Your Brain: How To Calm The Mind

This is a recording of my live talk 'Your Brain: How to calm the mind'. Did you know that our brain produces about 70.000 thoughts per day? You probably did notice that... Neuroscience has provided the most insight into where our thoughts come from and how we can calm the mind. Exactly this is the focus of this talk.

Transcript

Hello!

Good afternoon from Germany and welcome in this live session.

Take a moment to arrive for another exciting topic that I have prepared for you today,

Namely your brain,

How to calm the mind.

And I could see that quite a good people signed up today because I can imagine that this really is something we all know,

The business of the mind.

But the question is of course what to do with the business of the mind or what does the brain tell us on what we can do to calm the mind.

And this is the major topic of today.

I'm not sure who of you have read the description,

The short description of this live talk for today,

But just as a rough estimation,

How many thoughts do you believe our brain produces on a daily basis?

Just give me any number.

How many thoughts do you believe our brain produces on a daily basis?

We have Ruby.

Nicola.

70,

000 says Ruby.

I think Ruby,

And Nicola says 46,

000,

Another 70,

000,

80,

000 I think Rosie,

You are having the most thoughts.

Zoe is even tipping that 100,

000 thoughts.

And Jacqui,

Good to see you Jacqui,

You say 1200.

Ren says 90,

000.

Not sure if there is a difference in how many thoughts the brain produces in Ireland,

Ren.

I don't know and it probably also depends a bit on how we define thoughts.

But looking at those numbers,

You are very close to it.

And indeed,

I've also had this as a part of the description of the live session today,

Depending on the study,

Depending a bit on how the definition of thought is.

But indeed,

It's about 70,

000 thoughts a day,

Waking time.

This is a lot.

This means,

And I don't have to tell you that because you know that better than anybody.

You know that for yourself.

But your brain is constantly producing thoughts.

Your brain is constantly producing thoughts.

So what I'd like to do in the session today,

So for you to have a bit of an idea what to expect.

I'd like to give a bit of words on where thoughts come from,

What the importance of the thoughts are.

Then I'm going to give you a few factors that influence the business of our mind.

And then I would like to end today with five strategies that you can apply to calm down the business of our mind.

The business of our minds,

How do we see that in our brain?

Well,

Our brain is constantly producing spontaneous activation.

So if we place people into a brain scanner and we look inside their brain,

What do we see?

And you know that the brain is never addressed.

Your brain,

In fact,

Is constantly producing spontaneous activation.

And this spontaneous activation,

We use that to filter the world that is out there and to give the world out there a meaning.

So our brain produces spontaneous activation and we use this spontaneous activation to filter the world out there and to give the world a meaning.

And how that happens,

I would like to demonstrate that with a short experiment.

And for this experiment,

I'm going to show you a picture and just have a look at the picture.

And then after the picture,

I'm going to show you a four letter word,

The word consisting of four letters,

But the first letter is missing.

And when I show you that four letter word with the missing letter,

I'm going to ask you just as quickly as you can to complete that word by writing that full word into the chat.

So this is the experiment and the picture that I have for you.

I hope you will recognize that.

For those who can't recognize it so well,

This is a lady knitting.

You can see like the hands and the lady knitting,

Perhaps a scarf,

A jumper.

And if I would ask you now to complete this four letter word,

I'm going to show it to you.

So the final three letters are O,

O,

L,

So OO.

And if I would ask you to complete that word,

What would you say?

How would you complete the words?

And I'm seeing in the chat here.

So this is a four letter word ending on OO,

The first letter is missing.

I had a cool for the rest.

I have quite a few wolves here.

Usually how I do it when I have a classroom in front of me,

I split the group into two groups of people and then one group.

They would receive a picture of a swimming pool and the other group.

They would receive a picture of a woman knitting.

And then I would ask the two groups to complete the word ending on OO.

And of course,

There you could imagine that the people seeing the wool,

They would say wool and the other people seeing the pool,

They would say pool.

And some of them,

They wouldn't understand why people would complete the word as wool.

And the wool people might not understand why other people would complete the word as pool.

In fact,

It doesn't really matter how you complete the words.

But what I would like to demonstrate with this very short experiment is that with one brief picture,

I can very briefly change the spontaneous activation that you have inside your brain.

And this new pattern of spontaneous activation,

You use that to complete this word.

So here it shows that eventually,

And this is the main message that I like to bring.

But what you see out there is not necessarily what is out there.

What you see out there is fully determined by the spontaneous activation that you have inside your brain.

What you see out there is who you are,

Is the spontaneous activation that is happening inside your brain.

