“Please tell me more.”
“Our body chemistry influences our thoughts,” he explained. “When you’re in fight-or-flight mode, your thoughts are often unpleasant. Suppressing those feelings makes your body even more agitated, leading to frustration or anger. In this state, blood flow to the thinking brain decreases and your higher brain can’t filter the information properly. That information travels to the lower brain — the insula — where it can get stuck. Once embedded there, those thoughts interact with the emotional limbic system, making them difficult to change.
“That’s why it’s nearly impossible to change someone’s deeply held beliefs. The marketing world calls this reactance: Ideas you agree with strengthen your views, but conflicting data makes those same beliefs dig even deeper.”
Tell me more, I asked.
“There are four important aspects that you need to practice every day until they become automatic,” he told me. “First, separate yourself from your thoughts. Second, calm your stress response. Third, soothe your ego. And fourth, nurture positive neuroplasticity.
“You can’t control your thoughts,” he added, “but you can break free from them. Expressive writing — where you write your thoughts on paper and then destroy them — is a simple, effective starting point. It helps you calm your body’s chemistry.”
#Kogos #repetitive #unwanted #thoughts #Write