Category: Question and redefine everything

“The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.” Socrates

Over 2500 years after Socrates determined the definition of terms to be the beginning of wisdom, we seem to have lost the importance of this critical practice.
Depending on how we define things, different avenues open up in front of us and other options cease to exist.

The way we define the terms of our life shapes our reality!

Join me in questioning and redefining the important elements of life in a way that quiets our inner critic and soothes our neurobiology to replace stress with peace. I welcome you to question my definitions and share your own.

Five Ways Our Mind Trips Us Up and How To Change That.

Mind Trips

In my last article, I invited you to join me in celebrating the amazing capabilities of our mind.

Thank you so much for all your love, comments and engagement!

In response to all your invaluable comments, I decided this week to write an article that addresses what is on your mind: Why does our “untamed” mind lead us to behaviors that trip us up and what can we do about it?

By “untamed mind” I mean the thought processes that we habitually engage in based on past experiences although they sabotage us today.

Are you frustrated with any habitual thought patterns that sabotage your relationships, your career/finances, or your health? Why not consider guiding your mind to take alternative pathways so that you can arrive at different destinations?

Your mind may be distorting your view of reality and tripping you up without your even realizing it.

The truth about our mind’s involvement in self sabotage. – It is not your fault!

  • Our thought patterns are very powerful, but have been established through experiences we had no influence over.
  • Our mind has been trained to take certain pathways to make sense of challenging aspects of life and help us cope with the internal discomfort that accompanies them.
  • Threatening thoughts, (mind trips) place us in a compromised state because they activate our fear circuitry.
  • Our wise mind shuts down and our body systems veer off balance to address the perceived “threat”.
  • We then grasp for any ways to activate the reward centers in our brain and release “feel good” hormones, to mitigate the sense of unease.
  • Our pathways to rewarding activities that have also been set in our past, may or may not be aligned with our current goals.

Food may be a pleasurable, rewarding activity for someone like me, raised in the Mediterranean, where so many positive values are cultivated around the dinner table.  However, allowing food to be the default pattern of reward center activation during stressful times may over time lead to obesity.

Eliminating the thought patterns leading to Self-Sabotage is within our control.

It is not our fault if the thinking patterns and reward activation pathways which were established in the past do not serve us today.

However, it is within our control to change those patterns in the present.  

We can carve new thinking and reward activation pathways and displace the “defaults” which  consistently mess things up for us.

Here is what you can do next time you feel an internal thought-based discomfort and you are considering an action that sabotages your goals:

  1. Pause– Challenge the thought, its origin and the trigger.
  2. Ask– What it is that I really need right now? Often when we binge watch Netflix we try to numb our unmet need for connection and support.
  3. Choose– Replace old thought with a new alternative thought and rewarding activity that is aligned with your values today.

Trick your way out of Five Common Mind Trips

Here are some suggestions on ways to trick your mind out of five very common mind trips that mess things up for many of us, although they are not based on reality.

  • Mind Trip # 1 — “I am not good enough.”

Sometimes we confuse our behavior with our quality as a person, leading to inadvertent self-doubt and self-criticism. For example, notice the difference between “I am a failure” as opposed to “I fail sometimes.”

You are not your behavior. You can choose to change your behavior if it is not serving you well.

 Trick your mind out of this Mind trip by resting your attention on this thought instead:

You are perfect just the way you are and you have all that you need to meet and exceed every one of your goals in every area of your life. This does not mean that you do not have room for growth. You can use every mishap, moment of self-doubt, or encounter with your inner critic as  guides to uncover qualities that YOU would like to cultivate.

You are more than enough. I think it’s about time you embrace this!

 

  • Mind trip # 2 — “Material things will increase my value as a person.”

We literally kill ourselves to reach a six-figure income level, buy a certain brand of car, or upgrade our home. Yet research is clearly showing that beyond a certain income level, ($75,000/annually), wealth and assets have no impact on our happiness. 

Trick your mind out of this Mind trip by resting your attention on this thought instead:

No material asset will make you more amazing than who you already are. When you catch yourself worrying about the size of your bank account, consider instead the astonishing thirty-seven trillion cells at your disposal to manifest abundance in your body, mind, and environment.

