The Attitude That Takes A Brain Wired For Stress And Rewires It For Joy

A large body of research reveals that small steps such as these are powerfully neuroplastic, meaning the positive change in attitude they generate actually expands higher order brain structure to change our experience of life. In my book, Mystic Cool, I present the body of research that proves it.

I invite you to practice these steps for two weeks and see if they gift you with a better brain for a better life.

1. In the morning, when you come into the kitchen to make coffee or tea, while it is brewing sit in a chair and quietly take in the morning. Be present, here and now. Relax your mind, and open your heart. Before getting up to pour yourself a cup, tell yourself, I have another precious day of human life. I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to be more enlightened for the benefit of everyone.

2. During the day, when you are stressed, ask yourself: What am I afraid of? Biologically, it takes some form of fear to trigger a stress reaction. Thus, the operative question to ask whenever you feel stressed is -- what am I afraid of? Look at the fearful thoughts you are thinking at the moment. Don't edit anything. Most if not all of these thoughts will be exaggerations, multiplying simple problems into catastrophes or turning fiction into facts. Ask yourself, who would I be without these fearful thoughts, and then go be that person.

3. Be aware of your negative thinking. Don't judge it or even try to change it. Simply be aware of the negativity that the unconscious brain generates when you are fearful. Simple awareness slows the neural firing and these thoughts start losing their power. Soon you will find yourself in touch with the power to choose the experience you want to have, instead of tolerating the experience the unconscious forces on you. Two weeks of practicing in this way and you will start to feel more peace and joy.

4. Take a one to two minute break -- often. Simply looking out the window and being present with the day outside can be quite rejuvenating. Let go of work for a moment and notice the quality of light, or the wind blowing through a tree, or what's happening in the sky. After lunch, take a 5 minute walk around the building. During your walk, let go of future concerns and be fully present. You are seldom stressed when you are fully present.

5. Start work in a relaxed state of mind. There is an experience science calls flow, which research has established as the optimal state for creativity. Flow is “the zone” athletes seek. It is the experience entrepreneurs call “the top of your game.” It is the “effortless effort” mystics cultivate. So take your nose off the grindstone. The joy of excelling begins with a relaxed state of mind.

6. Listen better, judge less and forgive more. The reward is authentic relationships that resonate with the sense of connection. The strength of our connection with others is the #1 factor in determining how long we live. So hold others with positive regard and be kind, empathic, and interested.

7. Practice loving yourself just the way you are. Practice loving life just the way it is this very moment. As you do, you will begin to notice something tight inside you loosen.

8. Now and then, stand in the longest line at the store and practice being at peace. Drive home in the slow lane and listen to classical music instead of the news.

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The Workplace We All Hate

Most of us are stressed and stress costs us and our organization at every level that matters. Research shows that:
A brain under stress is incapable of sustaining peak performance.
Chronic stress also renders an employee neurologically incapable of maintaining positive affect, high morale, cooperation or interpersonal strength.

There are a million Americans absent from work everyday due to stress and even more missing due to presenteeism. Stress accounts for nearly half of turnover, and the long list of stress-related diseases is driving-up the cost of health benefits. Stress is identified as the #1 problem for 90% of senior executives. The price tag is somewhere around a trillion dollars. It's a mess and few companies know what to do to solve it. Most would tell you there is no solution. There is.

The neurological opposite of stress is peace. It may surprise you to learn that peace is a highly dynamic neurological state. It is a core condition that expands the physical brain structure to increase analytic, practical and creative intelligence. It is also the core condition that promotes a mindset for emotional and social intelligence, optimal health and psychological resilience.
Breakthroughs in neuroscience over the last ten years make it clear that the prescription for peak performance is to shift our attitude -- from stress to peace. This shift in attitude involves a simple set of processes anyone can learn. These simple processes physically rewire the brain to produce a highly creative, emotionally balanced, and increasingly healthy employee. These outcomes are a direct effect of the resulting healthy neural networks.

Stress hormones are toxic to these networks. Stress, as defined by science, is the perception that external demands exceed our inner resources to meet them. This causes a neurological reaction and releases stress hormones into the bloodstream.

A dynamic state of peace represents a shift in perception that allows us to relate to demands without fear. A simple but consistent practice that shifts anxious, stress-provoking attitudes at the point of inception has been shown to generate:

Higher gamma wave activity, indicating the brain is linking and processing information from all of its parts faster and in a more organized manner. Gamma waves are associated with high levels of intelligence, higher cognitive processes, and peak performance.

Higher levels of activity in the left prefrontal cortex, indicating that a positive perspective has become the emotional default, producing a calm, clear, optimistic, and emotionally resilient way of being.
Greater activity in the center of the brain (caudate and right insula,) indicating a higher level of interpersonal resonance and social intelligence.

