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.

Three Things I Am Letting Go of as I Say Good-bye to This Year.

Life is such a delicate balance between holding on and letting go, as Rumi once said.

Do you struggle with knowing what to hold onto and what to let go of?

More often than not, we tend to hold onto people, possessions, and habits that are draining away our energy.

The delightful Ms. Carolyn Myss, world-renowned medical intuitive and best-selling author of a number of books including, Anatomy of the Spirit, said it best: “We only have a specific amount of energy per day. If we have $100 worth of energy and we expend it all on things that do not return on our investment then we end up with an energetic debt. If we keep making this debt larger, eventually our own body tissues will have to cover the difference. This is how we end up getting sick.”

I have done a pretty good job throughout my life with balancing my bank account between deposits and withdrawals. But I have not been as good with energy deposits and withdrawals, so I did get sick.

As I have been building the bridge back to my healthy self, which was the genesis of Myndzen, I discovered that choosing to let go of some beliefs and attitudes that I held did wonders for my physical and emotional health. Over the course of my journey, I have experienced such beautiful warmth and joy from letting go of perfectionism, taking things personally, comparisons, the need for others’ approval, and other beliefs and actions that were eating away at my happiness and well-being.

However, there were three behaviors that have been very difficult for me to let go of because they camouflaged themselves in altruistic costumes. Not until this year did I realize their truly toxic nature.

As we are preparing to say good-bye to yet another year, I invite you to join me in letting go of the following:

  1. Putting up with people you cannot depend on

Nobody is perfect, by any means, and we should always be willing to give the ones we love the benefit of the doubt. However, there is a lot of negative energy connected to people in our lives who are chronically unreliable and never take responsibility for it. I used to think of myself as a kinder person for letting dear ones off the hook who forgot a commitment they had made to me, changed our plans at the last minute, or showed up a day late and a dollar short the one time I needed their support.

But the ultimate act of kindness is to be true and respectful to ourselves first in order to be able to extend the same courtesy to others. Ultimately, if I cannot rely on you, that means that I cannot trust you and that is not conducive to creating safety between us. And a lack of safety in relationships is a significant risk factor for our health.

So, if you are holding on to any relationships in your life with people you cannot depend on, I invite you to love them, hug them, kiss them good-bye, and let them go!

  1. Being the Mother Teresa of wounded souls

Somewhere in between my being “anxiously attached” in childhood and being enamored with the “high” of external approval, I found myself making an energetically draining choice over and over again in my life: I embraced and extended refuge and love to fellow humans who as adults still carried unresolved wounds from their past.

It is truly heartbreaking to imagine that any child suffers traumas inflicted by people they depend on.

I have chosen to work as a Court-Appointed Child Advocate to serve as a voice for abused children. But there is a vast difference between volunteering to protect the rights of innocent child victims of abuse and putting up with absolutely unacceptable behavior from adults because they still carry wounds from their past, which they are not willing to own up to and let go.

Empathy and compassion are wonderful virtues, but there is a fine line between empathizing about someone’s unfortunate past and letting them get away with entitlement, exploitation, empathy impairment, or projecting their pain on you. (These are the hallmarks of Narcisistic personality disorder-the ultimate manifestation of unresolved wounds!)

The bottom line is this—hurt people hurt other people. So, if you still have people in your life that often behave in unkind ways and are not accountable for their behavior because of how they were treated in their past—do yourself a massive favor and let them go.

  1. Living with illusions and lies

Human nature is such that, at times, we like to believe in fairy tales, mostly to protect ourselves from facing realities that we do not really want to face.

We create a story that nurtures and justifies an illusion, living in denial about how we actually play a big part in betraying ourselves.

But deep down we know when we are telling ourselves a lie—like sticking to a relationship that is not honoring our spirit, or working at a company or in an industry that is not aligned with our values.

Why is it hard to identify illusions? Because we are scared!