An imbalance in your bank account simply requires your attention in determining how you will go about increasing the deposits and minimizing the withdrawals. But increasing your wealth will have no impact on increasing your sense of self-worth.

Only you can improve your sense of self-worth by using your mind to reinstate balance in your life. From that calm and centered state you can access your body’s amazing resources for greatness.

 

  • Mind trip # 3 — “I can’t help the way I am. I was born this way.”

As George Elliot said, “Its never too late to become who you are meant to be”.

Your brain shapes your mind and your mind shapes your brain throughout your life.

In essence, whatever your mind rests upon becomes your reality.

Advanced imaging techniques now allow us to see from the inside exactly how our thoughts shape our brain and hence our reality.

Trick your mind out of this Mind trip by resting your attention on this thought instead:

 Where you choose to rest your attention induces the growth of different brain regions. Different brain regions are associated with traits and characteristics, some of which are positive and some negative. When you‘re dealing with a challenging situation, if your attention goes to feeling helpless, the neurons in the region of the brain that register helplessness will fire and wire together. This then strengthens the pathway to feeling helpless. When something becomes problematic, why not acknowledge the complexity of the problem and simply ask, “How can I solve this riddle?” Asking your brain to come up with the resources to solve problems is key. This redirects your energy and activates the problem-solving region of your brain, as opposed to the region that registers defeat. You can change any traits that you don’t like about yourself that you inherited from your environment. You can do so by consciously choosing to focus your attention on experiences that cultivate traits you would like to enhance instead.

And yes, my friend, your mind has the power to do that.

 

  • Mind trip # 4 — “Others will not like me if I let them see my vulnerabilities.”

We spend a whole lot of our energy hiding our humanness in an effort to be admired and respected more. We can witness this behavior in elementary school students all the way to our current political leaders. However, adopting the fake belief that perfection equals power deprives us of our real power—the power of connection.

Trick your mind out of this Mind trip by resting your attention on this thought instead:

You are an amazing, complex system with a myriad of strengths and vulnerabilities. However, part of being human involves having characteristics that have room for improvement. This can  threaten our feeling of needing to belong. Fear activates our stress response, which shuts down the part of our brain that helps us relate to others. 

The best way out of this trap of fear is to resist your tendency to let fear isolate you. Why not respond to fear by opening up to someone you trust? Andadd a hug while you’re at it. Human contact induces the release of oxytocin, a wonder chemical with so many positive effects. Why not focus your attention on the power of your body’s oxytocin to reduce your perception of fear and increase feelings of safety and trust?

A hug is a wonderful way to soothe the internal discomfort of feeling vulnerable. It is also a powerful way to train your mind and brain to keep your relational center open to connection— one hug at a time.

 

  • Mind trip # 5 — “My problems are not my fault.”

Do you blame your former spouse or your manager for your lack of career advancement? Do you attribute your debt to the economy? For many of us, our mind trips us up into wasting our energy blaming someone else for our reality when that reality is not the one we wished for.

 Trick your mind out of this Mind trip by resting your attention on this thought instead:

You are 100% the creator of your reality. The beginning of getting your power back is the realization that you, and only you, have control over your circumstances. If you are not where you would like to be, it’s time to take charge.

The mind map technique.

Here is a technique that you can use to begin this process. You can create a “mind map” of where you are compared to where you want to be. You will need a blank sheet of plain paper and three pens with different colored inks, green, red, and orange. Using the green color, jot down a list of all the things that you do that help you get to your desired destination. Using the red color, jot down a list of all the things that you do that hinder you from getting to your desired destination. Review your lists and then using the orange color, jot down one or two things that you can commit to doing every week that will help you get to your target. Make sure to focus only on things that are within your control.

Each one of those small things, repeated over time, will slowly but surely help you create the life you wish for.

Final thoughts

Although your mind is simply the focus of your attention, it has a lot of power.

Your thoughts are responsible for how you feel and how you act.

Your thoughts are also responsible for the architecture of your brain, which determines how resilient you are.

Thus, if you are unsatisfied with any aspect of your life, you can begin to make changes with the power of your mind.

When you catch yourself engaging in actions that do not support you, pause, question your motivation and make a new choice. In this way, you actually begin building a new pathway to feeling good during difficult times that eventually will all together displace the defaults that trip you up.

