The Four Qualities Of Mystic Cool

Our Brain At Its Absolute Best

When neuroscientists tested brain activity in Tibetan monks, they found inner peace had significantly expanded the usual networks that generate higher order brain function. These networks were larger and more fully integrated than brain scans show on the average person, with increased blood flow to the region.

As a result, brain function in these monks had reached levels never before reported in the scientific literature. The readings on Gamma Wave activity, signaling higher mental activity, was off the chart. The highly developed neural circuitry generated a flow of intelligence that was emotionally peaceful, positive, and fearlessly self-confident, all of which made the monks immune to stress. Even more astounding was the finding that when the monks were not actively practicing mindfulness meditation, they continued to sustain these optimal brain states.

It's In Every One Of Us
The conclusion of science: Inner peace builds a powerful brain. When the scientists drilled into the basic approach to inner peace that these monks practiced they found it consisted of four essential qualities that any of us can develop. Better still, science found that a little practice goes a long way in building brain structure.

These four qualities not only produce a great monk; they produce peak performers. The dynamically peaceful attitude the monks mastered is the zone athletes work toward. It's the calm under siege that drill-sergeants ingrain in soldiers. It is the stream of creativity that entrepreneurs call the top of your game.

I call this dynamically peaceful attitude "Mystic Cool," which is the name of the book I wrote on the subject. In the book I provide a simple set of tools for integrating each of the four qualities into daily life to sustain this powerful attitude. The reward is a powerful brain generating a joyful intelligence that can excel at work and at life.

1. The first quality of Mystic Cool focuses our attention. We are quietly engaged, fully present. We drop the incessant thinking that produces a pointless preoccupation with the past or endless worries about the future. We practice being present, right here, right now, engaging whatever is before us with an open, alert mind.

2. The second quality sets our stance in life. We are peaceful inside regardless of what is happening outside. We are not afraid or threatened by the outside. Thus, we can face a challenge confidently and feel our way to the best possible response to the situation.

3. The third quality creates our sense of connection. Our hearts are open and empathic, with the intention of creating an atmosphere of interpersonal resonance. We consciously connect with our own internal center, with the people we happen to be with, and to that which we conceive of as greater than ourselves. We practice listening better, judging less, and forgiving more.

4. The fourth quality of Mystic Cool engenders a wider perspective. It is an enduring sense of the whole that transcends the fragments. We see the proverbial forest and the trees as we hold to the big picture.

These four qualities, when evoked consistently, transform a disconnected, stress-provoking way of living into a richer, more integrated way of being. In the process, this simple approach to mindfulness builds higher brain structure so we can reach higher ground, in whatever we pursue. Mercifully, it could not be simpler. It is no further than a basic shift in attitude.

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Wiring Our Brains For The Joy Of Excelling

An article in the Wall Street Journal tells of a doctor who counsels a patient in extreme physical pain, "I think your real problem is stress." When the patient complains that the muscle injections the doctor has been giving him hasn't relieved his neck and shoulder pain, the doctor says, "You can't blame me for everything that's hard in your life." The patient bursts into tears, which only confirms his doctor’s diagnosis. The doctor suggests exercise as a means of mitigating his patient's level of stress. (for the Wall Street Journal article, go to http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123724722718848829.html )

The Amygdala: Wired for Stress, Wired for Fear

The reason someone becomes as chronically debilitated by stress as the person in the news article is because his brain is wired for stress. His brain is repeatedly hijacked by the amygdala, the brain's fear center that engineers fight or flight. The primary trigger for most of our 21st century stress reactions is not real and present danger, such as a wild animal; it is fearful thinking. Fearful thinking stirs up anxious, negative emotions, which in turn generates a perception of threat, often where no real threat exists. The problem is the amygdala can't decipher between a real and mind-made danger. It sets off a reaction in either case.Emotional Memory: Trapped in the PastThe amygdala also is the storehouse for emotional memory. Emotional memory is video clips of all the bad things that have happened to us. A brain under stress is prone to project these painful images from the past onto the screen of the present, exciting visions of a future that looks even worse. The frightening picture it paints seem real enough that it has us walking the floor late at night -- night after night -- ruminating over problems for which we see no solution. During the day, our sleep-deprived mind can erupt suddenly or withdraw precipitously, either of which can damage relationships.

