I might be still dreading telling her or thinking about when I'll tell her or thinking about how I'm going to tell her. If possible when you make the decision, try to act on it without allowing a lot of time to go by so you aren't just taking up that mental space. 

 

Another concept about decision making is to try and make decisions ahead of time. So we want to use our prefrontal cortex, which is good at making decisions. That's the highest form of our humanity. That's where we want to be making our decisions from. So say you're starting an exercise program. You could decide on Sunday night what you want that exercise program to look like for the week, like “Every morning, I'm going to get up and go on a thirty-minute walk with my dog,” or “I'm going to do yoga three days a week, on these days and at these times.” The more we make decisions ahead of time, then we don't have to struggle in the moment—the decision is already made. If we don't decide ahead of time, then you can guess what kind of decision we're going to make. When the alarm goes off and you're not committed or devoted to your decision, you'll probably talk yourself out of going on the walk or just go back to bed. The prefrontal cortex, the highest part of the brain, is the best decision maker. And it only works when we're not making decisions in the moment. When we don't make decisions ahead of time, or we're not committed to those decisions and we leave the decisions up to what we feel like doing in the moment, our primal brain is going to win every time and it's going to want to seek pleasure, avoid pain and do whatever is easy.

 

Another thing to think about with decision making is decision fatigue. So if you imagine cleaning out your closet, taking everything out of it and going through piles and piles of things, you might start out kind of thoughtful about each item and trying it on. And after a while, after a few hours, your brain has made so many decisions that you're just exhausted from making so many decisions. And so you either start just getting rid of everything, or if you're like me, you start hanging everything back up and thinking like, Maybe I'll go through it later, or I'll give it a few months and see if I'm actually going to wear those things and I'll just decide then. So don't try and make a lot of big decisions at once or make a lot of little decisions before you're making big important decisions. Just be aware that there is decision fatigue. In order to reduce decision fatigue, you could give yourself a certain amount of time and commit to making a decision at the end of that time. 

 

An example I've heard of is from my mentor, Brooke Castillo. She said that for clothes shopping, she only goes to one store. So she has one place that she gets her clothes. And she doesn't go to all of the different places, all the different stores and look at a bunch of different things. She knows her tastes and her style and what she likes. And so she only buys things from that one store. 

 

The more you can make decisions ahead of time, decide quickly, not go back on your decisions and not make tons of decisions at once or when you're already mentally fatigued, this will help you make better decisions and it will save mental energy so you're not feeling as drained. If you have a big goal, which I recommend, for the week, or a goal for the month, or the next three months or a goal for the next year, your brain will get overwhelmed with the immensity of this big, huge goal. So what you can do is write down all of the little things you'll need to do to accomplish that goal. Next to each of those things, write down all of the obstacles you might anticipate happening. And then focus each day on the next right thing or the next best thing to get you towards that goal. So “What is the next right thing for me to make this certain amount of money within a period of time?” Or “What is the next right thing I could do to show my body more love so that I can be healthy?” Or “What is the next right thing I could do to be a more present mom with my kids right now?”

 

You can decide that you're a decision maker. That's what I did. I saw that I was already making decisions, which I was. And I just decided on purpose that I am able to make decisions and I practiced making decisions on my own without polling a bunch of people and asking people's opinion and searching online for hours. And when I made a decision, I purposely didn't second guess it or doubt myself or go back on it and change it. And I did get better at making decisions and at listening to my inner voice. 

 

Making decisions is an important skill. And even if you are thinking of yourself as an indecisive person, remember that by not deciding you are already making a choice, and you're wasting your mental energy by spinning and indecision. You might have some strong neural pathways and beliefs about yourself and your ability to make decisions. But as we know from neuroscience, you can always rewire your brain. You can start making decisions consciously, you can start believing in yourself that you can make decisions and the more you practice, the more you will learn about yourself and what types of decisions you can make easily, and what types of decisions you don't want to make in the future. And the more you'll be able to trust yourself in the decisions you do make. So I invite you to notice the decisions you're making in your life and to start making decisions from a conscious place. And if this is something you struggle with and would like some coaching on, please reach out to me. You can go to my website, bodyandmindlifecoach.com or email me at info@bodyandmindlifecoach.com.

 

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review. And, of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know who wants an unstoppable body and mind.

Episode 21- Love is Letting Go of Fear

In this episode I share my favorite quotes and discuss the book Love is Letting Go of Fear by Gerald Jampolsky.  

There are basically two emotions- love and fear.  We are programmed for fear but always have the capacity of love.