Switching the focus of your attention will not only improve the way you feel in the moment, but you will also begin to carve a new path, using your mind, to take you to where you want to be.

If you need a guide to hold a lamp to light your way down your path to re-uniting with your best self, I am here for you. You can contact me at tzeli@myndzen.comto set up a free consultation.

It Is Time to Change Our Minds

mind power

If you want to improve the trajectory of your well-being, you may consider starting by changing your mind.

Because I am a former cancer researcher, healthcare industry veteran and stress-resilience evangelist, people often ask me:

“What is the one thing I can do to mitigate stress and improve my health?”

Can you imagine if one thing, like a magic genie, could take away all our pain? What if this one thing would allow us to do all of the following?

  • Bounce back when we fall.
  • Enjoy every moment without regret about the past and worries about the future.
  • Open doors to abundant health, happiness, success, love, and anything else we wish for.
  • Instantly turn the volume down on anything that steals our energy away.
  • Feel deeply connected to the present moment as opposed to being overwhelmed by the ups and downs of life.

My friends, one thing has all these powers: Our mind!

I want to take a few moments to acquaint you with the most potent antidote to almost everything that holds you back. This includes depression, anxiety, relationship problems, poor performance, insomnia, hypertension and other issues.

“Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.” Henry Ford

Your mind gives meaning to everything in your life.

 Do you ever wonder why you cringe when you see a spider, feel uncomfortable with change, or feel nervous at a party? Everything you think, imagine, dream, fear, and desire are all by-products of your mind. From conception all the way to this moment, your mind has been developing patterns. These patterns are representations of the meanings of sounds, words, sights, or even scents. Their purpose is to establish a blueprint of how you approach rewards and avoid dangers. Nerve cells firing and wiring together develop different regions of our brain to form these patterns. What we call memory is the systematic organization of events, classified by their assigned meaning in relationship to a corresponding emotion and action. Most of these memories cannot be consciously recalled, yet they run our life on autopilot. Many of them are limiting beliefs.

The more we engage in a specific thought pattern, the more nerve cells fire and wire together making that pathway stronger.

If you sacrifice work/life balance and self-care to work harder and harder, perhaps your subconscious programming has linked hard work to success. Or if you defer your own desires to please others, perhaps pleasing others has linked to your feeling worthy.

Try paying attention. Can you spot any limiting beliefs that are tripping you up?

“The energy of the mind is the essence of life.” Aristotle

Your mind is responsible for your emotional state.

 My understanding of the human mind has been greatly enhanced through the incredible work of Dr. Daniel Siegel, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute.

Mindsight is the ability to see and shape the activity of the mind behind the thought, memory or behavior. It has been shown that cultivating mindsight, results to a better integrated, more balanced and healthier brain.

Studying mindsight, has taught me that our mind is the system that processes and regulates information and energy flow. We can see our mind at work in the 60,000 thoughts we have every day about life situations that we encounter.

Whether you are at a job interview, on a date, or having a difficult discussion with your teen, it is your mind that determines how you feel and what you will do.

Life situations themselves, or people, don’t have the power to make us feel defeated, helpless, or depressed. Our thoughts about a situation lead us to negative emotions and inhibiting actions.

I invite you to consider: “How do you want to feel? “You can change the way you feel by recognizing choice points in your thought process in any situation and altering the focal point of your attention. Then you can choose actions that serve you well and help you arrive at your desired outcomes.

“The mind is a powerful force. It can enslave us or empower us. It can plunge us into the depths of misery or take us to the heights of ecstasy. Learn to use the power wisely.” David Cuschieri

A healthy mind-body connection is key for your optimal performance.

 What your mental activity rests upon will determine the energy available to meet your life’s demands. Your embodied brain, which is linked to all of your body systems, is the CEO of your energy. Your brain works with your cardiovascular, immune, and endocrine systems to keep you safe.

But your mind is the operating system of your body. If being asked to lead a meeting means “disaster ahead “to you, your stress response will steal all the energy you need to perform well.

When someone says something critical to you and you feel your stomach tie up into a knot, that is your energy being stolen from you through the shenanigans of your untamed mind. Your stress response will compromise the optimal performance of your body every time you encounter something, no matter how small, that your mind has assigned as a threat. Your thinking brain is shut down, which will undoubtedly compromise your work performance as well as your health.

