How I Lost My Mind & Then Got It Back Again

Giovanni Bartolomeo August 2, 2017

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I recently got to sit down and interview a good friend of mine, Kasper van der Meulen, founder of mindlift.com. An inspiring guy and fellow Wim How Method instructor, he used a few simple tools to pull himself out of a dark place that many people I speak to (including myself at one point) are in. I asked him to share his experience in the article below. If you want to view the full interview. you can find it at the end of the article.

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How I Lost My Mind, Took It Back, and Lifted It Up 

Written by: Kasper van Der Meulen

“This is what going crazy must feel like,” I remember thinking as my anxiety slowly turned my stomach upside down and sent a tidal wave of dark thoughts into my consciousness. My mental space used to be clear and orderly, with everything correctly in its place, but now it’s like I’m being terrorized by a rampant monkey that’s opening up the cabinets, tossing around my files, digging up old junk, and placing all of it into the front of my mind, all while screaming, “Look, this is wrong! So is this! Remember this? That’s wrong too!”

A few years ago, flashes of anxiety like this would come upon me regularly, and would seriously make me doubt my sanity. It turns out that this question of sanity is rooted in the wrong mindset, however; sanity had nothing to do with it. You see, it’s easy to feel like we are alone in our struggles, like we are somehow inherently different, inherently not good enough. In my experience, our inherent worth is out of the question, and our daily choices, habits, and behaviours are the things that shape our mental and emotional states.

Interestingly, in that period of mental and physical distress, I had not linked my collection of bad habits, including some popular favourites like smoking, drinking, overeating, binge-watching, and anything else I could use to escape reality, to my eighty pounds of excess weight, heart arrhythmia problem, back and shoulder pains, migraines, low energy, and poor concentration, or to the way that they led to feelings of anxiety and depression.

After some internal struggle, I finally went to visit a therapist, who was really a meditation teacher. He gave me a few mental exercises to get a grip on my thoughts, and I learned to work with the instant gratification-seeking, anxiety-producing monkey in my mind. Instead of trying to suppress and fight the monkey, I started studying it like a wild animal by simply paying careful attention to it and testing how it reacted to certain things.

Training the Monkey

I now had clarity to observe how my mental intention completely changed every physiological state in my body in a split second. That’s when it hit me — maybe my mind, my physiology, and their connection were tools that I could learn to work with. In that moment, a subconscious change of mind made the difference between feeling okay to feeling absolutely miserable. But what if a conscious change of mind could have a similar effect, just in a constructive and positive direction? If the mind is just a tool that I can learn to use, maybe I can decide how to use it, in a similar way that one can use a hammer to build a house or to bash someone’s head in. The hammer doesn’t care — it’s just a tool. The owner of the tool decides its application. That’s when I decided to become the owner of the tool that is my mind and lift myself into a new way of living.

This was not my first attempt at getting a grip on life, but this one was definitely different. There are three stupendously important mindset changes that caused me to finally make it happen:

1. I used to blame external circumstances. Now I took full responsibility for everything in my life.
2. Instead of trying to change who I was, my inherent identity, I set out to change what I did, my behaviour.
3. I started to see my health and happiness not as a fixed state, but as a skill that I could practice.

As a science teacher and an education innovator, I was used to plowing through research papers and studies, so I looked for ways to translate the scientific literature into simple applications that I could use right away. This personal study took me to the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and biohacking, but also to ancient esoteric philosophies such as Zen and different types of breathwork. Science can be great for qualifying and quantifying things, but it can also develop a blindspot for the unquantifiable. Esoteric practices can be great for delving into deeper states of consciousness, but can also be clouded by ‘woo woo’ concepts, mystique, and tradition. I decided to apply a semi-scientific, personalized approach to testing it all, stripping it down to the core and
just keeping what worked for me.

The first game-changers I found were:

• Meditation: It trains the monkey mind to not react to every single thing.
• Mindful running: It strengthens the mind to stay focused, keeping the monkey busy.
• Nutrition: In my case, sugar and dairy feed the monkey, so I took them out.

With every lifestyle change I felt better. My concentration skyrocketed, my heart palpitations and deep anxieties almost disappeared, I lost weight, and cut down substantially on smoking and all-night video game and junk-food binges. I was out of my immediate mental and physical distress and back to a “normal” level of health. Still, I felt the need to continue. If I could move from bad health to normal health this effectively, what else could I gain? I decided to continue to optimize my development, both personally and professionally. I had already climbed out of my hole, so why not keep climbing to the top of the mountain and see what the view is like?