If we did not grow up in an environment conducive to developing a healthy sense of self-worth, we keep one eye closed so we can get what we think we need, settling for crumbs and endeavors that are offensive to our soul.

Many statistics reflect our challenge with identifying illusions: The percent of infidelity in relationships and the incidence of alcoholism and other escape tactics are just a few.

Trust me, I know how hard it is to let go of the lies we tell ourselves and how uncomfortable it feels to be in free fall, detached from the stories that were part of us for so long.

But here are a couple of reminders to aid you in this magical act of letting go out of kindness for yourself.

  • Fear is also an illusion—95% of the things we worry about never actually happen.
  • We can increase our self-worth by the choices we make. When we start treating ourselves like we are worthy of all things great in life and no longer settle for fairy tales that drain our soul, we increase our self-worth, one nerve connection at a time.

If a person, a job, a friend, or a situation does not contribute to your values and your mission in life, and you realize that you are keeping them in your life because of a fairy tale you have been telling yourself, offer them a beautiful bunch of flowers and let them go.

We are about to enter a new beginning, a brand new year.

This new year can be amazing for you.

This could be the year that you make your dreams come true!

Or this new year could be disappointing.

The one certainty is that it is you who will determine how the year goes. You are worthy of love and belonging and goodwill and acts of kindness and all great experiences that allow your nervous system to remain in optimal balance supporting your health and well-being.

But choosing carefully and following through with whom and what you need to let go of is critical for the trajectory of your happiness in this new year and beyond.

Happy New Year!

Tzeli

Do You Have a Good Relationship With Stress?

In the midst of this crazy world we live in, fueled with uncomfortable phenomena, one thing that will never discriminate against us, regardless of our race, sex, or socio-economic status is—stress!

Stress has been described as the epidemic of the century. Prominent scientists around the world have provided us with over five decades of evidence that links stress to more than 90% of today’s disease, regardless of the color of our skin or any other of our unique characteristics.

I have had a tumultuous relationship with stress because I did not make friends with it. I am now living with some significant consequences. I have developed a musculoskeletal condition that graces me with chronic pain and restricts my activities to a great degree. Furthermore, my brain has been sculpted to be over-sensitive to stressors. This means that my amygdala (our nervous system’s alarm system responsible for identifying threats) is probably enlarged and my hippocampus (mainly associated with memory, among other critical functions) has probably experienced some shrinkage. So, you can say that finding a solution to the problematic consequences of not having a good relationship with stress has been a big deal for me.

During my diligent study and experimentation to improve my relationship with stress I came across a bewildering realization:

The dire ramifications of stress are not because stress is such a great villain, but because we don’t fully realize just how much power we have to choose how we relate to stressors and to the critical players involved with our stress response! Could it be that our “untamed” power leads us to the troublesome stress symptoms we experience?

What if we use our power to “befriend” stress?

On first thought, you may think the idea of “befriending stress” is a conundrum. The truth is, we all know how to do it. We go through the process of making friends pretty much every day in life.

In fact, making friends involves a simple two-step process:

  1. We get to know someone better.
  2. We establish safety and trust.

What if we followed the same process to improve our relationship with stress?

This week I want to talk about Step One: Getting to know stress better.

  1. What is stress?

Stress is the pressure we feel when our body goes off-balance (homeostasis) to respond to an environmental demand. In small quantities, stress is not necessarily bad as it motivates us to stretch ourselves to meet life’s demands. Imagine if you were an Olympian training to run for a gold medal. Some stress might be helpful to motivate you. Every day, we are all Olympians having to deal with situations that take us off homeostasis, which is our optimal, internal balance of essential bodily functions like temperature and heart rate. Next time you feel the subtle signs that your stress response is activated (for example, if you notice your heart rate has increased) give yourself sixty seconds to assess if the situation at hand is worthy of the activation of your stress response or not.