Next time you experience physiological changes like your heart rate increasing, pause and check in with your mind. You may ask a question like, “What about this situation makes me feel this way? “Your lower brain does not have enough data to answer this question. You can redirect your energy back to your more highly evolved thinking brain, which can reinstate the balance needed for optimal performance.

 “The human mind is the last great unexplored continent on earth. It contains riches beyond our wildest dreams. It will return anything we want to plant.” Earl Nightingale

Changing your mind is within your control.

 Science has proven that our thoughts can not only change the way we feel and act, but also the structure and function of our brain. However, you don’t have to be a neuroscientist to embrace your incredible capacity to train your attention and use your mind to sculpt a more resilient brain. You and I can strengthen our ability to monitor information and energy flow, one thought at a time.

But often we don’t know where to start.

You can try these processes as a beginning.

  • Every time you have a thought that leads to an automatic response that does not serve you, observe it and let it go. Recognize that it is just a thought.
  • Create space between an event and your reaction to provide yourself with the opportunity to choose the meaning you give to something.
  • Question emotions that do not serve you. This allows you to create new patterns and update your subconscious mind and your brain. Consider the impact of this practice, for example, if you chose to replace contempt with affection when having a difference of opinion with a loved one.

Would you like to learn more about how you can actually turn your thinking brain back on when stress has overwhelmed it? If so, I offer a practical way in the form of five questions you can work with. Click on the link provided to join my community to receive this tool and start the process of taming your mind today! http://bit.ly/JoinMyndZen

Final thoughts

Not that long ago I believed that the notion that we can transform our life simply by using the power of our mind was “new age hype with no scientific basis. “I believed that relentless hard work is what leads to optimal performance and ultimately success.

Failing to maintain my own well-being, despite doing what I thought were all the right things, proved me wrong.

Plenty of scientific evidence exists that shows that our frame of mind is a profound predictor of our health.

In fact, a 2012 study that examined the relationship between stress, the perception that stress affects health and actual health outcomes concluded as follows: “The study subjects that experienced a lot of stress and also believed that stress impacted their health had a 43% increased risk of dying prematurely.”(Keller. A.et al, (2012), Does the Perception that Stress Affects Health Matter? NIH, Health Psychology.)

By taking an active stance in choosing the focus of our mind’s attention, we can select the state from which we will face the inevitable challenges of our existence.

We can then handle life’s stressors in a coherent manner, without having the sense that every adversity is the “end of the world. “Beyond feeling good on a daily basis, maintaining an inner state of calm through our thoughts actually prevents wear and tear on our organs. When we don’t waste our inner resources for unnecessary defense, we have them available to help us perform optimally.

You see my friends, there is one thing, like a magic genie that we can do to improve our health.

We can become our own genie and embark on the wonderful journey of training our mind to develop a happier, more resilient brain.

When we are ready to embrace our own power, we can work with our mind to transform our life, one thought at a time.

Three Lessons Chronic Illness taught Me About Our Health Paradox

What concerns you about your health?

Is your weight outside of the healthy range?

Is your blood pressure too high?

How many nights this week did you have difficulty sleeping?

If you are struggling with any of the above health issues, or with any others, you are definitely not alone.

According to the latest stress survey of the American Psychological Association, health is the third highest cause of stress in the US.

The World Health Organization defines health as “the state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being.”

The state of our health

Over this last century, amazing medical and technological accomplishments have revolutionized our ability to improve our health. We have conquered the battle of treating communicable diseases with vaccines, antivirals, and antibiotics. Our ability to diagnose disease through sophisticated imaging techniques has been enhanced. And we can even intervene in our genetic predisposition to disease through revolutionary insights on the genetic material of an organism.

However, the mind-blowing knowledge we have acquired has not yielded the health improvements one would expect.

Despite all of our technical progress, we have never been as obese, over-medicated, or stressed as we are today.

There seems to be a gap between knowledge, medical advances, and the state of our health.

You could say that I am the “poster child” of this health paradox. Despite my educational and professional expertise in improving health, I failed miserably in applying this expertise to my own well-being. At the peak of my outward success, I developed a debilitating musculoskeletal disorder that has placed a huge strain on the quality of my life.

