Are You a Procrastinator or the ANTI Procrastinator?

Just as we are all different from one other, so are our cravings. The same situation can make two people react very differently. For example, playing the slots at a casino will give some people a hit of dopamine in anticipation of a win. For others it triggers cortisol/anxiety because they anticipate a loss.

Two siblings are dreading a big report soon due at school. At the mere thought of starting it, both feel anxious. But one will avoid it and procrastinate, putting off the anxiety. The other child, although anxious, knows that completing the project will alleviate her anxiety, and the thought of that triggers dopamine, so that child starts the project right away. If you are a parent it can help seeing much of your children’s behavior from this standpoint as it will aid you greatly in understanding them not to mention helping them to understand themselves.

For the past ten thousand years, the threat of danger had more impact on our survival than good experiences; therefore, our amygdala was primed to label most experiences as dangerous and has continued to do so right up until present day. We were built to last, not for lasting happiness, which is why we learn faster from pain than from pleasure. Each time something happens that we don’t like, cortisol magnifies the feeling, embedding it into our memory as a threat of some kind. 

For example, your boss gives you a stellar review, but at the very end, he says, “The only thing I would like to see improved is_______.” Yet after your meeting, all your brain focuses on is the one thing he wants you to improve. 

We all tend to do this, regardless of the feedback or the source of it. The brain digs out the negative comment; sometimes it may even dig through a positive one and think, “Hmm, but what was he really trying to say?” We tell ourselves that we do this because we just want to improve but that is contrived crap! The real reason we do it is that the brain interprets any slightly negative feedback from another person as us being at risk for being “kicked out of the tribe.”

FOR ANYONE WHO HAS BOUGHT MY BOOK Why We Are Wired to Worry and How Neuroscience Will Help You Fix It THIS WEEK OR DOES SO BETWEEN NOW AND SUNDAY AT MIDNIGHT I WILL SEND YOU A CODE TO GIVE YOU THE AUDIOBOOK VERSION AS WELL FOR FREE. JUST PRIVATE MESSAGE ME A PICTURE OF YOUR RECEIPT ADN I WILL SEND YOU THE CODE. MAYBE THERE IS SOMEONE WHO YOU KNOW REALLY NEEDS TO HEAR IT! Limited to the first 15 responders

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FREE Audio Version of my BOOK!

FOR ANYONE WHO HAS BOUGHT MY BOOK Why We Are Wired to Worry and How Neuroscience Will Help You Fix It THIS WEEK OR DOES SO BETWEEN NOW AND SUNDAY AT MIDNIGHT I WILL SEND YOU A CODE TO GIVE YOU THE AUDIOBOOK VERSION AS WELL FOR FREE.J UST PRIVATE MESSAGE ME A PICTURE OF YOUR RECEIPT AND I WILL SEND YOU THE CODE. MAYBE THERE IS SOMEONE WHO YOU KNOW REALLY NEEDS TO HEAR IT! Limited to the first 15 responders

http://www.amazon.com/Wired-Worry-Neuroscience-Will-Help/dp/1508616272/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427747166&sr=1-1&keywords=Why+Wired+Worry

Do You Think Like an Addict? Yep We All Do!

We human beings are just like addicts, making decisions from one moment to the next based on 2 questions: What will give me the greatest amount of pleasure right now or the least amount of discomfort? Every situation—physical, emotional, or social—is fueled, directed, and regulated by the drug effect we are seeking from the brain’s own chemical pharmacy, and this pharmacy is open twenty-four hours a day! The timely release of the “feel good”  chemicals in the brain underpins a healthy emotional balance. 

However, scientist know that we humans often take bigger steps to avoid the pain of feeling bad than to pursue feeling good and you are going to learn to reverse that. When we are trying to ease discomfort we may chase a hit of any of these three neurochemicals, by reaching for ice cream, having sex, or sitting down to watch a good movie; the multi-taskers in the group may attempt all three at the same time. However, as we all have experienced the feelings are short-lived. That is because these neurochemicals have a job, and that is to push our behavior in a direction, not put us in a “good mood”. That good feeling is just like the proverbial carrot, always tempting us to chase another short-lived buzz and it can become a vicious cycle. We don’t want the buzz we want a sense of wellbeing. This even effects our eating habits as we often eat foods for comfort not to feed our hunger. ( A subject I will be tackling in a future blog that I am writing for Psychology Today)

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As Your Brain Changes So Does Your Perspective

Dieting is another example of how beliefs/perception can alter people’s experience and outcome. In the first few months, many individuals become frustrated that they can’t eat the way others do. They may believe they are being deprived or even punished, causing a lowering of the feel-good chemicals, dopamine, and serotonin. However, if they stick with it, and begin to lose the weight, they feel better about themselves. Then their brains release hits of dopamine and serotonin whenever they just think about their new eating habits. (Why people go off their diet is a subject for an entire book). The job of these neurochemicals is to make us feel good when we do things that benefit us. The issue is that sometimes we have to teach our brains WHAT IS GOOD for us!

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  #beliefs #stopstressing #behappy #happiness #happiness #anger #moodiness #amygdala #dopamine #serotonin #oxytocin #feelbetter #stopworrying #eckhartTolle #present #opinions #amygdala #emotions #perspectives # temper #rage, #outburst #fury #rage

Nothing Stays The Same— Especially Your Brain!