My insight into the role that focused attention and mental fitness plays in our lives inspired me to continue to study, experiment, and apply everything that could improve my mental and physical fitness. In the following years, I lost eighty pounds, quit smoking, fine-tuned my nutrition, and adopted a host of helpful habits and practices. I started to hunt down and challenge any and every limiting belief that I had about myself. Soon enough, all the “impossibles” I had learned to believe melted before my eyes. The second set of game-changers I found were

• Breathwork: It taught me how every breath I take influences the state of my physiology.
• Cold exposure: Extreme environmental stress acts like a mirror of the ego and allows one to deeply train focus, effectively shutting up the monkey.
• Re-wilding: A daily practice to get in touch with nature, human nature.

Just a few years earlier, I had days when I was bedridden with migraines, back pains, and bad knees. I would spend weeks battling anxiety and stress and was so unfocused that I could hardly finish a sentence. By now, I’ve run multiple marathons on my bare feet, can lift twice my body weight dead off the floor, have climbed freezing mountains in just my shorts, created a successful business, wrote a bestselling book about focus in 30 days, and am travelling the world, teaching others these principles. The main difference between then and now? A series of conscious decisions and the willingness to put in the work.

Why am I telling you all this?

Here are a few things you should know:

You Are Not Alone

You either are or know someone who is dealing with (or has dealt with) burnout, depression, addiction, obesity, anxiety, etc. It seems to be a natural part of life. What’s unnatural is suppressing the truth about it and wearing an armour of fear-based conditioning that’s keeping you from truly living your life. Let’s start standing up, telling our stories, and seeing that we’re all not so different.

I Am Not Special

In this phase of my life — being a bestselling author travelling the world to teach people about these things — it’s easy to think that I have some kind of talent or special ability that allowed me to go from that unhealthy and unhappy past version to this current, more optimal version of me. I don’t. It’s abut doing the hard work day in and day out. That’s something you can do, too.

You Can Do It

The statement “you can do it” has lost a lot of its power due to overuse in the motivation industry. I’m not saying this to motivate you. I’m trying to say that this actually can be done. Once you start disconnecting your behaviour from your self-worth, learning about how your brain works best and what you really need to function optimally, it can be done. But it takes time, discomfort, and a lot of practice.

It Is As Simple As You Make It

The process of taking charge of your life can be very simple — hard, yes, but simple. In my book I have described the process of mental fitness. What is the mental muscle you want to train? What is the minimal amount of training you need to start to strengthen that muscle? If you can boil it down to just five minutes a day, you will be amazed at what you can do in 30 days, let alone a year. Here are some of my favourite five-minute practices for lifting your mind:

• Start breathing: Box breathing, 4,7,8 breathing, belly breathing, or just sitting down and watching your breath happen can all be super powerful. But if you really want get into it, check out the Wim Hof Method.
• Cold showers: It’s a little get-out-of-your-comfort-zone practice to start the day. If you do what is hard, life will become easy, and the cold shower is a great way to start (again, check out the Wim Hof Method).
• Learn to run barefoot: Jogging for just five minutes on your bare feet will strengthen your feet and improve your proprioception (spatial awareness).
• Sit down and shut up: Step back and watch the monkey mess around without interrupting or judging it. That’s it. Just  5-10 minutes a day. Another word for this is meditation.

Below is the audio and video of a full interview I did with Kasper where he shares more about his personal journey and some of his experiences.

Please feel free to connect with me on Facebook HERE or Instagram (@thewaywithin.me) HERE if you wish to follow my journey. You can also subscribe on YouTube below. If you want to join the Way Within mailing list to stay updated with new episodes, you can do so at our website www.thewaywithin.me, and please join our Facebook community filled with many people sharing their journey.

Research Shows Our Genes Are Affected By Thoughts & Perceptions: More So Than We Realize

HeartfulnessAugust 8, 2017

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LISA ANN CATANO shares some of the research findings in epigenetics that show us that our genes are affected by our beliefs and thinking more than we realize.

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Dr. Bruce Lipton, a cellular biologist who was at the University of Wisconsin cloning human muscle cells, is best known for challenging the existing belief that the human body is controlled by genes. In his video The Biology of Perception, he demonstrates to the audience that perception affects biology.
In one of his experiments, a stem cell was isolated and put into a petri dish (a cell-culture dish), where it divided every ten hours. The cells were then split up into three groups and placed into separate petri dishes, each of which contained different growth mediums. In the first dish the cells formed bone, in the second dish they formed muscle, and in the third dish they formed fat cells. All of the cells were genetically identical when they were first separated, yet each dish produced different results.

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Dr. Lipton’s research is life changing for all of us,
because his research enunciates that
we have the power to choose our destiny at any given point.
From victims we can become masters of our lives,
as we can determine how we respond to the environment.

