Hello. It’s Barb Earle Neurotransformational Coach and health and well-being expert on a mission to help you get to know your brain better and why it matters.
Welcome to this month’s special edition entitled
Boost Mental Health and shift your perspective—pandemic related or not!
To help remember it more easily, I call it the Four Ps:
Pause. Perspective. Practise. Patience.
Today’s episode and this entire week is about the first P—Pause. It’s the most important step, as it sets you up for the next three. It’s easy to get swept away with our current state of living. Strong, ineffective emotions take over and put us in overdrive.
It’s like the gas pedal is pressed all the way down.
We simply don’t function as well. And, our mental health seems to be negatively affected.
There is an antidote.
Apply the brakes.
Pause.
Whenever you feel a strong emotion such as anger, anxiety, frustration or even feeling completely hopeless:
Pause.
Every time.
That’s it.
For today it doesn’t matter how long you pause or what you do after the pause. You’re simply taking time to create and associate a pause with stress-related emotions.
Here’s three things that happen in your brain and body
- By pausing each time you are creating neuroplasticity. This is your brain’s amazing ability to change. And, repetition enhances this process. In essence, you are creating an effective habit.
2. Taking a pause helps you move closer to the region of your brain responsible for clear thinking. This shift rewards you with
the release of a bio-substance that behaves a little like pesto-bismal for your brain. It calms down the impact of stress
chemicals in your body.
3. Your nervous system switches over to the parasympathetic component which gets you into a ‘rest and restore’ state instead
of a fight, flight or freeze state.
You give yourself the opportunity to reset, reconnect and reconsider the situation. These days any pause and reset are most welcome.
Your mission today is to simply pause.
Let the neuroscience of your brain and body do the rest.
The next post looks at one layer to help reinforce and enhance this action called pause.
Until we meet in Person.
Brain to Brain.
Heart to Heart.
Ciao!