And sometimes how I also demonstrate that to my students,

And I decided not to do it today because it would take too long.

But it's also described in my books and also in my course here on Inside Timer,

So you can read into that.

What I would usually do is I'm telling people,

I said,

Listen,

Let's just assume for a moment that all of us were looking for a holiday house.

And what I do then is I give a very long description of a beautiful holiday house.

And then after that,

I would ask those students,

I said,

Listen,

Give me three things that you remember about the description of the house.

And they would say,

For example,

A beautiful apple tree in the garden or beautiful living room with an open fire,

Or we have a terrace outside with a beautiful view.

And then I would say them,

If I would have asked you to listen to that exact same story,

As if you were a burglar,

Would you have remembered the same things?

When I was a student,

This is how it was done.

Like half of the students were burglars and half of the students were people looking for a holiday house.

And there you see that people remember completely different things.

The people listening to the house as if they were a burglar,

They were remembering where the keys were stored.

They also remembered that the window was open in the garage,

One way to get into the house.

So my point here again,

Regardless of how which experiment you do,

My point here is what you see out there,

The information you receive and how you give that information a meaning is determined by the spontaneous activation that you have in your brain.

This is how it works.

Everyone's perception is different because,

And this is of course something that you can expect,

But the spontaneous activation that you have inside your brain is unique to you.

It is unique to you.

So it is very unlikely that you would say the same,

That you would see the same things at somebody else,

Simply because this is how our brain works,

Our spontaneous activation in our brain is unique.

And this spontaneous activation that we have inside our brain constantly changes.

It changes with a picture.

Remember,

You know,

Showing you the picture of somebody knitting.

If you're a person who likes to knit,

Perhaps tomorrow you might think it's Sunday.

Perhaps why don't I go knitting?

And if I would have shown you a picture of something else,

Perhaps you would do something else tomorrow.

So also here,

The spontaneous activation in our brain can constantly change with pictures that we see,

But also with information that we receive.

If I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do is read the newspaper and my newspaper does not contain much good news,

It usually contains negative news,

This definitely is going to influence the spontaneous activation in my brain.

And as a consequence,

Also the way I perceive other events following to reading the news.

And this is how it works,

You know,

What you feed into your brain will also be mirrored to you in following events.

So spontaneous activation in our brain is very important and one part of this spontaneous activation constantly changes.

It also changes with your feelings.

So if you feel stressed or if you feel happy or if you feel sad or if you feel angry,

Then you might have noticed that the world out there looks absolutely different.

And this is not because all of a sudden the world is different,

But this is because your filter changes,

The spontaneous activation in your brain changes.

And Ruby mentions here your course must really help with anxiety.

Well,

Definitely if it comes,

For example,

To certain anxiety feelings,

Some people are more prone to developing feelings of anxiety.

This is also described in one of my courses,

The course on personality.

And this is because each one of us is also born with a particular pattern of spontaneous activation.

And this is related to your personality.

And also this,

So this is what I wanted to say.

We have the spontaneous activation in our brain that filters the world out there,

That gives it a meaning.

Partly this is related to our personality,

The personality we are born with.

And partly this is also related to the information that we feed to our brain.

And this spontaneous activation,

And this is where I want to get to,

Because we're going to talk today about the business of our minds.

Even though I'd love to talk about the topic of personality,

I'd like to come to the business of our minds.

The spontaneous activation in our brain,

If we look inside the brain,

We can see that it is organized in so-called networks.

So a network,

How can you picture that,

Is a collection of brain structures and they like to be activated together,

Like a chain of networks or a chain of brain structures that are connected to each other and they like to be activated simultaneously.

And one network that is key if it comes to the business of our minds is called the default mode network.

The default mode network.

This is definitely how it relates to the racing of our thoughts.

The racing thoughts,

To understand where they come from,

We have to understand the default mode network.

The default mode network is a bit like our default settings.

In the chat you can read it,

The default mode network.

We can make it visible in our brain.

And what does a default mode network do?

Well,

For those 18 minutes that we've been together,

I'm very sure your default mode network has been activated several times.

And these were the moments that you were shortly distracted.

These were the moments that your brain was producing thoughts,

Perhaps unrelated to this talk,

Perhaps related to this talk,

But definitely your brain in those 18 minutes has been triggering thoughts.

And why is that?

This is because your default mode network likes to be in control.

It likes to take over the moment it can.

You could compare it with like the energy saving mode of the brain.

The brain consumes a lot of our energy and it likes to always go into an energy saving mode.

And how does it do it?

By activating the default mode network.