Approaching more of our life with love is how we get inner peace.  And that means continually letting go of fear.   

 

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Transcript:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind—Episode 21–Love Is Letting Go of Fear.

 

In this podcast we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.  Become unstoppable, body and mind.

 

Hello, welcome to Episode 21–Love Is Letting Go of Fear, based on the book by Gerald Jampolsky of that name. I love this concept of basically two emotions, love and fear, and you can't have fear when you have love, and you can't have love when you have fear. They're basically like north and south, like you can't go both places at the same time—opposites. I love thinking of all of the emotions that are kind of more stressful, anxiety-ridden on the lower half of the vibration, emotion chart. The fight or flight type of responses where the body is tense, there's some anxiousness and worry. That's all categorized as fear, and any of the more loving emotions which would include, of course, love. And I would say things above 200, you know, courage, willingness, acceptance. Even neutrality is more on the scale of love than fear. And those are the emotions that are associated with rest and repair. 

 

So as I talked about, you'll want to rest and repair sometimes for your body on a physical level because we are physical and emotional and mental beings. But you also want to emotionally get to a state of rest and repair. And that is something where the energy is constructive, not destructive, and where you're able to reach that level of the parasympathetic nervous system that you can slow down, rest, digest, get back to a neutral state, or even regain some of your power or your health. Fear is what happens as humans as we perceive reality from our physical senses. We think that's what there is. We consider our perceptions real. But fear always distorts our perception and confuses us as to what's going on. Love is the total absence of fear.

As humans, we believe that.

 

As humans, we believe the fears of the past can predict and prevent any fears of the future coming true. Or at least we can try to control it if we're afraid. But basically, when we are afraid of the past, and we spend our time worrying about that, then we're thinking about the past and not in the present moment. For most of us, we spend our time either worrying about the past or fearing something in the future. So being in the present moment is really such a difficult thing for most of us. Have you ever tried meditating? Sometimes it's so hard just to be still and to have no sounds and very little input, and just to watch your brain. It's like a fish flopping outside of the water. I'd be interested to know how much time people in general spend in the present moment. 

 

If 95% of our thoughts are subconscious, and 5% of the time, roughly, we're thinking conscious thoughts, I wonder if that's divided between the past and the future? Because being in the present moment is something you really have to practice and the way he's suggesting we can do that is to get rid of fear. He says with peace of mind as our single goal, forgiveness becomes our single function. Forgiveness is the vehicle used for correcting our misperceptions and for helping us let go of fear. Simply stated, to forgive is to let go. I think the forgiveness has to start with ourselves. It's so important. It's so important if you have any kind of chronic pain or disease, that you start being more compassionate with yourself, wherever possible, and forgiving yourself. 

 

And sometimes it seems silly to have to forgive ourselves for just being human. But

we're pretty harsh to ourselves. We really think if there's some parts of us that we don't like, it's kind of unforgivable. We have to accept the part of ourselves that, you know, it's kind of like when you have kids, and you love them, but you don't love everything they do. We have to be that same way with ourselves. We might not love everything we do. We definitely have room for improvement. That's always true. But beating ourselves up, coming from a place of fear, trying to motivate ourselves will not have the same effect as if we come from a place of love for ourselves, and forgiveness for all of those human parts of us, the humanity we share, and that includes the darkness and the light. 

 

If you're struggling with chronic pain or disease, you might need to forgive yourself for having that. You might want to work on forgiving your body. Sometimes we feel like our bodies have betrayed us, or that we should somehow be guilty for the pain that we do have and the effects of that on our loved ones and families and you can really have a lot of guilt or anger or shame or blame on the pain. Other people do not have to change for us to experience peace of mind. I love this because that's really good if we don't expect other people to change because that can be really disappointing, right? I mean, they're not good at changing how we want them to.

 

I know there are a couple people right now that I really wish would change. And it seems impossible that I could have peace of mind unless they just did some things differently and apologized. But we know this from the model too, right? The actions other people take, the things they say, those are just in our circumstance line. So the rest of the model is what we have control over:  our thoughts, feelings, actions and results. I'm going to read you some of his themes to live by:

Peace of mind is our single goal. Forgiveness is our single function and the way to achieve our goal of peace of mind. 

Through forgiveness, we can learn to judge. Through forgiveness we can learn not to judge others and to see everyone, including ourselves, as guiltless.