This change is called neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity means that a change of attitude which changes our experience, physically changes our brain. As we shift our attitude from fear to peace, our brains rewire. This resolves chronic stress by quieting the primitive neuro-circuits of fear and amplifying higher brain function.
In this new environment, companies generate a neuro-competitive advantage. The emotional climate shifts from negative to positive, from survival mode to the joy of excelling. Challenges stretch people in positive ways, instead of taxing them. Work becomes an intrinsically rewarding experience that energizes people instead of rendering them drained and dissatisfied.

The ROI for making this shift is enormous.

A Mountain Was My Greatest Teacher Of Peace

Ironically, my greatest teacher on the sheer power of peace was a dangerous mountain called Mt. Shasta, which is the second highest mountain in the continental United States. Shasta is glacial and classified as a technical climb, meaning you need crampons, an ice ax, a hard hat, special clothing and boots, a subzero sleeping bag, and a long list of other essentials to undertake the journey. You also need to be in excellent physical condition.

As in life, externals are not unimportant. The mountain is unforgiving of those who neglect even small details in preparing to make the climb. It can seem very complicated and daunting, but climbing Mount Shasta demands more than being tactically prepared. It requires an attitude of absolute simplicity and humility. This attitude can be absent in people who come to the mountain with the primary goal of “bagging” her. Hubris is lethal in mountain climbing. However, to a humble heart that surrenders to Mis Misa, the name native people have given her, the mountain becomes a guiding hand. In the beginning, my mind was preoccupied with reaching my destination, which was the summit. After a few hours, this goal became blurred in weariness, and my focus shifted to more immediate locations. I began to fixate on small plateaus or crevices just ahead that promised a place of rest. These positions almost always turned out to be a mirage of shadow and light, which was discouraging.

The higher I climbed, the harder it got, and for the first couple hours, my mind complained incessantly about the hardship, undermining the positive attitude it takes to reach the top. It badgered me with: What have I gotten myself into? What was I thinking when I decided to do this? It’s crazy to go on. I can’t make it. This mountain is going to kill me. Eventually, I realized that my mind was making me miserable, depleting my physical and emotional energy. I realized I had to let go of reaching any destination at all. I had to stop thinking and begin disciplining myself to focus on the step I was taking, to be fully present in the moment and alive in the experience. It is as Eckhart Tolle stated in his book The Power of Now: The moment you completely accept your nonpeace, your nonpeace becomes transmuted into peace.

It took some time to master this orientation, but gradually I calmed down and eased into accepting whatever experience occupied a given moment, from dispiriting fatigue to expansive joy, from overwhelm to surrender. Then something I had not expected happened. My mind began to quiet, and as it quieted I suddenly woke up to the experience I was having. The beauty of the mountain lifted my heart and expanded my mind as I watched the shadows of billowy clouds race across the undulating contour, darkening its surface, and then restoring it to pure white as they sailed by. I became aware that I was literally walking in other people’s footprints, etched in the ice, making the way easier to find, and I was bolstered by the courage of those who had preceded me. My heart opened wide to the people I was climbing with. They became brothers and sisters to me. I was touched by the way we watched out for each other, slowed the pace at times to let someone catch up, and how we quietly celebrated each other’s courage to continue to venture higher.

Gradually, effort transformed into flow, and within this feeling of flow I was carried along by a force or presence of something greater than me. It was nothing less than miraculous. I had no sense of time or even a sense of self. The mountain and I were at peace and at one with each other, without a shred of ego or conflict to separate us. That year I made it to the summit, weathering fifty-mile-an-hour winds through the corridor leading to the top. I had reached what felt like the top of the world. I knew, though, it was not ice, altitude, forty-degree snowfields, and fifty-mile-an hour winds that I had conquered in reaching the summit. It was my mind I had conquered.

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The Heaven and Hell of Brain Chemistry

A Japanese samurai warrior visited a Zen master, seeking answers to questions that had plagued him.

“What is it you want to know?” asked the Zen master.

“Tell me, sir, do heaven and hell exist?”

“Ha!” laughed the Zen master in a contemptuous tone. “What makes you think you could understand such things? You are only an educated, brutish soldier. Don’t waste my time with your ridiculous questions.”

The samurai warrior froze in shock. No one spoke to a samurai that way. It meant instant death. Increasing the tension, the Zen master went on, “Are you too stupid to understand what I just said? Stop wasting my time and get out of here!” he shouted.

The samurai exploded with rage. As quick as lightening, his hand grabbed the sword, sweeping it over his head to get ready for the kill. In the split second before the sword descended to cut off the Zen master’s head, the samurai heard him say, “This is the gate to hell.”

Again, the samurai froze in astonishment. He got the message. It was his own rage that brought hell to him. The Zen master–as is customary among the greatest of Zen teachers–risked his life to make that fact inescapably clear. Pausing and then breathing deeply, the samurai replaced his sword. He bowed humbly, filled with respect and even awe.