Dr Bruce Lipton during a lecture.

Why was this so? Since the genes were all identical, the differences arose because of the environment in which they were placed. The environment was the stimulus to which the cells responded, which means genes respond to their environment. It is the genes’ perception of their environment that causes them to behave in a certain way.

We have been taught that our genes determine our lives — our behaviour, emotions, character, health, and biology — and that we do not have any control over our lives. We have been told that our genes are inherited from our family and we are a victim to this heredity: If there is cancer in your family, you are vulnerable to that illness; if your father or mother were prone to addiction, you will to some extent be the same, or feel entitled to justify similar behaviour. This brings about a feeling of powerlessness, that your life is destined to be a certain way because of your genes. So a kind of apathy takes over, a ‘Why should I try?’ attitude.

Dr. Lipton’s research is life changing for all of us, because his research enunciates that we have the power to choose our destiny at any given point. From victims we can become masters of our lives, as we can determine how we respond to the environment. Of course the genetic patterns are there, but they are not as fixed as we once believed.

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Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

– Viktor E. Frankl

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You were born into the world without any beliefs, and since you learned to believe certain things through the instruction of your parents, education, and social systems, you have the ability to unlearn them and try new ones. As you change your thinking, you change your mind and biology, which culminates in an evolved reality.

In addition to the new understanding that perception influences behaviour, Dr. Lipton goes even deeper by saying that perception not only influences genes, but it also rewrites them! Like any living being, the cell is a conscious organism. By virtue of its state of consciousness, the cells’ perception of the environment is what controls the gene. In his study, Dr. Lipton provides proof of how a belief actually switches on a gene.

To demonstrate the power of belief, let’s take the example of our beloved insect, the bumble bee. Aerodynamically the bumble bee is not really designed to fly. This is apparent in observing its rounded hairy body that is much larger than the little wings that struggle to carry it. Now imagine that someone repeatedly told the bumble bee at a young age that she was not designed for flight; do you suppose she would be flying today? Of course not, and yet the bumble bee flies nonetheless, even if a bit clumsily at times. Belief is powerful and can often override the most logical reasoning.

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When the mind is peaceful,
we are free from worries and mental discomfort,
and we begin to experience true happiness.
In this state of grace and Godliness,
healing can be restored.

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A Medical Example

In his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Carl G. Jung describes a patient sent by an American colleague with the accompanying diagnosis: “Alcoholic neurasthenia: incurable.” Jung discovered that the patient was struggling to hold onto his manhood in a tyrannical relationship with his mother. According to Jung she was a “power devil.” She owned a large firm where the son worked and was very unhappy. Due to her power games, he chose to drink as a way of self-medicating. He did not have the adequate self-belief or strength of character to stand up to her, or resign from the comfort of the wealthy family business.

 

Jung took the initiative, behind his back, to give his mother a medical certificate stating his inability to carry out his work-related responsibilities due to his alcoholism, and recommended his redundancy. Although the man was furious with Jung (albeit an unethical move for a medical practitioner), he went on to create a life in which he thrived. He built a successful career, among other things, and his wife was extremely grateful to Jung for his instinctive approach to what seemed like a hopeless case. The man gave up drinking and his character developed and strengthened handsomely.

This is a fine example of a man who generated a wholesome life and personality by changing the constituents of his environment. By removing himself from a negative situation that did no service to his character, he was able to create a new life.

Meditation as a remedy.

Remedy

Meditation and visualization are strong repertoires for holistic health and vitality. Studies illustrate that meditation can diminish all kinds of physical diseases and psychological disorders. The immune system, blood pressure, pain response, stress hormone levels, and even cellular health can all be improved. Psychologically, meditation reduces depression and anxiety disorders, ADHD, bipolar disorder, addiction, and eating disorders, among others.
Meditation actually makes structural changes to the brain and reprograms the DNA. The way neurons communicate with each other can change and thus create new circuits. Some brain regions become denser than others and others become less dense. Neurogenesis and neuroplasticity improve, including memory, critical thinking, and overall cognitive functionality.
Meditation alters perception and the mind. It is a method for acquainting our minds with virtue. The more familiar our mind is with virtue, the calmer and more peaceful it becomes. When the mind is peaceful, we are free from worries and mental discomfort, and we begin to experience true happiness. In this state of grace and Godliness, healing can be restored. Thus, the practice of meditation confirms the outcome of Dr. Lipton’s experiments, which state that perception influences genes and can also rewrite them.

Sources
The Biology of Belief 10th Anniversary Edition: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter & Miracles
The Biology of Perception, Dr. Bruce Lipton.
Kymatica, Ben Stewart

Memories, Dreams, Reflections, C.G. Jung & Aniella Jaffe, 1963, Pantheon Books.
Meditation Health Benefits: What The Practice Does To Your Body, Meredith Melnick.