When the amygdala is triggered, it takes charge of our physiology. In some situations, it freezes the body, which explains the tight neck and shoulders of the person in the article. Other times, it sends body and emotions into an uproar, which over the long haul can lead to a massive heart attack. Many heart attacks can be traced back to a long run of thought attacks. Surveys by Gallup and the American Psychological Association reveal that eight in ten American struggle with stress, half of whom are stymied by extreme levels of stress. Lower brain function is running these people's lives, making a mess of things. Sending our stressed-out brain to the gym for a good workout is a good thing. It can flush out stress hormones and relieve symptoms for a while. But it isn’t a cure. It won't fix the way we’re wired.

Rewiring Ourselves for the Joy of Excelling
Take heart. There is a cure. Neuroscience has discovered that we can literally rewire a brain that genetics and a painful past wires for stress. In the absence of chronic stress reactions, a flow of intelligence gradually emerges and takes hold. Higher order neural circuits light-up, stimulating the joy of excelling. The process of rewiring is accomplished through a fundamental shift in attitude that takes us from fear and stress to a dynamic quality of inner peace. There is no greater gain in brain function that the shift from fear to peace. Mercifully, this essential shift in attitude is something anyone can make. Positive change comes in a matter of weeks.

I wrote a book on the subject, called Mystic Cool, which Simon & Schuster/Beyond Words is releasing April 14, 2009.

Is Your On-Line Social Network Providing Support or Increasing Your Fear?

What is the typical reaction we see in a worsening economy with rising unemployment? The answer is fear. Biologically, fear triggers stress. The greater part of the stress we experience is caused by psychological fear. Stress represents the way fearful thoughts generate negative emotions, producing a constant sense of threat that at times sends our body into an uproar. As stress amplifies, it debilitates brain function, leading to fatigue, poor decision-making, overwhelm, declining self-confidence, and emotional upsets that can damage relationships. Obviously, this is not the package that is likely to succeed in this bad economy.

There are proven approaches that can help people master their fear and transcend stress. But these days, most people are not spending money on that. Instead, many people are turning to Social Networking to vent, bond and find emotional support for their fears and frustrations. While it is widely recognized that interpersonal connection is a powerful antidote to stress, it is also true that social networking can backfire, when most of what is shared is gloom and doom. Other people’s anxiety can raise our own level of fear and pessimism. When the brain’s fear center is excited, it can run wild with anxiety that increases our stress level exponentially. Spending time with highly fearful people can trigger our own tendency to think negatively and lose confidence.

When engaging in social networking, if you find your feelings of stress and anxiety are increasing, exit immediately. Neurologically, we can’t afford the luxury of negative, stressful thinking, especially in these times. My advice is to redirect yourself to another group, blog or forum where the dialogue is based on “non-negative thinking” and the experience strengthens your peace of mind. Neurologically, the more we break negative thought patterns by no longer believing the gloom and doom these thoughts forecast, the more we light up networks of neural circuits that make us powerful.

Science has established that the mental zone that heightens brain power is a dynamically peaceful attitude. A dynamically peaceful attitude literally strengthens the higher order brain function that makes us brilliant problem solvers. A brain unencumbered by stress naturally generates the creative intelligence that not only sees the solution inside the problem but creates the solution that works. We call this capacity “peak performance.” A brain chronically under stress, on the other hand, is incapable of sustaining peak performance.

Find a social network filled with people whose attitude is dynamically peaceful and positive. It will help you fully engage the part of your brain you need most. And remember: stress is psychological fear; peace is neurological power. There is no greater gain in brain function and brain chemistry than the psychological shift from fear to peace. Making this shift is simpler than you might think. The reward is the capacity to excel at life.

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The One Thing That Makes Everything Work

Say you are at peace; dynamically at peace. Your mind is lit up. It is open to experience and spacious. It’s clear and quiet instead of pointlessly preoccupied with stressful thinking. This dynamically peaceful mind is naturally generating a friendly attitude in you instead of one that is contentious. It makes you flexible and creative instead of rigid. Then let’s say that neuroscience slides you under an f-MRI or attaches your head to an EEG or connects your brain to some other high tech instrument. What they would find is expanded networks that generate higher order brain function.

These networks would be larger and more fully integrated than brain scans show on the average person, with increased blood flow to the region.

There would be a high level of activity in the left prefrontal cortex, the seat of positive emotion. This means that, in your brain, positive emotion had swamped negative emotion. Emotional negativity wouldn’t stand a chance in your brain.

There would be greater activation in brain regions called the right insula and caudate, a network that underlies empathy and maternal love. This indicates a loving, understanding brain. It’s the brain you want in your spouse, your best friend, your boss, and the brain you want to parent your children.