2. Is the reason for your stress a truth or a story?

What we don’t realize is that most of the time what triggers our stress response is the subtle, momentary interpretation we give to life situations and not the life situations themselves. For example, public speaking in and of itself does not actually pose any significant threat or danger to an organism. However, the thought of possibly forgetting our words and feeling embarrassed has the power to trigger our stress response, which we can immediately feel by the increase in our heart ratem just the same as if we had encountered a shark while swimming in the ocean. What if we shift our attention to simply recognizing how amazing it is that we are just as powerful as a shark or a bear in activating our fight or flight response, instead of allowing the power of our mind to take us off-balance?

 3. Too much of a good thing can be bad.

There are situations that warrant the appropriate elicitation of our stress response. Maybe we are in a car accident and we have to rush to provide aid for ourselves and our loved ones. A temporary, and infrequent, activation of our stress response with ample time to rest and digest what has happened in-between does not lead to health issues. However, we are now estimated to elicit our stress response over ten times a day. We are over-estimating threats and placing our bodies under a tremendous amount of unnecessary strain that does have significant short and long-term health consequences. What if we acknowledge how efficient we are at identifying threats, but shoot for eliminating one unnecessary stress response activation per week?

 4. Balance and optimal performance go hand in hand.

When we identify a situation as a threat, our thoughts and words trigger our brain to engage multiple systems in our body to address the threat. This diminishes the effectiveness of critical structures in our brain, for example, those that govern thinking; and shuts down other essential functions of our body, for example, our immune and digestive systems. In other words, when we operate under our stress response, our power is momentarily diminished and we enter a state of temporary impairment. Additionally, when we are in this defensive mode we cannot learn as well. What if we use the old advice to “pause and take ten breaths,” and then reconsider if we want to label a situation a threat, considering how powerful our thoughts and words are?

5. There are significant consequences to chronic stress.

When we allow our body systems to be used too often to address imaginary fears, like public humiliation, we are essentially exhausting our body systems by asking them to work overtime. Allostasis is the process that our body uses to regain homeostasis after it has been taken off-balance by a stressor. The total sum of all the things our body has to do to get back to its balanced state is called allostatic load. When our allostatic load is greater than our ability to recover, we enter the overload-level of allostatic load, and significant damage to organs and functions can occur. What if we consciously infuse breaks of calm in between jumping through hoops of stress as a means of boosting our resilience to life’s demands? Even sneaking out to the garden to water the plans, or creating a five minute space at work to listen to a guided meditation could be enough to restore balance in our nervous system.

We seem to frequently judge ourselves for our shortcomings, but we do not acknowledge how powerful we can be in creating not just our reality, but also our health and well-being. Although life’s demands are endless and many of them are outside of our control, what is actually within our control is working on building the resources that help us bounce back when something pushes us off-balance.

We are all drawn to rewarding experiences, and we strive to be happy. Reinstating an internal sense of safety and security is one of the most sustainable forms of happiness.

We know how to install a security system in our home to help us feel safe, but do we know how to reinstate a sense of safety in our neurobiology to improve our relationship with stress?

Join me next week for the second part of ways to improve our relationship with stress—how to establish safety and trust with stress and our nervous systems.

We cannot eliminate the sheer volume of stressors, but we can improve our relationship with our body systems and our stress response as a powerful way to live happier, healthier, and more productive lives.

21 Guideposts to Being Grateful

We didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving in Greece, where I grew up, but I have come to really like this American holiday.

For starters, I like roast turkey, mashed potatoes, and cranberry relish, but mostly I like Thanksgiving because it is officially the day when we are invited to practice gratitude.

Gratitude is a powerful human emotion. We can choose how to respond to life and make conscious choices about where to invest our attention. I recommend choosing gratitude.

Not that long ago I used to roll my eyes when anyone mentioned the myriad benefits of a gratitude practice. Not only was I a scientist through and through, but I also lived by the philosophy, “no pain, no gain.”

But as it turns out, I was wrong!