The New Meditation Handbook, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, 2013, Tharpa Publications.
Psychology, John W. Santrock, 7th edition, 2003, Chapter 6: ‘States of Consciousness’, McGraw-Hill College.

About Lisa Ann Catano

Four Simple Hacks That Can Help Liberate Anyone From Experiencing Stress

Heartfulness August 7, 2017

 

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This is an excerpt of a workshop coordinated by VÉRONIQUE BRASSELET and EMMA MILESI during the Heartfulness days at the Cité Internationale in Lyon in January 2016.

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The Heart’s Simplicity Reduces Stress

Stress is everywhere in our daily lives. When it is positive (eustress), it is considered beneficial; when it is negative (distress), it inhibits our potential and prevents us from accomplishing our objectives.

What is stress?

Stress is something that causes a state of strain or tension.

What hides behind stress?

Our fears. Fear is part of daily life, and it is present everywhere. According to its intensity, stress will be more or less severe, uncomfortable, challenging, or crippling.

Various sources of stress

1. Daily worries — for example, missing the bus and arriving late, or being unable to finish all that was planned for the day.

2. Undergoing fear — for example, speaking in public, being interviewed for a job, not reaching our parents’ expectations, or required job performance.

3. Undergoing binding, sometimes crippling fear — for example, reliving an old wound that made us suffer. Examples include not being loved, being abandoned, failing, hurting others, or the fear of being judged by others.

4. The growing pace of life — for example, fear of anything new, of change, or of not adapting.

Fear/Stress is a film we create for ourselves, a mental scenario, which confines us to a narrow vision excluding reality. Our interpretation distorts reality into false beliefs about ourselves and others.

Stress, in particular distress, reveals that something is not quite right, and allows us to question ourselves: “What is causing me to feel stressed or frightened?”

Various Reactions Under Stress

Our survival instinct forces us to act in one of three ways: defend ourselves, flee, or stay dumbstruck on the spot!

Stress acts specifically at different levels

1. The Brain

 

Stress specifically targets the brain areas implicated in coordinating cognition and emotions:

a) The cognitive functions coordinated by the prefrontal cortex, such as language, memory, and the ability to reason, plan, and organize.

b) Adaptability — calmness, problem solving, and decision-making.

c) Emotions, such as aggression, fear, and pleasure, controlled by the limbic system.

According to the degree of stress, we more or less lose these faculties, and this can lead to lack of spontaneity, to depression, and even to psychomotor retardation. The limbic system is the seat of our impulses, fears, and angers. It emotionally colours any information received and grades it as agreeable or disagreeable. Its main function is survival by suitable adaptation to the social environment. Under stress, it focuses on survival — fight or flight — and deprives us from thinking clearly, e.g. blank page syndrome. Consequently, with stress (distress), we lose our capacity for reflection, and emotions take over. Take, for example, a job interview; some will have clammy hands while others will not turn up, the stress being too unbearable.

How Does the Brain Treat Information?

Imagine your brain as a multi-storey house.

First of all, information goes to the reptilian brain, the instinctive brain. If the body is in survival mode, as when you are hungry, for instance, the information will be slowed down, even completely blocked if the hunger is severe. If body survival is not threatened, the information moves to the second storey into the limbic system, the emotional brain.

 

Here the information is classified as agreeable or disagreeable. If it is agreeable, it passes through to the cortex and then you may have an answer to your mathematics problem! If it is considered disagreeable, failure is guaranteed! In the worst of cases, the limbic system will not allow the information to pass to the cortex.

How does the limbic system assess information? Like an arbitrator, it adds up the plusses and minuses. For each disagreeable thought it allocates a minus, and for each agreeable thought it allocates a plus. Say you have a math problem. If you say, “I am hopeless at math,” or “This teacher is poor,” or “My family has never been good at math,” it is a minus. If, on the other hand, you are feeling positive, then you create a plus. To continue the metaphor of the multi-storey house, let’s say there is a door to go from the limbic system to the cortex. The plusses try to open the door, while the minuses try to shut it. The team that has the most wins. What does a team coach do before a football match? He talks positively to the players, saying, “We will win,” and “We are the best,” so the information passes directly to the cortex and the team can play at its best level.

In fact, when information is considered agreeable or very agreeable by the limbic system, the limbic system passes it to the cortex, and then the cortex deals with it as a priority.

2. The Hormones

The hormones adrenaline and noradrenalin are released in stressful situations, and they accelerate our heart rhythm and breathing to allow the organs linked to movement to increase their functions and thus to support defence or escape.