Gamma Wave activity -- signaling higher mental activity like problem solving, creativity and error detection—would also be high.

This highly developed neural circuitry would generate in you a flow of intelligence that was emotionally peaceful and positive, producing a fearlessly self-confident attitude with a clear sense of purpose, all of which would make you immune to stress.

This represents a brain operating at its absolute best. This is a person capable, not only of attaining, but sustaining peak performance. Work would not besiege and discourage such a person. For them, the research shows, work is an intrinsically rewarding and fulfilling experience.

Neuroscience has established that all these benefits are produced by a dynamically peaceful attitude. Peace is the threshold to the experience researchers in human performance call flow. Flow is the joy of excelling that we sometimes experience when we slip past stress and anxiety and enter that wonderful zone, where the full power of our skill, knowledge and ability come into play. The usual storm of demands, pressures, and doubts may have be present at the outset, but by subtle twists and turns, we manage to slip past the storm and locate the eye, where the pressure to produce becomes the challenge to excel. The only stress we feel is the desire to stretch ourselves.

As we settled in, an effortless flow of intelligence takes over, sweeping us along in its current. Time stands still. Pieces fall effortlessly into place, as if the dots are connecting themselves. At some point, our brain and mind harmonize to generate our own brand of genius that is capable of hitting a target no one else can see. Working in this way does not feel like work at all. Rather, it is a rewarding labor of love. It produces “a deep sense of enjoyment that becomes a landmark in memory for what life should be like,” as Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the father of positive psychology, stated.

A TOOL FOR GENERATING FLOW
Here is a simple way of establishing this sense of flow as you approach work:

Sit calmly for a moment before beginning the task. Recall the basic fact that at a mind at peace is a brain working at its absolute best. Let go of any anxiety or tension and be at peace. Feel your brain light up with power and energy to give you everything you will need to succeed. Next, just for a moment, feel the simple joy of being alive. Feel gratitude for the creative gifts you possess, which each new challenge invites you to realize and increase. See the task before as an opportunity to stretch your creative wings. Now bring to mind your goal for the task or project. Feel how the simple sense of joy and gratitude merges with your goal to inspire you with the enthusiasm to excel. Place your faith in your peaceful, joyful attitude. Imagine it forms an arrow headed straight for the bull’s eye. As you step to the task, let go of the outcome and trust the process … completely.

Click-on here to download this tool.

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Thought Attacks That Cause Heart Attacks (and drive performance into the ground)

Mark Twain once said, "I've been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened." I call this "Thought Attacks." Thoughts attacks are fearful thoughts that, when believed, escalate into negative emotions that produce perceptions of threats. It is the reactive mind that repeatedly mistakes a stick for a snake. Dr. Robert Sapolsky -- the famous stress researcher at Stanford and author of Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers -- states: "We humans are smart enough to generate all sorts of stressful events purely in our heads. We can experience wildly strong emotions, provoking our bodies into an accompanying uproar, all linked to mere thought."

Thought attacks are the origin of the anxious, stress-provoking attitude called Type-A that leads to heart attacks. It also generates the stream of stress hormones that debilitate higher brain function. This makes it impossible to sustain peak performance or generate the resonance and empathy for meaningful relationships.

Tools That Keep You At The Top Of Your Game

In my book Mystic Cool, three of the ten tools I provide (described below) serve to quiet thought attacks by promoting the power of non-negative thinking. These exercises are simple, on-the-spot intercessions that add nothing to our to-do list. They work by increasing awareness, which is half the battle in transcending stress and unhappiness. Practice even one of these exercises over two weeks and positive change is inevitable. You will start to recover the emotional calm, mental clarity, and physical energy that sustains you at the top of your game.

At first, it may feel distressing to face the stream of negativity the unconscious mind is capable of generating. But as you make the content conscious you begin to recognize toxic thoughts for what they are: stressful delusions. After a while, you will begin to laugh at the very thoughts that used to punish you. Eventually, you will stop thinking this way because your logical mind will no longer find any value in it, meaning that you've freed yourself from the critic within. Below is a description of each process. Click on each link for a set of instructions for the exercise.

TOOL #1. Transcending the Background Negativity: This process involves becoming aware, as much as possible, of the negative feelings and thoughts your mind generates. Each time you are aware of a negative thought or feeling, you tell yourself "this stressful thought or this pessimistic feeling is in me, not in reality." You remind yourself that you have the power to let it go -- by not believing it.