And how do we notice it?

By the thoughts that are popped up in our mind,

The default mode network.

And Chance here in the chat is saying,

I think my default mode network needs a reset.

Well,

Dear Chance,

This is exactly what we're going to look at because we can definitely use the mental reset button here.

And Denise says the default mode network is especially active in the night.

Yes.

And this is because during the night we are lying in our bed and it's not necessarily more active than during the day.

But during the night,

It's very still.

Nothing really is happening.

So we are so confronted with the business of the default mode network that our minds are,

It feels like they're racing.

Right.

So what I'd like to do now is I'd like to give a bit more explanation on how this default mode network works and especially how we can calm down the default mode network.

And also,

I'd like to tell you here that many of the insights that I'm giving to you today are also part of my 30 day course here on Insight Timer.

OK,

So if you want to look into all the details about that step by step,

You are very,

Very welcome to join me on my 30 day course here and you will find more information there.

The business,

What is actually leading to the business of the default mode network?

What are the factors contributing to how busy the default mode network is?

Well,

First of all,

The default mode network,

If you really picture like this network connection of talks with feelings like these kind of connections,

You see that those connections that are repeated more often and also given more of our attention to those connections will become stronger and they will have a higher likelihood to present themselves or to be activated.

So,

For example,

If you have a certain kind of task that you don't enjoy,

So you have like the task,

You have the negative feeling.

If this is a connection that repeats itself a lot or you give it attention,

Namely you think about the task in a negative way,

The more you repeat this connection,

The stronger it will become as a part of the default mode network and the higher the chances that it will be presented as a thought in your mind.

So first factor here,

And you can also write that into the chat if anybody would like to repeat that in the chat.

The first factor that is going to give power to certain thoughts is repetition and attention.

The more certain thoughts and feelings are repeated,

The more attention we give to them,

The more powerful that they become.

So repetition and attention is the first factor that I would look into.

Then secondly,

Which thoughts will have a higher chance of being presented to you?

It's just the way the brain works,

But these are especially the thoughts that are connected to a negative feeling.

And why is that?

This is because we all have in our brain what science calls a negativity bias.

We are biased to more quickly see negative events.

And why is that?

This is because when there really is a danger,

Our life is in danger,

Then our brain really needs to react to it very quickly in order to survive.

And especially these have been things that are connected with a stronger negative emotion,

A stress emotion.

And this is also why these events that are connected with a negative emotion will more easily attract our attention compared to events that are connected to positive emotions.

Even though there are definitely differences here between people on how to react to it,

But the negativity bias is something that is very well investigated and very well reported in science.

And this is simply we have a bias towards negative feelings,

Negative thoughts,

Because evolutionarily spoken,

Anything connected to a negative feeling used to be much more important for our survival.

This is a negativity bias.

So if it comes to the strengths of our thoughts or how busy our thoughts get,

The first factor that I told you about was the attention and repetition.

The second one is the negativity bias and the third one is stress related.

The more stress we have,

The more active our default mode network will be.

So I'll repeat that.

The more stress we have,

The more the default mode network will drive over time.

And why is that?

Well,

Stress is the biggest energy eater of your brain.

Stress really eats our energy.

You might have noticed that when you had a day,

A very challenging day,

What happens at the end of the day,

We feel mentally absolutely tired.

And this is because stress eats a lot of energy.

I'm not going to go into the biological details.

And I just also told you that what does the brain like to do?

Your brain likes to save energy.

And how is the brain going to save energy?

By activating the default mode network,

Triggering your thoughts.

So these are the three factors that I wanted to give to you,

Because I will now explain to you five strategies that you can apply to reduce the business of your mind.

And they will be easier to understand if you also understand those three factors.

So just to a very short recap,

We have spontaneous activation in our brain.

This spontaneous activation is organized in networks.

One network is the default mode network that likes to take over these triggers,

Our thoughts.

Some people call it the monkey mind.

And what contributes to the chance that a certain thought will be presented in your brain?

I showed you three factors.

One,

We have the attention and repetition of certain connections.

The more we repeat a connection,

The more attention we will give it,

The higher the likelihood that it will present itself.

Secondly,

We also had the negativity bias.

And then last but not least,

In general,

The more stress we have,

The more our brain will allow the default mode network to take over.

And it's the default mode network that will trigger our thoughts or the monkey mind.

So this is especially when we feel the busyness of our mind.

So what are the strategies that I have prepared for you that I would like to share with you?

The first strategy that is,

To my opinion,

One of the most powerful strategy that one can use to down regulate the business of the mind,

It is mindfulness meditation.