In many ways, I am thankful to the wake-up call of my chronic illness.

I don’t mean to minimize the negative aspects of living with a spinal disorder and chronic pain. However, my ultimate failure gave birth to my new life mission. My mission became translating science into practical, everyday activities that could close the gap between our medical advances and the state of our health. Starting with my own!

I delved deep into the latest neuroscience insights and psychological theories and got certified in the discipline of integrative wellness.

Here is the knowledge I overlooked to embrace to resolve my own health paradox, that you may want to consider for your own health.

1. We are an exquisite scientific marvel, which is primed for wellness.

I used to think that my health would be great when I had more money, time, support, friends, resources, or accomplishments. You can probably create a similar list.

Yet, we already have all we need to enjoy optimal health.

Our body balances and self-regulates itself in the face of external environmental changes.

Our body temperature is an example. Consider how our body keeps our temperature just right without us having to take any action. If at any point we get too warm, a signal is sent through our nervous system to our endocrine system. This triggers dilation of our arteries along with sweating so we lose the excess body heat.

But sometimes, we overwhelm our bodies via the perceptual lens through which we view the world. For example, we fear public speaking more than death, simply by the way we view it!

I needed to be more aware of how powerful our body systems are and use them for health instead of wasting their capabilities for defense.

Now I know how to maintain my nervous and cardiovascular systems in a calm, balanced state for health and restoration. Mindfulness has been a great way for me to pick and choose which battles are worthy of my energy.

 2. Over 90% of todays’ disease is either directly, or indirectly, linked to stress.

Stress is nothing other than the way our body responds to demands from the environment. Yet today, the demands of modern life evidently exceed our ability to maintain balance in our physical, emotional, and spiritual selves.

Although we may think this is the price we have to pay to be successful, operating according to our stress response has several pitfalls.

Critical structures and functions malfunction. Our thinking brain shuts down and the functions that keep us healthy become greatly compromised. We are then more prone to developing disease.

Our bodies may respond to a stressful situation by releasing hormones or increasing heart rate, metabolic rate, and blood flow to our large muscles. However, we can intervene. We can redirect the energy in the structures of our brain that are involved in problem solving by pausing and observing our thoughts about a situation. We might even decide to challenge the situation. Maintaining a sense of calm also ensures the optimal performance of our immune system, which is well-equipped to keep us healthy.

3. The way we respond to life’s demands happens without our permission.

Have you ever wondered why your heart starts to race when you are asked to speak in public? Science informs us that our heart rate will increase as a physiological response to a threat. But, in reality, public speaking involves no threat, except perhaps to our self-concept!

In fact, most of the situations that lead to our lack of self-care, work/life imbalance, or other unhealthy behaviors relate to fears regarding our self-concept.

Whatever negative experiences happened during our early development produced neuro-chemical changes that were stored as our automatic responses to life’s stressors. Until we re-write our past, our implicit childhood memories run our life without our permission.

But if our old beliefs limit and do not serve us, we can create a new narrative that does not interfere with our ability to succeed in life.

For example, the next time you feel compelled to sacrifice family time in order to work late, challenge the belief that propels you to do so. You may have established the belief that hard work is rewarded and self-care is for lazy people, but is this really so?

Setting healthy boundaries and providing yourself with well-deserved space to rest in between sprints of work activity actually increases your productivity.

If like me, you have struggled to maintain your health at optimal levels, it may be time to do something different!

All the knowledge in the world is not going to improve our well-being unless we translate it into practical interventions. Our health paradox clearly indicates that our current interventions have plenty of room for improvement. We are missing something that could help us get to the bottom of our health problems so that we can finally solve them.

The significant part of this story that we may be overlooking is our mind. Our mind is the system that regulates the flow of energy and information in our life.

We may consider our mind to be an abstract concept. However, our mind gives meaning to every life experience.

You can tap into ways to work with your mind to train your brain to achieve a happier and healthier reality. If this interests you, don’t miss my next article on this topic!

Better yet, join my community to be notified as soon as this next article is published.

According to Earl Nightingale, the human mind may be the last unexplored continent on earth, but it does indeed contain riches beyond our wildest dreams. And our mind will certainly return anything we want to plant, especially if we plant tangible, scientifically-proven practices that support our health.