Have you ever watched something so scary or made you nervous that you realized just after a couple of seconds of watching that, you’re a bit tighter everywhere and your palms are sweaty?
Haven't experienced that?
Watch The Dawn Wall or Free Solo.
These are enough to make your palms sweaty for sure!
Physically, you didn’t do anything to make anything sweat.
Your mental processing of the content had you have an emotional reaction, and that resulted in a physical manifestation: sweaty palms.
Everything is connected!
The secretion of sweat on your palms can be easily observed as they manifest physically as a result of you watching something nerve-wrecking. You can feel it and touch it. Imagine this is happening all over your body - your inner body, gut, cells, brain, hormones and other chemicals that you can’t feel or observe as visibly as your palms.
I’m convinced that all your cells and organs are also ‘sweaty’ and have a reaction of their own - although they may not be as obvious and observable as the sweat in your palms.
Now imagine those reactions happening all over your body for an extended period of time. Minutes to hours, in case of horror or anger. Continuous and frequent negative emotions being brought up, in case of constant fights with someone you live with, or hatred of someone you work with.
This does something TO YOUR BODY, all over your body.
Next time you are feeling angry, remember that you are not just angry in your mind. It affects you physically - and everywhere.
Next time you are feeling negative, remember that stress hormones are being secreted in your brain and all over your inner body, just like the sweat in your palms.
When you are angry, all your cells are angry.
When you feel negative, all your cells are negative.
When you feel happy, all your cells are also, happy.
When you're in a negative state of mind,
Your cortisol (stress hormones) level goes up, and your dopamine and serotonin are depleted. By sleeping, resting, forgiving, and having a positive attitude, you can bring about the opposite effect and ‘even it out’.
But why constantly struggle between the two states, and put your body through ups and downs, when you can simply and consistently be in the positive side, for the health of your mind and body? Wouldn’t it make sense to NOT let your body go through the negative and angry chemical reactions? Oh how the world would be, if we all did that for ourselves!
Anger, resentment, jealousy, bitterness, envy, frustration, hatred, contempt, criticism, high stress, anxiety, not forgiving, and bullying others all negatively impact YOUR OWN BODY. When you are in these states of mind, it’s not just the others that you may hurt, but your brain chemicals and neuro-connections change. All these negative hormones secrete all over your being. You're producing poison for your body to consume.
"Anger, resentment, hatred -
these are all poisons you drink,
and you expect somebody else to die."
- Sadhguru
But don’t you worry. There are antidotes to this!
With these tricks you can influence your thoughts and emotions, and trick your brain and body into secreting more happiness all over you.
1. Remember the sweaty palms next time you feel negativity.
Let them remind you that your emotions and thoughts have an affect on your bodily functions. Hormones, cells, organs, all of it! It will help you decide to react to situations and solve problems with more positive energy.
Remember: you have an opportunity decide how you feel about things, every single minute of the day. These little decisions and actions make up the bigger picture - your personality, your life, your world.
2. Smile.
When you smile, your brain doesn't know your intention. Weather you smile because you are actually happy, or just making that smiley face only at a physical level without feeling happy, a smile is a smile to your brain. Over the years, it had learned to recognize this facial expression as happiness and something positive. So no matter what your intention is to make a smiley face, they translate as a happy positive moment in your brain. And I assure you, it will put you in a good mood, help you take better attitude on things, and your brain will also order all your cells to smile as well.
So smile more! Cringe less!
Make your brain tell every cell of your body you feel good!
"Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy.
Even smile in your liver."
- Ketut from the movie Eat, Pray, Love
3. Talk to yourself.
When someone trips over their own foot and falls, you won't go to them and say, "You're such an idiot. You don't know how to use your legs? Get up!" Instead, you'd probably go help them get up, right? We need to give ourselves the same niceness that we offer to others.
We need to ask ourselves, are you OK today? It's fine, you will get through it. You are amazing! You are great!
Talk to yourself. And positively🙂
Pep-talk and positive words are powerful. But we can't afford to wait for others to do that for us. Talk to yourself. Give yourself a pep-talk every day. And it will re-direct your energy, change the connections and chemicals of your body and mind, help you change your belief about yourself, hence change your behavior on a day to day basis, eventually leading you to achieve amazing things in the long run.
4. Write down 1 thing that you are thankful for, daily.
Don’t just think it. Write it down. Actualize it. Materialize it.
Let yourself really feel that gratitude come all over you for a full minute or two. When you are in the space of gratitude, it’s hard to be in a negative space at the same time.
5. Meditate.
I know, I know. How cliché? But this is your ultimate weapon in this constant battle against the negativity. Meditation creates the space for you to step away. It can offer you the chance to be observant of your own thoughts and emotions. It enables you to see things from different perspectives, and become more of a level-headed, objective thinker. Meditation helps you see the TRUTHS of things and situations, unbiased of your opinions or conditioning.
The secret to longevity is to not just manage but reduce stress and negative thoughts and feelings. You can only do so if you are in control of yourself.
In order to be in total control of yourself, you first need to KNOW yourself, and learn to CONTROL YOUR ENERGY.
With Self Study and Energy Control, you will be able to change the energy in and around yourself, and therefore control any situations to become as pleasant or as unpleasant as you wish. You control your energy, then you control yourself. You control yourself, then you control your world. When you are able to control your world, that is the total mastery of life.
And if you're interested, I want to invite you to learn more about it in our Self Mastery course with Yoga Philosophy. We would love to have you there!
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