And with mindfulness meditation,

Why is that so powerful to reduce the business of the mind?

Well,

With mindfulness meditation,

We activate in our brain a completely different network.

And I won't say much about it because it's in all of my courses covered.

I just want to say a few words about that.

With mindfulness meditation,

We activate in our brain the direct experience network.

And this is why mindfulness meditation is so powerful.

And this is because,

And listen carefully,

This is because the direct experience network in your brain cannot be activated simultaneously with the default mode network.

So think about that.

The default mode network,

When my default mode network takes over,

What does it do?

It triggers my thoughts,

The business of my mind.

Right.

But with mindfulness meditation,

We activate the direct experience network in our brain and the direct experience network and the default mode network cannot be activated simultaneously.

Biologically,

This is not possible.

And so if we regularly practice mindfulness meditation,

What has science shown us?

That the default mode network in general,

It calms down.

It calms down.

It's not as dominant anymore.

So your mind won't be triggered as much and producing thoughts constantly that are interrupting whatever it is we're doing.

And this is why it has been shown that people who regularly practice mindfulness meditation also at some point will be able to concentrate much better because they're not as much disturbed by the constant minds that are popping up.

And I can't remember who said it in the chat here again,

But somebody asked me about the reset.

Can we do a reset of the default mode network?

Pure from a biological point of view,

Mindfulness meditation,

When you practice in a particular way,

This is your mental reset because biologically we shut out,

We deactivate the default mode network.

And so what's at the core of mindfulness practice?

How do we activate the direct experience network?

How do we activate it by bringing our awareness to the direct experience of our senses?

And this is like there's I have many mindfulness meditations,

All for free here on the on the app here so you can look into them.

You can also look for other mindfulness teachers here on inside timers.

We have a lot of really good one here,

I find.

So look into that if you want to do longer exercises.

But what is actually at the core of mindfulness practice is you bring your awareness to the direct experience right here and right now.

For example,

When I'm holding a cup,

But if I would hold a cup and I bring my full awareness to the direct experience that I feel in my hands of the cup without any judgment.

What I'm going to do that is I'm going to in my brain,

I'm going to activate the direct experience network and the monkey mind will go quiet.

What is going to happen?

I'd say just a few milliseconds,

But the monkey mind is going to take over again.

The default mode network is going to say,

Wait a second,

This is my job.

I want to chat to you.

So my default mode network is going to take over.

And that's OK.

I'm going to say it's totally OK.

Default mode network.

I know you're there.

But at this moment,

I'm bringing my awareness back to my cup.

So in a mindfulness meditation,

What we do is we constantly switch the activation level of these two networks.

And this is where the magic happens.

Well,

Magic,

That's a word I like to use.

But in fact,

If you look,

It's pure biological science,

But I like to call it magic because I'm so grateful for having a brain that is designed that way.

So knowing that this for me can be a solution to just calm the busyness of my mind.

So the first step,

This is the mindfulness meditation here.

And to put it in a very easy,

Simple sentence.

Your brain cannot think and feel at the same time when I'm holding my cup.

And I bring my awareness to purely feeling this cup right here and right now without any judgment.

It is impossible for your brain to think.

Needless to say,

My brain is going to interrupt and is going to start thinking.

But that's OK.

This is for me a sign to bring my awareness back to the cup and to feel the cup.

Your brain cannot think and feel at the same time.

This is so crucial to understanding how to calm your mind.

And thank you so much,

Hope.

And thank you so much,

Robby,

For donating.

I really appreciate that.

So this is the first strategy that I would like to share with you.

And you're very welcome to try that out.

If you're in my courses,

Feel free to also go to the classroom.

If you have any questions,

Feel free to ask all the questions you have.

I'm probably not going to know all the answers,

But I'm very happy to just assist you and support you wherever you might have questions.

So mindfulness meditation is the first strategy for regular practice.

It's going to calm down the mind.

What is the second strategy?

The second strategy is also a really important one.

It sounds simple,

But in fact,

I believe it's one of the most powerful things that we can do.

And this is acceptance.

Acceptance is the second strategy I'd like to say a few words about.

And this idea of acceptance is based on research that was started off by a researcher called Wegner.

Wegner,

This is W-E-G-N-E-R.

W-E-G-N-E-R.

Daniel Wegner.

This is also part of my courses.

So if you've done my courses,

You might know what's going to come.

But he did experiments with students and he asked the students for a few minutes not to think of a white bear.

So basically,

If I would tell you now,

Don't think of a white bear for five minutes,

You're going to sit here.