3. Behaviour and Emotions

Stress leads to:

• Dependency, jealousy, withdrawal, and even submission,
• Withdrawal due to fear of showing weaknesses and not meeting expectations
• Difficulty in saying no, tendency to avoid conflicts,
• Hindrance of all action and relations,
• Withdrawal due to sadness and despondency,
• Compensation, such as eating disorders, drinking, and smoking.

Activity: How to Liberate Stress in Four Stages

 

Ask a friend to guide you through the steps.

Step 1: Observe it

Put yourself at ease, breathe calmly, and close your eyes. Observe any current stress that you feel.

Identify the emotions that take place inside you when you are aware of that stress.

Identify the physical symptoms that appear, such as sweating, breathing, clammy hands, etc.

Identify how you react to this stress: Do you run away, stand up to it, or become inert?

Note the stress level on a scale from 1 to 10. Breathe in slowly and deeply through your nose, and breathe out through your mouth.

Step 2: Feel it

Recognize it, expressing inwardly, “I feel stressed because…”

Inhale slowly through your nose, and exhale through your mouth.

Feel this stress as deeply as possible, so as to integrate it.

Feel the emotions that surface. We are often afraid to feel these emotions because we think they are bad and we will become like that.

Inhale slowly through your nose, and exhale through your mouth.

Step 3: Accept it

Welcome your stress without judging and with benevolence, as it is part of you.

Inhale slowly through your nose, and exhale through your mouth.

Accept it. What feelings occur when you do? What physical changes do you observe?

Welcome this new sensation, explore it, appreciate it, amplify it while breathing naturally, let it spread throughout your body, and feel the energy circulating.

Step 4: Integrate it

Do you feel that something has changed or loosened? Be ready to listen to a new understanding. Bring your attention again to the same stress: How do you feel now with it? If there is no improvement, wait some time and if necessary, try again. Note the stress level that you feel now on a scale of 1 to 10. Thank yourself that you took care of yourself. When we take the time to welcome what happens inside us and acknowledge it, we digest it better. We give ourselves permission to live in the present. Then, slowly, we will accept it, integrate it, and then transcend it. This is our personal work. When we cut ourselves off from our feelings, we try to stand back and intellectualize, and then our emotions take over. To free ourselves from our stresses is a proof of maturity and wisdom.

7 Unusual Signs You’re Reaching Your Potential

Mark DeNicola August 10, 2017

To one person it could be getting promoted to a particular position within the company they’ve worked at for years. To another, it could have nothing to do with a traditional job path, and instead be about building a life that allows them the freedom and time to do the things they love regularly.

No matter how you currently define your potential, chances are that you often criticize yourself for not closing the gap between present day you and your ‘ideal’ state sooner. 

In hopes of breaking that unnecessary self-criticism, I’ve put together a list of seven unusual signs that you’re reaching your true potential, in both video and written form.

See how many of these you currently exemplify, and choose to give yourself some credit for the incredible progress that you are making.

1. You’ve Stopped Giving a S**t About What Others Think

In my opinion, one of the biggest obstacles to someone reaching their potential is being overly preoccupied with what others think of them. Whether your goals are common or farfetched, you need to be able to pursue them in whatever way you deem most effective for you, rather than in a manner that you believe will be most socially acceptable.

I’m not suggesting that we all act recklessly when making decisions, with no consideration for how they could impact others, but rather, that we stop limiting our approach based on what others are going to think of it. The more often you are true to yourself and your needs, the closer you’ll be to attaining whatever your potential entails.

2. You Dictate Your Bedtime

This may sound silly, but you’d be amazed by how many of us (even those well into adulthood) continue to rob ourselves of our beauty rest. I know that the demands of work can make controlling your bedtime difficult, but nothing makes a long work day harder than ignoring your body’s desire for rest — and not taking advantage of the times it works best. 

Those on the cusp of reaching their potential will happily either go to bed early or stay up late based on what they know works best for them, without any care for what others might think of their decision.

Helpful Hint: Find it difficult to fall asleep early? Try cutting yourself off from tech like your laptop and phone 1-2 hours before your desired bedtime.

3. You Spend Money on You, Not What Others Expect You To

Let me immediately clarify that I am not suggesting that reaching your potential involves spending selfishly. What I am arguing is that you should choose to allocate your resources in ways that benefit you and your long-term goals, rather than in ways that others may expect.

Just because “most people” your age own a car or go out for dinner several nights per week, doesn’t mean that you necessarily have to as well. If those things are important to you, awesome, but if not, a big sign you’re reaching your potential is your ability to differentiate between what does and doesn’t matter to you and act accordingly.