Ample scientific evidence exists that clearly proves that the choice to place our attention on elements we are grateful for can lead to more happiness, physical health, and meaningful and satisfying relationships.

It takes twenty-one days to form a habit. I invite you to use the following twenty-one guideposts, as thoughts to start your day. You can also use them as your chosen focal point to redirect your attention to, every time something happens in your day that takes you off-balance.

We have no control over much in life, like the economy or our obnoxious work colleague.

On the other hand, we have complete control over what we choose to put our attention on. Focusing on positive things we are grateful for has a tremendous impact on our happiness, health, and performance.

So, let’s begin!

Day 1: What do you love about yourself today? I invite you to view yourself as the amazing human being that you truly are, free of concerns about your abilities, your age, your body shape or size. Instead, consider how many challenges you have already overcome, how much adversity you have endured, and in how many ways you have positively impacted the world we live in throughout the course of your life.

Day 2: Celebrate what a scientific marvel you are. If you are wondering how a certain part of your anatomy looks in a specific type of outfit, I invite you to shift your attention to the fact that in every second you are alive your brain orchestrates six trillion actions using the 100 trillion cells of your body to keep you in perfect balance. That realization should put any concerns about size and parts of your anatomy into perspective!

Day 3: Take a few moments to appreciate your heart. Consider that no matter how many times your heart is broken over the course of your life, it will continue to beat over 100,000 times per day sending blood to 60,000 miles of blood vessels!

Day 4: Take a few moments to appreciate one aspect of yourself that you usually do not like. Challenging parts of ourselves are a little bit like a bratty child that acts up when ignored. By embracing a negative part of ourselves, for example, our inner critic, we make friends with it and then we can work together toward our purpose.

Day 5: Cherish the power of your breath. Remember that your breath can activate your parasympathetic nervous system, the part of you that is your natural antidote to the stress response! Isn’t it funny that we look for power externally in things like money and material assets when we have so much internal power to shut down what does not serve us and open the doors to so many wonderful things simply through the power of our breath?

Day 6: Treasure your ability to calm your nervous system on demand.

A calm nervous system halts the production of cortisol, which in large quantities interferes with the optimal functioning of your body systems (immune and digestive, just to name a couple). Did you know you are a fabulous chemist and scientist in the laboratory of your life every moment you are alive? By simply changing the narrative we give to a life situation, no matter how stressful the situation may be, we can calm our nervous system. For example, if we just got laid off, we can acknowledge that the situation is challenging, but focus on how many times we have been able to overcome similar situations in the past, instead of how this is the “end of the world.”

Day 7: Recognize the incredible power you have within your amazing neurobiology! Being in a balanced state of gratitude allows you access to the relational parts of your brain (right hemisphere) and allows you improved functioning of executive regulation (pre-frontal cortex). Is there a person in your life that you would love to share a positive relationship with? Recount five things you love about them before you talk to or see them next time and notice what happens!

Day 8: Be grateful for the gift of neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the greatest neuroscience discovery of the last 150 years. We can grow regions of our brain associated with desired traits by simply shifting our attention to having experiences that foster those traits. For example, we grow optimism by consciously shifting our attention to being grateful for the positive sides of even negative experiences.

Day 9: Revere in your ability to activate your reward center and trigger the release of dopamine. You can activate dopamine, our “feel good” hormone, simply by identifying rewarding aspects of all experiences. When our “feel good” hormones get triggered by certain experiences, these experiences are flagged for protection and safekeeping. This means that over time, one positive experience at a time, your automatic response will become gratitude.

Day 10: Fill your heart with gratitude for a person that makes you feel cared for. When we consciously recall people and situations that make us feel good, our body functions (heart rate, temperature, blood pressure) remain at optimal levels. In todays’ era of information overload, we seem to operate from our stress response state quite a bit more frequently than what we were physiologically designed to handle. Thank heavens we have a natural antidote for this problem!