You're going to be like,

Don't think of a white bear,

Don't think of a white bear.

But I can tell you,

The more you're going to try not to think of the white bear,

The more likely it is that the thought is going to pop up.

And this is why they call this effect.

I love this effect.

I love this name.

This is why they call this effect the ironic rebound effect.

The ironic because it really is ironic.

Rebound because you get the rebound effect.

The ironic rebound effect.

And what is the ironic rebound effect?

The more we try not to think of the white bear,

The higher the chances the white bear is going to be produced by our default mode network.

The more you're going to try not to feel stressed,

The more stressed you will feel.

That's the ironic rebound effect.

So lots of research was done on that.

And they were really wondering what can people do?

Because this is so important also to simply for clinical studies,

Right?

Because so many of the depressive symptoms are caused by people ruminating.

So having to understand how to get rid of,

Take the power away of negative thoughts is really important.

And eventually what they came up is one of the strategies one can do that has shown that leads to a decrease of the chance that unwanted thoughts will pop up is an acceptance of the thought or feeling.

And you can imagine this as follow.

If you want to apply this in daily life,

I constantly do that.

You know,

So I work at the university.

Sometimes I have to teach on a Saturday,

For example,

And certain topics I don't like to teach that much.

And I've noticed myself really winding myself up thinking about I don't want to teach that.

Oh,

No,

How is it going to be like and what's going to happen?

And what if they're unhappy with this topic?

And I noticed that I was stressed out even before starting my class.

So how could we apply this acceptance towards a situation like that?

Well,

I was driving to my class and I told myself it is absolutely OK that you're not in the mood to teach this class.

If this is what your brain produces,

You don't want to teach the class.

It is absolutely OK that you don't want to teach the class without anything further,

Without saying get out of the situation.

Notice it's absolutely OK that you think that.

And you know what?

The drive up to my class is just so much more relaxed simply because my brain calms down.

It is OK that I think of my worries at times because the more I'm going to try to solve the problem in my mind and the problem is not even present at the moment,

The more stressed I get.

So simply going into acceptance that this is what your mind produces is OK.

It does not mean that you also agree with the talk.

There is a huge difference.

Accepting your thoughts does not mean that you agree with it.

It's just that you say my brain is producing this talk and this is OK.

I'm not in the mood to go to this lecture.

That is absolutely OK.

Again,

It's not about agreeing,

But it's just about accepting that your mind is producing that being kind to yourself.

This is for me.

This is what's about being kind to yourself.

So this is the second tip,

And I've chosen this as a second strategy because I believe this is a very powerful one.

So let us move to the third strategy.

And I'm looking here at my paper,

The third strategy.

You remember that the more stress you have,

The more your default mode network is going to take over.

And this is the racing mind.

You know,

The more stress we have,

The more pure biologically your mind is going to race.

The more racing thoughts will be produced.

This is because stress takes energy.

I told you that.

And the more energy we put into our stress,

The more the brain will go into the energy saving more.

And the more your brain is going to produce talks.

So therefore,

And this I can't really give any specific tips here because this is different for each one of you.

Find always ways to to reduce your stress,

Whatever it is for you.

If this is about going to excuse me,

Going to wellness,

Going into sauna,

Going for a walk,

Hugging with your children.

This is what helps with me a lot.

You know,

I hug my kids constantly.

I hug my dog constantly.

I love it.

Whenever I see my dog and I pass by my dog,

I have to stop.

I have to hold her.

I have to kiss her.

And whatever it is for you that just reduces your stress level is going to result in the fact that your mind is going to race less.

Simply because this is how the brain works.

The more stress,

The more my mind is racing.

So this is the third strategy.

And I can't give you one particular tip because it's different to all of you.

Whatever reduces your stress,

Make sure that it is a key part of every day,

Every day.

And it doesn't always have to be like these big acts,

You know,

Like go on holidays.

Yeah,

Well,

This perhaps like once a year,

Two times a year.

But small acts during the day that release your stress.

They're so important.

A short walk outside at the fresh air.

Cuddling with your pet.

Reading a good book.

Whatever it is that you say this reduces my stress,

Make sure it's part of every day.

Because this is going to reduce your amygdala activation.

This is the brain structure leading to stress.

And this is going to lead to the fact that your default mode network is going to reduce its activation level.

That's the third strategy.

The fourth one,

Then sorry,

But I always have to look at my notes here.

This is a new talk.

I haven't given this talk before.

So this is why I've made my notes.

The fourth strategy and also a really important one.

Find activities that lead to positive emotions.

Find activities that lead for you to positive emotions.

It can be underestimated.