 

What do you think about that one? I have a hard time seeing myself as guiltless. I think it's just something, you know, it's how we're raised and in our survival instincts and our genetics that we want to see ourselves as bad so we want to improve, right? But yeah, seeing ourselves as guiltless. 

We can let go of fear when we stop judging, and stop projecting the past into the future, and live only in the now. 

We can learn to accept direction from our inner intuitive voice, which is our guide to knowing. 

 

What do you guys think about the inner voice? I have found that to be something I'm working on developing, but like super cool. I like how Glennon Doyle describes the next right step. Also, I've heard Nicole Sachs use that. So the next, or the next best considered action. So we get very overwhelmed if we're thinking of some big goal in the future. But if we can just take the moment, again, center in the moment, that's already a first step that's hard for us to do, but good for mindfulness every once in a while to check into what's going on in reality, not in the past or future in your head. So in reality, say we have a moment that we are making a decision, we can ask for what is the next best considered action and just listen. This takes some practice, but the more you practice listening, the more you'll hear. 

 

Did I lose anyone there? I hope not. If so, welcome to this level of the podcast. I believe in the inner voice. I really do. Okay, what works for me is the sway test. If you close your eyes and calibrate, so say, “Is my name Betsy?” and then I would kind of unwillingly, unwittingly lean forward, like I'm kind of pulled one direction or another, and forward is yes. And backward is no. So then I would ask, “Is my name Jack?” and probably feel this pull back. After calibrating that way, I can close my eyes and ask a question and see, you know, where my body is pulled. So, I think that's a cool way of just answering some yes or no questions to practice listening to your inner voice. And again, I would try to ask kind of relevant questions to what's going on. I guess you could ask it, you know, things about the future, but I think for that next best considered action, that is a way you can start asking yourself and your body and your inner wisdom some of these questions. So after our inner voice gives us direction, it will also provide the means for accomplishing whatever is necessary. Ooh, I like that. 

 

Glennon Doyle, in Untamed, talks about listening to her inner voice and then doing what it says and then this rush of liquid gold that she feels in her veins. I love that. For me, I've felt, you know, I consider it gratitude when I have that kind of response to something serendipitous that happens or me following that inner voice and having that reward. I feel like it's this lightness in my chest and kind of this fluttery, quick vibration that feels like a warm fuzzy, basically, inside my chest.

 

In following one's inner guidance, it's frequently necessary to make a commitment to a specific goal, even when the means for achieving it are not immediately apparent. This can be a reversal of the customary logic of the world and could be thought of as putting the cart before the horse. So basically, I hear this a lot with, like manifesting and the law of attraction. So if I haven't lost you already, here we go, another layer. But for you, for those of you who stick with me, I know you are my people. So, when you want to manifest something, you don't need to know the how. In fact, the more you get hung up on the how, the more confused you get, and the less likely you are to manifest it. 

 

So basically, have things you are working towards. Sometimes I think the law of attraction, people think that it just means have those goals and then just sit on the couch and hope for them. But I'm saying, like, have those goals, you don't have to know the why. But you can ask the next right action, the next best thing to do, the next best considered action to make money, to do whatever it is that you're trying to achieve. But the difference is, rather than trying to control reality, and plan out all the things and follow all the actions, you're having an intent, and you're having a commitment, and you're still putting in the work, but in a very, like trusting and loving way. And I think the more you do this, the easier it becomes. There are more of those serendipities which is that liquid gold and things just tend to work out, right?

 

We do have a choice in determining what we perceive, and the feelings we experience. 

Okay? Is that a hard one for you guys? Like, I get that if you think the world is a loving place, you are more likely to see those examples of love in the world. But it seems a little much that we can really determine what we perceive and the feelings we experience. But that's because he talks about kind of a continual letting go of the past and the judgment and the fears you have. And so you could be perceiving the same thing. But you determine what you perceive, because you're not seeing it through this filter of fear and defensiveness.

 

And the last of the themes to live by:

Through retraining of the mind, we can learn to use positive action imagination. Positive action imagination enables us to develop positive, loving motion pictures in our minds. 

So basically a positive, loving movie that you're watching and seeing in your mind, instead of perceiving things through a lens of fear. Sounds super easy and simple, right? Okay, maybe it doesn't, but this is the way to have peace of mind, to have more love than fear, and really the way to healing. He says, “With love as our only reality, health and wholeness can be viewed as inner peace and healing can be seen as letting go of fear.”