Day 11: Adore your strong muscles today. Do something that gives you the chance to encounter your physical strength. And don’t forget that much like muscle fitness, gratitude sculpts and increases cortical tissue in brain regions that are associated with harmonious emotional regulation. That means that the more time you invest in being grateful, the better you can process and manage negative emotions like fear and anger.

Day 12: Savor and trust in the universe that you are part of. Feel free to let go of what does not serve you, knowing that when you allow yourself to be the beautiful, amazing you who you are in your true essence, the whole universe will conspire to bring to your path all that you need. Have faith and trust the universe.

Day 13: Nurture the joy you hold inside your heart! We are so used to living life from a threatened state focusing on the challenging aspects of existence. Joy is not something that we arrive at in a conditioned manner and trust me—it does not come when we arrive at certain material milestones. We can find joy in the beauty of appreciating mundane details like autumn rain drops or being fully present without getting hi-jacked by past regrets or future worries. Let go of concerns about what’s to come.

Day 14: Be grateful for the ones that caused you pain. I know this does not seem like a typical thing to be grateful for or one that is easy for us to do. I invite you to consider that everything that comes along our path has a beautiful and precious reason and purpose. Acknowledge that when our interaction with another ends up in suffering, it is an incredible, fertile ground for growth for us. What is the message this person is here to give you? What can you do within your control to arrive at a harmonious outcome with another as a result of the lessons learned from this experience?

Day 15: Delight in your ability to be an active participant in reciprocity. Did you know that when you share gratitude with another it spreads like a positive, wonderful, wildfire? It feels good to be the recipient of appreciation and it drives us to “pay it forward” to others. Gratitude allows you to be part of a positivity wave that has the power to triumph over so many unnecessary human conditions, like hate, discrimination, and intolerance.

Day 16: Think about a recent situation when you did something great. How did that feel? Did you know that when you pause and actively recall what something wonderful felt like, you actually enhance your brains ability to replace negative, pre-existing wiring with positivity?

Day 17: Love your brain today. Your immaculate brain cannot focus on too many things at the same time, so if you occupy as many of your neurons (brain cells) as you can with gratitude, you have to let go of thoughts of self-doubt that might come up. This is the basis of many proven strategies, like mindfulness meditation, that have the power to increase our focus on one positive thing and away from our scattered “monkey mind.”

Day 18: Bring consciousness to how brilliant you are. As you go about cooking your meals, pouring your heart into your work, or raising your children, about thirty billion basic nervous system cells are at work forming the fiber of your life. Through nerve cell connections, our brains will select and save the experiences we have taught it to value. You can take action now, by telling your brain what YOU value.

Day 19: You are an inspiration to others simply by the choice of your actions. Consider how many great things you actually do every day. Beyond business plans and professional goal attainments, think of all the times you make someone smile! You have so many choices of actions you can take. I invite you to choose to nurture someone special today, or to simply empower and inspire the people around you by being the wonderful you that you are.

Day 20: Enshrine your power of responsibility and accountability. By recognizing which of your chosen views and actions do not take you to a destination you wish to arrive at, you actually give yourself the gift of choice. You can then play with your glorious ability to change anything that does not serve you. This is our natural antidote to learned helplessness, which fosters depression, as Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology, has shown us.

Day 21: Embrace the myriad of elements that make you who you are. You are just as amazing as Aristotle or Albert Einstein! Embrace your beauty and all of your imperfections, decide which ones you want to work on, and rest peaceful that you are more than enough just the way you are.

A fellow Greek by the name of Plato once said: “A grateful mind is a great mind which eventually attracts to itself great things.”

It is truly amazing that over 2,500 years after Plato noted this modern research has proven him right.

But what is more amazing is that by making the simple choice of practicing gratitude everyday, we can harness the promethean light of Greek philosophers and modern science to illuminate our path to optimal well-being.

Happy Thanksgiving!