Many people have noticed during the corona situation or the lockdown,

What happened at least is how it was for me.

Sitting at home was okay because I work a lot from home.

So this was not new.

But what also happened to me was that many of the activities that for me are connected with positive energy,

I couldn't apply them anymore.

They were not allowed anymore.

So what happened during the corona situation for me at least is I got more stress.

And at the same time,

Whatever was giving me positive energy was actually falling away.

I couldn't just drive to my family because they live in a different country.

It's not that far,

But I wasn't allowed to cross the border or I had to show whatever test.

So it was not such a straightforward thing anymore just to meet the people who I love.

And for me,

Social relationships and being closer to people that I love really is something that gives me a lot of positive energy.

So and why is that?

This is because finding your muse,

Finding those activities where you feel positive energy,

Where you lose the track of time,

Finding your muse,

This is how I would call it.

This is really gives you so much positive energy to the brain.

And what also happens is that stress also will be reduced.

So all of these strategies,

Of course,

Are interlinked.

They're connected to each other.

But feeling good is not just about reducing your negative emotions.

It's also about allowing the positive emotions.

We need both of them for mental health,

For mental fitness.

So the fourth strategy,

I'd like you to reflect on that perhaps not now,

But perhaps take some time later on.

What really gives you positive energy?

What's those activities where you lose track of time and where you,

You know,

You forget about the environment.

It's just about being in the moment.

For me,

This is my painting.

I love to paint.

And once I get started and I use a lot of watercolors,

I have lots of waters and I have little bits of paint dripping into the water.

And I can see how the paint is,

You know,

Just spreading around on the paper.

This really is my muse.

Yeah.

Playing my piano.

This is my muse.

I love it.

I'm in the moment.

So the fourth strategy,

Find your muse,

Because this is going to usually brings you very strongly into the here and the now.

And this is connected with mindfulness.

This is also connected with positive energy and reducing your stress levels.

And this will lead again to the fact that your default mode network is going to calm down.

It should be a very important part of your agenda.

Don't skip it.

Make sure you also give it priority.

So the fifth strategy,

The last strategy then indeed,

And this is probably also one of the most important ones,

Is retrain your brain.

Remember when I was talking about the factors that even increase the business of our minds?

I also mentioned to you repetition,

Attention and the negativity bias.

So our brain is also designed to especially point out the negative things,

Because as I mentioned in the past,

It used to be so important to find out potential danger for our survival.

And nowadays this is presented itself into negativity bias that we especially see the things that go wrong.

And you see that a lot of you,

I work a lot of companies and one of the topics we work on is to how to give feedback.

And I always tell them that if you give feedback and if you have the possibility,

It is important to divide in time the positive feedback and also the learning moments.

And I will give you an example.

Let's say that,

You know,

You've done a presentation and you receive feedback at work for the presentation you've received and your colleague is telling you,

You really did a great presentation.

The graphs you used,

They really captured your message.

You were speaking loud and clearly.

You made also a great joke.

But you know what?

Here in the company,

You still have a lot to learn.

If you give feedback and I mentioned three positive things and one more negative thing or learning moment,

So to say,

Then usually what happens is people go out and they remember the one single negative thing.

And you don't want that.

You actually also want people to understand what actually and not understand,

But also feel what went well.

And again,

This is the negativity bias at work.

The brain especially points out the negativity parts.

And this is what the fifth strategy is about.

We're all here going to retrain our brain.

And how can you retrain your brain is by consciously bring your awareness to the positive events outside.

And it sounds so trivial,

Trivial,

But it's not.

It is so important.

And with this fifth strategy,

I make the loop with what I mentioned at the start of this life talk.

I told you that what you see out there is determined by the spontaneous activation that you have inside your brain.

Well,

I can tell you one thing.

The spontaneous activation in your brain,

You can change that.

You can steer that.

You can influence that.

Problem talk will lead to problems.

Solution talk will lead to solutions.

Try to take the perspective of the holiday seeker and not the burglar.

You will see different things.

If I drive to my lecture and I know all the students,

They're going to be busy on their mobile phone.

You know,

They're going to be having their mobile phone out.

They're going to have the laptop out.

I'm going to stand in front of the lecture and I'm going to feel rejected because nobody's listening because they're looking at their phone.

I could go into the lecture like that and it's very likely I'm especially going to see that and I'm going to feel rejected.

But I could also go into the lecture and I'm going to say,

Let myself be surprised.

What are they going to take with them?

If I use this example,

How are they going to react to it?

What are they going to learn today?

And which student is going to surprise me today?