 

Okay, so this is why we have fear. Our belief system is based on our past experience, which is constantly being relived in the present with an anticipation of the future being just like the past. Yep, I think that's true. Our present perceptions are so colored by the past that we are unable to see the immediate happenings in our lives without distortion and limitations. So think about, you know, fear changes our perceptions. I mean, think about it when you're scared, like playing hide and go seek or something, and you're scared of being found. And your perceptions are changed, depending on what you're thinking and what you're on the lookout for. So, since we have so much of our present consciousness filtered through this lens that we take in reality through, we're basing basically everything we're coming into contact with in the present. We're seeing it through this filter from the past and our belief system from the past. And then we are anticipating that the future is going to be just like the past. So we're basically all in our heads all of the time. 

 

And reality is something that none of us can clearly see—none. Not one person. We're all confined to the reality that seems limited by our physical center. We're all confined by the reality that we perceive from our physical senses. So to have freedom, to have peace of mind, we have to detach from thinking of the past and the future, and choose to live in the now.

 

If you think of an interaction with someone, we can choose to have either love or fear. When people have fear, you would definitely think they would be defensive, right? But people can also be attacking from fear. He basically says that you wouldn't attack unless you feel threatened. To try to demonstrate your own strength, if you feel threatened, then you might attack first. So attack is really a defense. So whenever someone's acting defensively or attacking, you can know that they're acting out of fear. In order to experience peace of mind, instead of seeing someone as attacking us, we can see them as fearful. We're always either expressing love or fear. Fear is really a call for help and therefore, a request for love. 

 

To have peace, we must recognize that we do have a choice in determining what we will perceive. Peace of mind comes from not wanting to change others but simply by accepting them as they are. True acceptance is always without demands and expectations. That would be the manual, right? Those demands and expectations we have for other people. If we can throw away our manual, true acceptance, not wanting to change others, we can have peace of mind. Inner peace must be reached through forgiveness. And I love how he talks about forgiveness here. Forgiveness is the letting go of the past and is there for the means for correcting our misperceptions. Hmm, we're just remembering it wrong. Or not remembering it wrong, but like remembering in the human way through the senses that we filtered through our brain, right? So maybe we just didn't perceive the whole situation. And maybe we can just forgive ourselves for the humanity we all share. And know that we're just not going to be perfect all the time. And knowing that thought is only causing us pain, you know, any of the disappointment we feel in ourselves. 

 

For forgiveness, we have to let go whatever we think other people have done to us, or whatever we think we have done to them. Through this process of selective forgetting, we become free to embrace a present without the need to reenact our past. So really, how often do we reenact our past by judging what's going on in the current situation? And, you know, This is how these types of certain people react. When I say this, it's going to have this effect. We need to basically try to see the world through fresh eyes and try to see just, Is someone reacting out of fear, or out of love, are they needing love? Most of the time, I bet the people that bug us are reacting out of fear and we're reacting out of fear too. If we don't have the fear about the people that we're interacting with, then we probably have some fear from guilt and shame going on. 

 

Love in our society is often thought of as something that we get from someone else. If we think we need to get something from another we’ll love that person when we think we get what we want, and we’ll hate that person when we don't. We frequently have love/hate relationships in which we find ourselves trading conditional love. The getting motivation leads to conflict and distress and is associated with linear time. Giving means extending one's love with no conditions, no expectations, and no boundaries. Peace of mind occurs. Therefore, when we put our attention into giving and have no desire to get anything from or change another person, the giving motivation leads us to a sense of inner peace and joy, that is unrelated to time.

 

Okay, there's so much there that I think is so, so brilliant, so simple and so brilliantly said. Basically, we come to relationships often with this emptiness that we want filled. And if someone is not doing the right things that we're expecting, then we will not feel loved by that person. And if we do realize that they're doing some of the things, then we love that person. So conditional love, but when you could move into unconditional love, you're not trying to change the other person. And you have this timeless part of your relationship that is just peace and joy. 

 

Episode 9 is about relationships. It's really interesting because it is about how relationships are basically thoughts about the person that you have in your head, and how much you can control of what you perceive about the other person in relationships. And how, if your purpose is not to receive love from someone, but to give love, how much it changes your perception of the relationship, and as well, you just feel more love, because love is a feeling that you get by giving it. You can't feel loved by someone unless you're thinking thoughts that they love me. That's from your thoughts. But feeling love is something that is always available to you. Because all you have to do to do that is love someone else; to give love to someone, you get love. 

 

Here's some questions you can ask and retrain the mind. 