 4. You’re Grateful for Your Past

We’ve all been through our fair share of hardship in life, and while many of us would love to have avoided much of that pain, we also know that we cannot change the past. A key sign you’re reaching your potential is the way you choose to look back upon your life story thus far.

Do you regularly dwell upon your past, basking in the victimhood, pain, or sadness that came along with it? Or do you accept it for what it was, and instead focus on appreciating and applying what you learned about yourself, others, and how to handle particular circumstances from it?

5. You’re Okay With Being Wrong 

No matter how spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually intelligent you believe yourself to be, we are all wrong from time to time in this life. And, in my opinion, one of the most obvious indications that you’re reaching your potential is your acceptance of that reality.

The more you admit to your shortcomings and are willing to learn from others, rather than wasting your time pointing the blame elsewhere, the more likely you are to expedite your path to success.

6. You Happily Compliment Others

How do you view other people’s accomplishments? Does seeing someone succeed at something that you deem admirable inspire you to pursue your own goals, or does it fill you with jealousy?

Feeling jealous has never done anyone any good, yet we seem to love casually stating it (“I’m so jealous”) as if it does. You genuinely being happy for, rather than jealous of, others people will save you a ton of time and mental energy that you can instead direct toward your own projects.

7. Patience Is Not a Problem 

We all know what it feels like to be impatient. And while we might wish that life never required us to be patient, we also know that will never be the case. Pretty well every big accomplishment in life that you deem admirable took time to develop into what it is today.

Another sign you’re reaching your potential is that you not only recognize the necessity of patience, but choose to practice it regularly — even when losing your cool would be more satisfying.

New neuroscience reveals 4 rituals that will change your life and make you happy

Actually, don’t trust me either. Trust neuroscientists. They study that gray blob in your head all day and have learned a lot about what truly will make you happy.

UCLA neuroscience researcher Alex Korb has some insights that can create an upward spiral of happiness in your life. Here’s what you and I can learn from the people who really have answers:

1) The Most Important Question To Ask When You Feel Down

Sometimes it doesn’t feel like your brain wants you to be happy. You may feel guilty or shameful. Why?

Believe it or not, guilt and shame activate the brain’s reward center

Despite their differences, pride, shame, and guilt all activate similar neural circuits, including the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, amygdala, insula, and the nucleus accumbens. Interestingly, pride is the most powerful of these emotions at triggering activity in these regions — except in the nucleus accumbens, where guilt and shame win out. This explains why it can be so appealing to heap guilt and shame on ourselves — they’re activating the brain’s reward center

And you worry a lot too. Why? In the short term, worrying makes your brain feel a little better — at least you’re doing something about your problems.

In fact, worrying can help calm the limbic system by increasing activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and decreasing activity in the amygdala. That might seem counterintuitive, but it just goes to show that if you’re feeling anxiety, doing something about it — even worrying — is better than doing nothing

But guilt, shame and worry are horrible long-term solutions. So what do neuroscientists say you should do? Ask yourself this question;

What am I grateful for?

Yeah, gratitude is awesome… but does it really affect your brain at the biological level? Yup.

You know what the antidepressant Wellbutrin does? Boosts the neurotransmitter dopamine. So does gratitude. 

The benefits of gratitude start with the dopamine system, because feeling grateful activates the brain stem region that produces dopamine. Additionally, gratitude toward others increases activity in social dopamine circuits, which makes social interactions more enjoyable…

Know what Prozac does? Boosts the neurotransmitter serotonin. So does gratitude

One powerful effect of gratitude is that it can boost serotonin. Trying to think of things you are grateful for forces you to focus on the positive aspects of your life. This simple act increases serotonin production in the anterior cingulate cortex

I know, sometimes life lands a really mean punch in the gut and it feels like there’s nothing to be grateful for. Guess what?

Doesn’t matter. You don’t have to find anything. It’s the searching that counts.

It’s not finding gratitude that matters most; it’s remembering to look in the first place. Remembering to be grateful is a form of emotional intelligence. One study found that it actually affected neuron density in both the ventromedial and lateral prefrontal cortex. These density changes suggest that as emotional intelligence increases, the neurons in these areas become more efficient. With higher emotional intelligence, it simply takes less effort to be grateful. 

And gratitude doesn’t just make your brain happy — it can also create a positive feedback loop in your relationships. So express that gratitude to the people you care about.

(For more on how gratitude can make you happier and more successful, click here.)

But what happens when bad feelings completely overtake you? When you’re really in the dumps and don’t even know how to deal with it? There’s an easy answer…

2) Label Negative Feelings

You feel awful. Okay, give that awfulness a name. Sad? Anxious? Angry?

Boom. It’s that simple. Sound stupid? Your noggin disagrees.