And I tell you,

If this is the way that I go into the lecture,

This is exactly what I will see and I will feel much better.

And this is much better for my racing thoughts,

For my stress level,

For my positive energy and for the activity in my default mode network.

So your thoughts are going to be active anyway,

But you can consciously deal with your thoughts.

Constantly remind yourself to look at the positive things.

And one way of doing that is going with a positive mindset into a situation.

But what other other thing that you could also do is to at the end of the evening,

Before you go to bed,

Name the three things that you are grateful for.

What went really well today?

We'd like to point out so much what doesn't go well,

But very consciously like what went well today,

Right?

The brain is not always going to point that out due to the negativity bias.

But if we take the power over our own brain and just reflect on what went well today,

You are going to find things that went well today.

And when you regularly repeat this practice,

What is going to happen at some point,

Your brain is going to spontaneously point out the things that are going well for you today.

And also this here is going to reduce the raising thoughts simply because this is more positive energy.

The amygdala activation will go down and the default mode network is going to become much more calm.

So retrain your brain,

Allow yourself,

Invite yourself,

Make an invitation to yourself.

Whatever it is you're going to do after this talk here today,

This is my invitation to you,

But whatever it is,

Mind your own perspective.

What filter are you using and invite yourself to especially find all the positive things that you're going to find in the next situation you're going to go into.

And you can always let me know,

Right?

If you would be part of the courses here on Inside Timer and you have access to my classroom,

Let me know how that went.

Thank you so much,

Kim,

For donating and Aileen.

I really very much appreciate that.

This is very helpful,

Of course,

For the work that I do here,

Which is volunteer work.

And it's very nice,

Of course,

To see that you donated.

I would like to repeat everything because I can see I still have nine minutes.

I'm going to put it all together.

I'm going to make a recap and I would like to start with small gift to you at the end of the session.

OK,

So let me just recap the most important things that we looked at.

So first of all,

I told you we have spontaneous activation in our brain,

Which is our filter.

We use this filter to give the world out there a meaning.

And this spontaneous activation,

If we make that visible in the brain,

We can see that it's organized in networks.

One of the very busy networks is the default mode network.

And the default mode network likes to take over because it's the energy saving mode of the brain and it's going to trigger thoughts,

Thoughts about the past,

The future,

Thoughts about myself,

Thoughts about others.

And what contributes to the business of this of this default mode network?

First of all,

We had repeated and attention,

Repeated thoughts and attention that we give to thoughts.

They will make them stronger,

More powerful.

We also had the negativity bias.

So especially those negative thoughts or feelings will capture our attention due to the negativity bias.

And we also had stress.

So the more stress we have,

The more the default mode network will take over because it's saving energy.

What are the five tips?

The five things that we can do to ourselves and we all can do to ourselves,

Which will help to reduce the business of our mind or to calm the mind.

First of all,

We have the mindfulness meditation.

In short,

The brain cannot think and feel at the same time.

So when we go into feeling,

Get in touch with feeling as often as you can,

Because this is going to reduce.

It's going to deactivate the default mode network.

That's the first strategy.

Mindfulness meditation.

Second strategy,

A very powerful is have an accepting attitude towards the thoughts and feelings your brain presents you with.

The more you fight them,

The more powerful they become.

That's the ironic rebound effect.

If you're not in the mood to go cleaning later on,

It's OK not to be in the mood.

Accepting does not agree,

But at least accept the feeling,

Accept the thought.

And you will see that your mind will relax with you accepting.

The third one is whatever reduces your stress is also going to reduce the business of your mind,

Because the more stress we have,

The more the default mode network take over.

So whatever that is for you and make sure it's a part of your agenda.

The fourth strategy,

Find your muse.

Find those activities that give you positive emotions and that really bring you straight away to being right here and right now and feeling good.

This is your muse.

Perhaps it's your painting,

Perhaps it's piano playing,

It's hugging with your pad,

It might be social relationships.

And also make them a priority.

Mental health in which your mind is going to calm down does not only require the reduction of negative feelings,

But at the same time also the production of positive energy.

This is your muse.

And last but not least,

Retrain your brain.

The brain likes to point out the negative thoughts,

But thoughts are going to produce anyway by your brain.

But you can influence which thoughts are going to present.

And this is the filter that you can actively influence with which you're going to go in situations.

Problem talk leads to problem,

Solution talks leads to solutions.

That's the idea behind it.

Take the perspective of the person looking for the holiday house and not the burglar.

And you will see completely different things that will lead to completely different emotions.

You are the architects of your brain,

Not somebody else.

Take charge.

