Create Some Calm With Some Super-Easy Mindset Hacks

Have you ever wondered why deep breathing works some of the time and not others? Tune in to find out why, as well as get some additional effective mindset hacks to help you create calm and peace when you're in a place of stress, fear, anxiousness, and worry.

Transcript

Hello fellow Insight Timers.

Welcome to the Unstoppable Mindset,

A series of deep diving mindset related topics to empower,

Inspire,

Ignite,

And encourage one another.

So we go from underestimated to unstoppable.

And I want to welcome you to this session,

Create Some Calm with Some Super Easy Mindset Hacks.

Before I get into those mindset hacks and how we're gonna use them to create some calm,

I want to introduce you to Marla.

Marla's having a conversation with a really good friend.

She's sharing all about some of the events that have been happening lately that she's really excited about.

And while she's sharing,

Her friend interrupts her and redirects the conversation onto something else.

This royally ticks Marla off.

So Marla,

Feeling angry,

Hangs up the phone,

Swearing that she's never ever going to share anything personal with her friend again.

But it doesn't stop there.

She then replays the phone conversation,

Thinking about her friend's behavior.

And as she's thinking about her friend's behavior,

She's crafting a narrative of how rude her friend is and how her friend obviously has no time for her and how she's probably one of the most selfish people she's ever met and is not interested in anyone else but herself.

And each time Marla replays the phone conversation and the story she's crafted,

She finds herself getting angrier and angrier.

So the next time Marla's friend calls,

Marla immediately feels the anger rise.

And because she's angry,

She forgets the well-crafted speech she's prepared.

And instead,

Her words come out of her mouth,

A jumbled mess.

Have you ever had that happen,

Where an event sparked a really strong reaction,

A really strong emotion that renders you unable to make a coherent sentence?

You know,

I always wondered why I couldn't think straight and why I sounded like a bumbling fool when I was angry.

And then I started to geek out on all sorts of brain-related books and articles and come to find out when we're feeling a really strong emotion like anger,

Fear,

Anxiety,

The thinking part of our brain,

The prefrontal cortex,

Goes offline.

It just completely shuts down.

And so understanding this has helped me to also understand why we're in a place of intense emotions,

Why sometimes using logic to calm down doesn't always work.

Come to find out,

This is something I learned while I was reading the book,

"'Rewire Your Anxious Brain,

How to Use Neuroscience of Fear to End Anxiety,

Panic,

And Worry.

'" In that book,

The authors explain that when we're trying to calm down,

We have to speak our brain's current language.

So if I'm in an emotional state and trying to use my logic,

It's not going to work.

So I have to be able to speak the language of my brain in that moment.

And so after geeking out,

I also discovered a simple way to tell which part of my brain is speaking.

So then I can then find a mindset hack that is appropriate for that particular language to calm down.

So if I am in a feeling state,

Feeling intense anger,

Feeling sadness,

Feeling anxiety,

If I'm getting that urge that I just need to react in some way,

Shape,

Or form,

That's my indicator that my brain is processing through what's called the limbic area,

Where emotions and memories are processed.

So I need to do something that's gonna be physical to help me calm down.

And I'll share those things with you.

I'm not talking about physical altercations,

But I'm talking about something that's a calming physical activity,

Which I'll share with you in just a moment.

Now,

If I'm ruminating,

For example,

If I'm what-ifing myself to death,

If I'm over-analyzing,

If I'm in a state of analysis paralysis,

I'm in that thinking state.

That's an indicator to me that I am currently in,

Or my brain is currently processing things through the prefrontal cortex,

Where we process our thoughts and our actions.

So I mentioned what-ifing.

Say I'm what-ifing a situation.

What if this happens?

What if that happens?

My brain's letting me know that I'm using my prefrontal cortex,

Even if some of my thoughts might be creating some sense of worry or stress.

And so that tells me I need to use a form of a thought-based exercise to derail my what-ifing so I can calm down.

But say I'm feeling really anxious,

Or say I'm feeling really,

Really upset about something,

My brain's indicating that I'm processing from the emotion center of my brain,

That limbic center,

Which is why using a logic-based exercise isn't gonna work as well as maybe engaging some deep breathing exercises or what's called progressive muscle relaxation,

Which I'll also be sharing a little bit about here momentarily.

So in short,

To get into a calm and more grounded space,

We have to speak the language of our brains in the current moment.

So I wanna offer you a couple of mindset hacks to use to calm down,

Some things to experiment with.

And I have lumped them together based on whether we're feeling,

We're in an emotional state,

So I've got some exercises for the emotional state,

And then I'm gonna share some exercises that you can do if you're in that thinking state.

So first let's talk about when we're in that space of maybe feeling fear,

Anxiety,

Nervousness,

Anger,

Or stress.

Here are a couple things that we can try.

These are things that work to calm us down.

I've tried them all.

I've tested them out thoroughly,

And I'm gonna offer them to you.

And if any of these don't line up with you,

Please don't use them.

Please find something that will work for you.

So I wanna talk about a few breathing techniques.

The first one is taking a slow breath in and then letting the breath out slowly.

So taking a slow breath in through your nose and then releasing it slowly out of your nose.

I'm doing this a couple of times.

There's also something called square breathing where you take a deep breath in to a four count.

You then hold the breath for a four count.

You release and exhale the breath to a four count,

And you hold the exhale.

So once you've exhaled out all the air,

You hold it to a four count,

And you repeat that four times.

Now this one's a fun little breathing technique.