TOOL #2. The Clear Button: Most stress reactions begin with fearful or toxic thinking. If we collapse the thought pattern before it proliferates, we can thwart most stress reactions. A psycho-kinetic exercise called "The Clear Button" is a proven way to do that. It resets the brain.

TOOL #3. Refuting the Critical Voice: We can transcend the judging, critical mind to achieve a more optimistic self-view. In a series of simple steps, we can effectively refute the typically negative, generally overstated, and tacitly unfair judgments the critical voice flings at us.

Click-on here for all three exercises.

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Can People Under Pressure Sustain Highly Creative Levels of Performance For Long Periods And Not Burn-Out?

Recently I was asked: Can people work ten hours a day, five and sometimes six days a week for extended periods of time and enjoy high levels of creative performance without burning out? The answer is yes . . . if -- and only if -- a person is adept at transcending stress. If he or she can do that, they are much more likely to succeed, and in ways that will make work intrinsically rewarding.

Start Today
Neurologically, transcending stress is achieved through the shift in attitude that takes us from anxious to peaceful. Stress is psychological fear; peace is neurological power. That's not my opinion; that's science's definition. Mercifully, making this shift is simpler than we might think, producing meaningful results in a relatively short period of time. In my book, Mystic Cool, and in workshops, I provide ten simple tools that sustain the shift from stress to peace, without adding to your to-do list. But you can make this shift right away. Starting tomorrow, begin your day in peace and dedicate the rest of the day to the goal of sustaining your peace of mind, regardless of what happens. Here's one approach:

• In the morning, when you come into the kitchen to make coffee or tea, while it is brewing sit in a chair and quietly look out the window at the morning.
• Be present, here and now. Simply follow your breathing, relax your mind, and open your heart.
• If there is any tightness in your body, feel it. Feeling it actually releases the tightness.
• Feel whatever emotion you feel. Meet it with a willingness to feel it and then let it pass.
• Forgive whatever transgressions you or someone else committed that still linger from the day before and make this day new.
  Commit yourself to being at peace today, remembering the brain power science tells us it inevitably provides.

During the five minutes it takes to make the coffee, you can brew the attitude that will make your day. What could be simpler? Stress, on the other hand, is what makes things difficult. The cost to us, personally and professionally, is enormous. Stress depletes the higher order brain function, physical stamina, and enthusiasm that sustain peak performance. A dynamically peaceful attitude restores the brain power that keeps you at the top of your game.

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Perfection Is Not An Option

On the Discovery/Health website there is a test to determine whether or not you are a “perfectionist.” The preface to the tests asks: Are you putting unreasonable demands on yourself by setting the bar too high? Do you expect too much from your children or lover? Or do you feel that the world is exerting pressure on you?

The test asks 15 questions. Here are a few of the questions:

• In general, the prospect of making a mistake angers me.
• I am frequently disappointed in my mate, friends, kids, co-workers.
• I get impatient with people around me - they always screw up in one way or another.
• I believe that if I do things badly, others will reject me.
• When my plans don't go as I envision, I get extremely stressed out.
• Being 'average' is a terrible thought for me.

Type-A

It’s easy to see why a perfectionist is regarded as Type-A, meaning they produce an extreme level of stress that, over a decade or two, is likely to ravage their cardio-vascular system and threaten their life. There was a time when the unreasonable demands I placed on myself at work meant I didn’t get home some nights until midnight. It's telling that I cannot remember one thing I did that seemed so important at the time. But I do remember the toll it took on my mind and body. There is a lot to be said for making it home for dinner with enough energy, mindfulness and good heart to make the evening pleasant. Those evenings we do remember.

Transcending Type-A

Ralph Waldo Emerson advises to do this: "Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on yesterdays."

Ernest Holmes is also worth quoting. Here is his perspective: "What we demonstrate today, tomorrow, and the next day is not as important as the tendency which our thought is taking: the dominant attitude of our mind. If everyday things are a little better, a little more harmonious, a little more health giving and joyous; if each day we are expressing more life, we are going in the right direction."

A Choice

Ask yourself, which do you want? Do you want an attitude that berates you for a mistake, obsesses over details that hardly matter, and causes you to criticize and distance yourself from people, especially those you love. Or do you want an attitude that sheds your mistakes along with your old nonsense in exchange for a new day filled with new possibilities that each day increase your capacity to generate new life. We choose, and as we choose we create our life.

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