…in one fMRI study, appropriately titled “Putting Feelings into Words” participants viewed pictures of people with emotional facial expressions. Predictably, each participant’s amygdala activated to the emotions in the picture. But when they were asked to name the emotion, the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex activated and reduced the emotional amygdala reactivity. In other words, consciously recognizing the emotions reduced their impact.

Suppressing emotions doesn’t work and can backfire on you.

Gross found that people who tried to suppress a negative emotional experience failed to do so. While they thought they looked fine outwardly, inwardly their limbic system was just as aroused as without suppression, and in some cases, even more aroused. Kevin Ochsner, at Columbia, repeated these findings using an fMRI. Trying not to feel something doesn’t work, and in some cases even backfires.

But labeling, on the other hand, makes a big difference

To reduce arousal, you need to use just a few words to describe an emotion, and ideally use symbolic language, which means using indirect metaphors, metrics, and simplifications of your experience. This requires you to activate your prefrontal cortex, which reduces the arousal in the limbic system. Here’s the bottom line: describe an emotion in just a word or two, and it helps reduce the emotion.

Ancient methods were way ahead of us on this one. Meditation has employed this for centuries. Labeling is a fundamental tool of mindfulness.

In fact, labeling affects the brain so powerfully it works with other people too. Labeling emotions is one of the primary tools used by FBI hostage negotiators.

(To learn more of the secrets of FBI hostage negotiators, click here.)

Okay, hopefully you’re not reading this and labeling your current emotional state as “Bored.” Maybe you’re not feeling awful but you probably have things going on in your life that are causing you some stress. Here’s a simple way to beat them…

3) Make That Decision

Ever make a decision and then your brain finally feels at rest? That’s no random occurrence.

Brain science shows that making decisions reduces worry and anxiety — as well as helping you solve problems.

Making decisions includes creating intentions and setting goals — all three are part of the same neural circuitry and engage the prefrontal cortex in a positive way, reducing worry and anxiety. Making decisions also helps overcome striatum activity, which usually pulls you toward negative impulses and routines. Finally, making decisions changes your perception of the world — finding solutions to your problems and calming the limbic system.

But deciding can be hard. I agree. So what kind of decisions should you make? Neuroscience has an answer…

Make a “good enough” decision. Don’t sweat making the absolute 100% best decision. We all know being a perfectionist can be stressful. And brain studies back this up.

Trying to be perfect overwhelms your brain with emotions and makes you feel out of control. 

Trying for the best, instead of good enough, brings too much emotional ventromedial prefrontal activity into the decision-making process. In contrast, recognizing that good enough is good enough activates more dorsolateral prefrontal areas, which helps you feel more in control...

As Swarthmore professor Barry Schwartz said in my interview with him: “Good enough is almost always good enough.”

So when you make a decision, your brain feels you have control. And, as I’ve talked about before, a feeling of control reduces stress. But here’s what’s really fascinating: Deciding also boosts pleasure.

Via The Upward Spiral:

Actively choosing caused changes in attention circuits and in how the participants felt about the action, and it increased rewarding dopamine activity.

Want proof? No problem. Let’s talk about cocaine.

You give 2 rats injections of cocaine. Rat A had to pull a lever first. Rat B didn’t have to do anything. Any difference? Yup: rat A gets a bigger boost of dopamine.

Via The Upward Spiral:

So they both got the same injections of cocaine at the same time, but rat A had to actively press the lever, and rat B didn’t have to do anything. And you guessed it — rat A released more dopamine in its nucleus accumbens.

So what’s the lesson here? Next time you buy cocaine… whoops, wrong lesson. Point is, when you make a decision on a goal and then achieve it, you feel better than when good stuff just happens by chance.

And this answers the eternal mystery of why dragging your butt to the gym can be so hard.

If you go because you feel you have to or you should, well, it’s not really a voluntary decision. Your brain doesn’t get the pleasure boost. It just feels stress. And that’s no way to build a good exercise habit.

Via The Upward Spiral:

Interestingly, if they are forced to exercise, they don’t get the same benefits, because without choice, the exercise itself is a source of stress.

So make more decisions. Neuroscience researcher Alex Korb sums it up nicely:

We don’t just choose the things we like; we also like the things we choose.

(To learn what neuroscientists say is the best way to use caffeine, click here.)

Okay, you’re being grateful, labeling negative emotions and making more decisions. Great. But this is feeling kinda lonely for a happiness prescription. Let’s get some other people in here.

What’s something you can do with others that neuroscience says is a path to mucho happiness? And something that’s stupidly simple so you don’t get lazy and skip it? Brain docs have an answer for you…

4) Touch People

No, not indiscriminately; that can get you in a lot of trouble.