I will warn you,

Probably don't wanna do it when anybody's around because it requires you to get really loud.

And it's called oxytocin breathing.

If you Google oxytocin breathing,

You will find all sorts of YouTube clips that show you how to do it.

But oxytocin is that feel-good chemical.

And to release it,

You wanna take a really,

Really deep breath in,

Filling your belly as full of air as you possibly can get it.

Then once you have taken as much air in as you can,

You forcefully release it out of your mouth while loudly saying ha.

That's why I said you might wanna do this when you're in private.

Here's a breathing technique that indicates that lets your brain know immediately,

Like when we're in that state of amygdala hijack where we're in that fight,

Flight,

Or freeze mode,

This lets your brain know that everything's okay,

That we're not in any perceived danger.

And that's to take a shorter inhale than your exhale.

So if you take a short inhale in to a four count,

You're gonna wanna exhale to maybe a six or an eight count.

And this does,

It lets the brain know everything's cool,

No need to be in the state of amygdala hijack.

Also,

Changing your physiology changes the energy.

So if you shift your posture just a bit,

Because I don't know about you,

But when I'm in a nervous state or I'm anxious,

I have a tendency to wear my shoulders as earrings,

And I have a tendency to kind of curl up into myself so I'm kind of hunched over.

And so shifting my posture really does help.

And you can do this standing or sitting,

But all you do is put your shoulders back,

Stick your chest out just a little,

Tilt your head up slightly,

And just take a deep breath.

And this really helps to ground you,

It helps to change that energy.

Something else that will help when you're in a state of fear or anxiety is going and getting a hug from someone.

Because what that does is that releases those feel-good chemicals into your brain,

Which has a beautiful calming effect.

Now I mentioned progressive muscle relaxation.

I'm not gonna,

I won't go over the whole technique.

I will encourage you to Google progressive muscle relaxation,

Because there are detailed instructions out on the web.

But what I will tell you about it is what it requires is for you to tense up and then release each particular muscle group as you're taking deep breaths in,

Deep breath,

A deep breath in.

So for example,

You'll be,

When you start with your feet,

Curling in your toes as you're taking a deep breath in.

And as you're letting your toes relax and release,

You're also releasing the breath that you just took in.

And the last mindset hack that I wanna offer you when you're in that state of feeling that emotional,

Intense emotional state is just get up and move,

Pace.

Pacing is a great way to get your brain back online.

Okay,

Now to offer you some mindset hacks to help you calm down for when you're in that place where you're in that thinking state.

You may be what-ifing,

You may be rehashing or replaying an event,

You may be worrying about something that has yet to happen,

You might be in that state of an analysis paralysis.

These are great ways to help calm down because what they do is they get the thought that we're currently having to stop and it replaces it with something else.

So a great way to do that is to express gratitude.

You know,

Taking a look around and expressing gratitude for all the things that you see.

You're redirecting your thought,

That negative thought that you're having,

Onto something that feels better,

That's nicer,

Something that's more positive.

The next thing you can try is to engage your senses.

This is an excellent exercise to really pull you into the present moment because oftentimes when we're thinking about something that has yet to happen or we're what-ifing,

We're in the future,

We're not right here in the present moment where everything is A-OK.

And so engaging your senses is really helpful.

And that,

You can do that by just asking yourself these really simple questions.

What am I seeing right now?

What am I hearing right now?

What am I smelling?

What am I tasting?

What am I feeling on my skin?

And redirecting,

Speaking of redirecting,

Sometimes all you have to do is just redirect your thoughts onto something else.

It is that simple.

So if you're having a negative thought,

Redirecting it to redirecting your thought and your attention,

Focusing your energy elsewhere.

I will often,

If I catch myself what-ifing or over-analyzing,

I will redirect and look at my puppy that's lying on the floor next to me and think about how cute he is.

It's really hard to be in a negative space and it's really hard to be anxious when I'm sitting here looking at something that adorable.

I also like to ask myself what I consider to be the magic question.

What would I see or feel if I didn't see or feel whatever it is I'm fretting over?

So if I'm working on a project,

For example,

And I have this thought of,

I'm in this space of failure,

Oh my God,

This is gonna fail.

What would I see or what would I feel if I didn't see failure,

If I didn't feel failure?

And what we're doing is by asking that question,

We're helping engage our prefrontal cortex in a healthier way,

Coming up with a way to help us get through this.

A healthier way,

Coming up with all sorts of different options to replace the negative thought we're having.

The next thing that's also really helpful is to do something fun that engages your brain.

I love to play games on my iPad for a brief five or 10 minutes if I find myself in that state of overthinking something or what ifing.

I will redirect my thoughts onto my game and getting absorbed in that game is a really great way to help calm down as is dancing or singing,

Putting on some really cool music and getting up and moving.

And this by far,

I have to say,

Is probably one of my favorite mindset hacks.

And that's just to notice.

Just to notice.

Just notice the thought instead of engaging it.

So I like to say something like,

Oh yeah,

Look,

How interesting.

There's that negative thought again.

That's fascinating.

Just by noticing it and not engaging it,

I'm not sitting with it.

I'm not allowing it to anchor into my thoughts.

It doesn't have the same charge as if I were allowing that thought to run away with me and I immediately start to calm down.

Whatever you decide to experiment with,

I wanna leave you with one final thought.

Feelings and thoughts are just data and we get to decide what to do with that data.

Until next time,

I wish you so much peace,

Love and light.

Thank you all for being here.

Please take really good care and be well.