1. Do I choose to experience peace of mind? Or do I choose to experience conflict? 
2. Do I choose to experience love or fear? 
3. Do I choose to be a love finder or a fault finder? 
4. Do I choose to be a love giver or a love sender? 
5. Is this communication verbal or nonverbal? Is it loving to the other person and is it loving to me? 

Okay, I love that last sentence:  Is it loving to the other person and is it loving to me? That is such a good thing always to keep in mind, especially if you're trying to distinguish between being a people pleaser, or doing something out of unconditional love. So you might think that you need to let someone come over to your house every time they want to, and play with your kids as much as they want to show unconditional love. But if you are not finding that you're having the sense of love, if it's not loving to both you and that other person, then that's not unconditional love. That is what you're trying to do to get someone to like you or approve of you or to make them happy. That's people pleasing.

 

What we're striving for is communication that is loving to the other person and loving to yourself. When we find ourselves irritated, depressed, angry or ill, we can be sure we've chosen the wrong goal and are responding to fear. When we are not experiencing joy, we have forgotten to make peace of mind our single goal and have become concerned about getting rather than giving. We think the outside world is the reality, the outside world is the cause and we are the effect. What if what we see is actually just determined by the thoughts in our mind? So perception is more like a mirror of what we already believe than a fact out there in reality. Knowing that, you can choose to awaken in the morning and see a friendly world through the glasses that filter out everything except love. It is from our peace of mind that a peaceful perception of the world arises. Throughout the day, whenever you're tempted to be fearful, remind yourself that you can experience love instead.

 

How does fear of the past lead to wanting to control everything? I think a lot of us like to do that, right? So we have a belief system that our fearful past is going to become our fearful future, making the past and the future one. The memory of the fear and pain makes us feel vulnerable. And the feeling of vulnerability makes us want to control and predict the future at all costs. So an old belief system might be something like anger occurs because I've been attacked, and I am justified in a counter attack. So I'm responsible for protecting myself by talking back to someone who is angry at me. We change the world we see by changing our thoughts about it. By changing our thoughts, we are actually changing the cause, then the world we see, the effect, will change automatically. 

 

How crazy is that? It's kind of backwards of what we think. If we resist relinquishing the predictability of our past belief system, we resist assuming responsibility for our thoughts, feelings and reactions, since we always look within before going without. Since we always look within before looking out, we can perceive attack outside us only when we first have accepted attack as real within. Actually, we try to hide from ourselves that the attack we perceive is coming from somewhere else, when it actually came from our own mind. Those are called attack thoughts. And those are hurting us when we have attack thoughts of anger. When I believe that attacking others brings me something I want, let me remember that I always attacked myself first. I do not wish to hurt myself again today.

 

I like the concept of thinking of acting out of fear or love. When I think about things in my life, like if I'm making a decision, am I making that decision because I'm scared of what other people will think, or I'm scared of making the wrong decision, or am I making a choice out of love, love for myself and for my children, or whoever's involved? So, for example, if I was wanting to lose some weight, I could do that from fear or from love. I could be hating my body and want it to be different and think it's taking too long and I could eat a salad and I could exercise out of fear. Or I could take those very same actions of eating salad and exercising, because I love my body, because I want to fill it with good food. And I want to train my muscles and be in good physical health because I love my body and I love the way it feels to move it. And to feed it well.

 

He uses an example of living in the present. If you think of a little baby, they have this look of wonder in their eyes, like everything is so new. They don't have these preconceptions of the past. They don't see the world even as separate from themselves yet; they're not seeing the world as fragmented. They're seeing as them as part of the whole. But once we experience some emotions, the painful ones, the guilt, the loss, the grievances, the dissatisfaction, the rejection, we hold on to those and invest. We hold on to those experiences and become attached to them so that we end up having them in the future. Instead of thinking of the future as the extension of the guilty past, we can think of the future as an extension of the peaceful present that never ceases.

 

So if you're curious about coaching, or if you've been working on things on your own and you feel like you're just not getting the results you want, then please email me at info@bodyandmindlifecoach.com and check out my website, bodyandmindlifecoach.com.

 

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review. And, of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know who wants an unstoppable body and mind.

 

Episode #20- Clean Pain vs Dirty Pain

In this episode we talk about all of the kinds of pain- emotional pain, physical pain, and how each kind can have clean and dirty pain.  Clean pain is the kind of pain we want to feel in our life- yes there is pain we want to feel!  Dirty pain is characterized by 1-resisting reality, 2-layering negative meaning onto the pain,  or 3-making it mean something about the future.  Learn how to lessen the emotional and physical pain you are causing yourself by dirty pain.

 

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