But we need to feel love and acceptance from others. When we don’t it’s painful. And I don’t mean “awkward” or “disappointing.” I mean actually painful.

Neuroscientists did a study where people played a ball-tossing video game. The other players tossed the ball to you and you tossed it back to them. Actually, there were no other players; that was all done by the computer program.

But the subjects were told the characters were controlled by real people. So what happened when the “other players” stopped playing nice and didn’t share the ball?

Subjects’ brains responded the same way as if they experienced physical pain. Rejection doesn’t just hurt like a broken heart; your brain feels it like a broken leg.

Via The Upward Spiral:

In fact, as demonstrated in an fMRI experiment, social exclusion activates the same circuitry as physical pain… at one point they stopped sharing, only throwing back and forth to each other, ignoring the participant. This small change was enough to elicit feelings of social exclusion, and it activated the anterior cingulate and insula, just like physical pain would.

Relationships are very important to your brain’s feeling of happiness. Want to take that to the next level? Touch people.

Via The Upward Spiral:

One of the primary ways to release oxytocin is through touching. Obviously, it’s not always appropriate to touch most people, but small touches like handshakes and pats on the back are usually okay. For people you’re close with, make more of an effort to touch more often.

Touching is incredibly powerful. We just don’t give it enough credit. It makes you more persuasive, increases team performance, improves your flirting… heck, it even boosts math skills.

Touching someone you love actually reduces pain. In fact, when studies were done on married couples, the stronger the marriage, the more powerful the effect.

Via The Upward Spiral:

In addition, holding hands with someone can help comfort you and your brain through painful situations. One fMRI study scanned married women as they were warned that they were about to get a small electric shock. While anticipating the painful shocks, the brain showed a predictable pattern of response in pain and worrying circuits, with activation in the insula, anterior cingulate, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. During a separate scan, the women either held their husbands’ hands or the hand of the experimenter. When a subject held her husband’s hand, the threat of shock had a smaller effect. The brain showed reduced activation in both the anterior cingulate cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex— that is, less activity in the pain and worrying circuits. In addition, the stronger the marriage, the lower the discomfort-related insula activity.

So hug someone today. And do not accept little, quick hugs. No, no, no. Tell them your neuroscientist recommended long hugs.

Via The Upward Spiral:

A hug, especially a long one, releases a neurotransmitter and hormone oxytocin, which reduces the reactivity of the amygdala.

Research shows getting five hugs a day for four weeks increases happiness big time.

Don’t have anyone to hug right now? No? (I’m sorry to hear that. I would give you a hug right now if I could.) But there’s an answer: neuroscience says you should go get a massage.

Via The Upward Spiral:

The results are fairly clear that massage boosts your serotonin by as much as 30 percent. Massage also decreases stress hormones and raises dopamine levels, which helps you create new good habits… Massage reduces pain because the oxytocin system activates painkilling endorphins. Massage also improves sleep and reduces fatigue by increasing serotonin and dopamine and decreasing the stress hormone cortisol.

So spend time with other people and give some hugs. Sorry, texting is not enough.

When you put people in a stressful situation and then let them visit loved ones or talk to them on the phone, they felt better. What about when they just texted? Their bodies responded the same as if they had no support at all.

Via The Upward Spiral:

…the text-message group had cortisol and oxytocin levels similar to the no-contact group.

Author’s note: I totally approve of texting if you make a hug appointment.

(To learn what neuroscience says is the best way to get smarter and happier, click here.)

Okay, I don’t want to strain your brain with too much info. Let’s round it up and learn the quickest and easiest way to start that upward spiral of neuroscience-inspired happiness…

Sum Up

Here’s what brain research says will make you happy:

• Ask “What am I grateful for?” No answers? Doesn’t matter. Just searching helps.
• Label those negative emotions. Give it a name and your brain isn’t so bothered by it.
• Decide. Go for “good enough” instead of “best decision ever made on Earth.”
• Hugs, hugs, hugs. Don’t text — touch.

So what’s the dead simple way to start that upward spiral of happiness?

Just send someone a thank you email. If you feel awkward about it, you can send them this post to tell them why.

This really can start an upward spiral of happiness in your life. UCLA neuroscience researcher Alex Korb explains:

Everything is interconnected. Gratitude improves sleep. Sleep reduces pain. Reduced pain improves your mood. Improved mood reduces anxiety, which improves focus and planning. Focus and planning help with decision making. Decision making further reduces anxiety and improves enjoyment. Enjoyment gives you more to be grateful for, which keeps that loop of the upward spiral going. Enjoyment also makes it more likely you’ll exercise and be social, which, in turn, will make you happier.

So thank you for reading this.