We were taught in high school that if we drank alcohol, we would destroy brain cells that would never grow back. (Thank God that was wrong because it failed as a deterrent to our partying.) Now neuroscientists understand that every time we learn something new or even practice a skill repeatedly, the brain changes accordingly. Someone who has played piano or a stringed instrument will have a larger volume of area in brain dedicated to finger movement than the average person will have. This is neuroplasticity. On a grander scale, this process occurs in the brain of a blind person whose hearing develops way beyond what the normal range would be. The part of the brain that used to receive input from the eyes (called the occipital lobe)looks for another way to receive information, so it joins forces with the part of the brain used for hearing, increasing the amount of brainpower dedicated for hearing. Stroke victims can sometimes recover speech or movement because the undamaged portion of their brain begins learning the required action. However, the most magnificent illustration is that neurosurgeons have performed hundreds of hemispherectomies (removing half of a person’s brain) because of disorders that are uncontrollable in any other way. Unbelievably, the surgery has no apparent effect on personality or memory. Some of the patients are now in college doing very nicely; one such person became a champion bowler, and one is a chess champion of his state. I know what you are wondering now—and the answer is no, we can’t just have the sad part of the brain cut out. Thankfully, however, we won’t have to. 

For the next month I am making this very generous offer to be a speaker at your club or organization at no cost to you!. That’s right FREE!.I will build the talk about my new book and the specifics of your group. You must book me this month for any future date at least 2 weeks out. Private message me for more info.  Must be within 40 minute drive.

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  #beliefs #stopstressing #behappy #happiness #happiness #anger #moodiness #amygdala #dopamine #serotonin #oxytocin #feelbetter #stopworrying #eckhartTolle #present #opinions #amygdala #emotions #perspectives # temper #rage, #outburst #fury #rage

Put Yourself in a Good Mood!

All it takes to move your mood toward a positive one is simply reprograming it to focus on good the way it looks for problems. Acknowledging that something is good or counting your blessings is very different from taking ten to twenty seconds to dwell on it so you can feel it on an emotional level. A study published in 2010 reported that when experiencing positive events, focusing attention on the present moment and engaging in positive rumination promotes a sense of well-being. Conversely, being distracted while having a good experience lowers the sense of well-being. How many times have you taken a few seconds to replay a compliment over in your mind until you actually felt happy about it? Probably never. Have you ever taken ten seconds to replay a hug from your loved one and really feel touched by the love? Of course not. We tell ourselves that, those things are not important enough or live changing enough to give them our focus. But you have it backwards. Big things only make us feel better because WE ALLOW ourselves to FEEL them not just think about them. This is where everything changes! Feeling the good around you will permeate the emotional area in your brain where words cannot reach. You can’t talk your way into a good mood; you must feel your way. You will learn to deliberately seek and hold onto the positive things around you, allowing these observations to become amazing feelings that sink into your whole being.

Take twenty seconds right now to envision a person or pet showering you with love; Yes that means you. Put the book down. Really feel the love filling you. Did you feel the emotional lift? Now imagine carrying that feeling around most of the day. Can you picture how different you would feel if you did this regularly?

For the next month I am making this very generous offer to be a speaker at your club or organization at no cost to you!. That’s right FREE!.I will build the talk about my new book and the specifics of your group. You must book me this month for any future date at least 2 weeks out. Private message me for more info.  Must be within 40 minute drive.

BUY NEW BOOK Wired To Worry on Amazon

  #beliefs #stopstressing #behappy #happiness #happiness #anger #moodiness #amygdala #dopamine #serotonin #oxytocin #feelbetter #stopworrying #eckhartTolle #present #opinions #amygdala #emotions #perspectives # temper #rage, #outburst #fury #rage

DO YOU KNOW WHY YOU REALLY GET ANGRY?

Wonder why you get angry so easy? The average person has between 32 and 48 thoughts per minute, according to the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging at the University of Southern California and the National Science Foundation. That can add up to a total of 70,000 thoughts per day! However, what is scary is that several studies have also shown that 80 percent of those thoughts are negative, and 90 percent of those are similar to the ones you had the day before! 90%!  Now we all have genuine situations to deal with but at those times when your brain pushes the panic button and has you yelling over something small, I can assure you there is something else going on in your mind creating the firestorm, and probably something unrelated. At the early stage of getting upset, you generally have an inaccurate perception of what is angering you. Underlying thoughts and memories from the past often attach themselves to the things happening in the present, causing you to overreact. You may be ruminating on something upsetting that took place yesterday when you suddenly spill something and let out a stream of expletives. All the while, you are completely unaware of what really triggered your outburst.  

In my new book I teach you how to separate an upsetting event from your ongoing undercurrent of worrisome thoughts. Only then will you be able to figure out what you are really feeling, and therefore how to feel better. Because that’s your brain, a never-ending stream of what ifs and worry about how life did or will go wrong. Welcome to the Worry-Go-Round™ The average person has between 32 and 48 thoughts per minute, according to the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging at the University of Southern California and the National Science Foundation. That can add up to a total of 70,000 thoughts per day! Several studies have also shown that 80 percent of those thoughts are negative, and 90 percent of which are similar to the ones you had the day before! 

BUY NEW BOOK Wired To Worry on Amazon

  #beliefs #stopstressing #behappy #happiness #happiness #anger #moodiness #amygdala #dopamine #serotonin #oxytocin #feelbetter #stopworrying #eckhartTolle #present #opinions #amygdala #emotions #perspectives # temper #rage, #outburst #fury #rage