You're the architect of your brain.

So these are the five strategies that I wanted to share with you.

And thank you so much,

V,

For donating.

I also saw some other people donating.

Thank you so much for donations.

I really appreciate it.

I still have a few things to say in the five minutes that are left.

So before you go,

One gift to you that I would like to use as well.

I found this poem and it's a poem about the business of our mind.

And the poem takes a turn in the middle.

It's a very short poem,

But I would like to read it out to you.

So let me just take my paper here,

So my poem that I can read it out to you.

The poem is called I Worry.

And the poem is from Mary Oliver.

And it's a poem that goes straight to my heart and is related to the topic of today.

It's a very short one.

I'd like to share it with you.

It goes as follows.

I worried a lot.

Will the garden grow?

Will the rivers flow in the right direction?

Will the earth turn as it was taught?

And if not,

How shall I correct it?

Was I right?

Was I wrong?

Will I be forgiven?

And can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing?

Even sparrows can do it.

And I am,

Well,

Hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it?

Am I going to get rheumatism,

Log jaw,

Dementia?

And finally,

I saw that worrying had come to nothing.

And I gave it up.

I took my old body and went into the morning and I sang.

This is a song.

This is a poem that I absolutely love.

And it has a lot to do with we're so stuck in our minds.

But you know,

Eventually what we can do is we can just go out and we can sing.

Worry than sitting inside and worrying about,

Can I sing?

Even the sparrows can do it,

But I am hopeless.

But we can just also get in touch with ourselves and go outside and sing.

And this is the poem for me contains a lot of wisdom and I really love the poem.

So thank you so much for the beautiful comments here in the classroom.

This was a completely new talk today.

So this is why I was also constantly looking at my notes to make sure that I was sharing everything that I had prepared for you today.

And thank you so much also,

Victoria,

For donating.

This is really precious.

Thank you so much,

Kazoo,

For I'm so happy that I was able to remain in the time because when I was preparing the talk today,

I was like this I'm going to say this I'm going to say and I need to get the poem in.

And it's great.

It is exactly one hour.

So I'm very happy that,

You know,

Sometimes you just have to surrender and trust the universe and you see it and things just go the way actually you want them to go.

And this is what I wish from the bottom of my heart.

This is what I wish for all of you here.

That things will go the way you want them to go.

And don't forget our thoughts play a major role in that.

And this is what we can influence.

We are the architects of our brain and thus of our own life quality.

Have a beautiful weekend to all of you.

And thank you so much for reminding us that the poem is called I Worry It by Mary Oliver.

I'm sure you can find it online.

Print it out,

Write it down,

Place it on your wall.

And whenever you worry about whatever it is,

Go out into the morning and sing.

Just sing.

Don't even think about it.

So beautiful wishes to all of you.

And I hope to see you soon.

Bye bye.

Reviews

Mary’s poem is a metaphor- to go out and sing- go out be yourself and live your life with grace love and ease

❤️🙏🏻

This was amazing, it left me speechless. Great job.👏

Excellent lecture with much shared knowledge and ways to control the brains thinking in a way to make your life more enjoyable.

Your talk really helped me to understand my own stress and anxiety. Thank you for the helpful strategies. I have found mindfulness meditation to be very helpful as well as your talk which helped me to understand how my brain works.

Very good. Covered in a clear and concise manner. Thanks

Always very interesting and lots to discover and learn. Thank you Karolien 👍❤️

Wonderful talk! Looking forward to more content from you. Thank you!

Thank you - this was just what I needed to hear. 🙏🏼

I’m looking forward to applying these strategies!! Thank you for sharing so much great information!

This educated me, inspired me, touched my heart to the point of tears of joy and a moment of stress relief. Thanks! Lovely lecture.

This was amazing - a simple explanation to the background of our 'worries' and to the 5 startegies to change these. Best hour I may have ever spent!

Wonderful information! Lifelines. Thank you for these gifts. 🙏🏼🌸

Excellent information. A well-constructed live session, suitable for sharing as a stand alone talk.

Wonderful talk, thank you! I see you and the light within you. Be well. 🤲🏻💖🤲🏻

Really clear and concise account of how our busy brains work and what we can do to feel less taken over by racing, stressful thoughts. So helpful, thank 🙏

Good information on brain science behind mind workings! Thank you.

This is perfect:)
Thank you for sharing your knowledge

This was so good I plan to listen to it again and share it with others. Thank you for your very clear explanations of the complex workings of our wonderful brain! 🙏

Brilliant, loved this. I'm so much in my head and need to learn the tools to get out.
Thank you 😊