“And this,” smiled the Zen master, “is the gate to heaven.” (1)

Hell is chronic stress. Neurologically, chronic stress indicates a brain wired for fear. Genetics initially wires our brain to make survival mode a dominant feature. Past emotional traumas intensify this condition. That puts the primitive brain’s fear center (the amygdala) in charge of our experience, meaning that fight or flight takes over. When we were in the jungle we needed fight or flight, probably a hundred times a day. But most of the stress reactions modern people experience comes from fearful, worried thinking that exaggerates problems, generating a persistent perception of threat. It’s the condition Mark Twain described when he said: ”My life has been a series of terrible calamities, some of which actually happened.”

The core problem is this: The primitive brain can’t tell the difference between a real and imagined danger and sets off a stress reaction when either is present. As a result, stress hormones debilitate higher brain function. We don’t realize our full potential, our emotional meter defaults to negative, and our relationships suffer from all the reactivity stress generates. On top of that, stress is lethal. It is the #1 precipitant of life threatening disorders. Clearly, stress is hell.

We can change this predisposition to the hell stress produces by rewiring our brain to give higher brain function greater control. How: by being at peace. Peace and heaven are synonymous. In its most essential form, peace means we are not afraid of or in conflict with an external condition. The result, psychologically, is a shift from feeling overwhelmed by circumstances to a way of being that makes us larger than circumstances. That the power of attitude and the evidence is the more we practice peace the more our brain wires in ways that make this dynamic state of calm and clarity second-nature. The process of rewiring is called neuroplasticity and the change it generates happens relatively quickly, in a matter of weeks. Higher order neural networks expand and integrate, allowing creative intelligence, self-confidence and positive emotion to flow. That’s as close to heaven as it gets. Who, in their right mind doesn’t want that?
There is a tool that can start the rewiring process right away: It’s called the Clear Button. Click on the image above to download it.


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(1) The Zen parable is from “Eastern Wisdom for Western Minds,” by Victor M. Parachin

The Whole of You (That Transcends The Fragment)

One of the four qualities of Mystic Cool is wholeness. Wholeness is the enduring sense of who and what you are that transcends the fragments.

How do you transcend the fragmentation that the demands the world can make of you? Or the blocks that fear creates, causing you to perceive a threatening world that never lets you rest or feel safe? Or the critical voice that harps on your faults and mistakes and says you're never good enough?

How do you overcome all that to feel whole? The answer is simple. It is so simple it often eludes us completely.

The experience of being whole comes from loving yourself exactly as you are. It is loving life just the way it is, even if you think life sucks at the moment.

Wholeness is the total acceptance of everything in you and around exactly as it is, right here, right now.

It is the affirmation and acceptance of the man or woman you are and are becoming, encompassing the whole of you -- your blunders and successes, your strengths and weaknesses, your joys and sorrows, your brilliance and your absurdities, your integrity and your contradictions.

Wholeness is not a destination; it is the journey. It is the sense of perfection emerging from all the imperfections. It is a true blue moment in which the authentic person that is you is felt by you, opens wide in you, and is welcomed into the heart of all that is. A few seconds of standing in that heart can change a life entirely.

The place where the whole of you resides could not be closer. It is accessed through your openness to your immediate experience, whatever that experience may be.

Some time ago my family went through something catastrophic. The fear and inadequacy it triggered initially was unbearable for all of us. Then I remembered this quality of wholeness and began to open to my experience. I allowed myself to feel the heartache along with the hope, the shadows along with the light. I disciplined myself to refrain from letting my emotions turn into the thinking that scripts a frightful outcome. I allowed myself to feel my way through the experience without getting locked into fear. It was like finding the eye of the storm. It enabled me to see more in a clearer light and to be gentler and more compassionate with my family.

How Do I Make Myself Whole?
Take a moment right now and love yourself just the way you are. Give it a try. If it makes you feel silly initially, then be open to that. Love the brilliant part along with the flawed, but love the flawed part too. Love your life just the way it is and where it is. See who you become when you open to yourself in this simple manner.

If we judge, reject, or feel conflict with our present experience, the sense of wholeness will instantly fragment. This, unfortunately, is the way it tends go for most of us. We end up feeling discouraged and separate and develop a slavish concern for the evaluations of others. It can reach the point where we have no genuine sense of who we really are.

Most of us are skillful at judging ourselves but not very adept at loving ourselves. So, today I invite you to heal this condition by giving this new approach a try. Dedicate this week to loving yourself exactly the way you are. Love your life exactly as it is, where it is. And see what happens to your experience of life.

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Your Brain Can Work 12 Hours Every Day And Not Burnout

You can actually work long hours, day in, day out, and experience little or no stress. How? By cultivating an attitude of peace. This is not a sermon or even an opinion. It is the finding of a mounting body of brain research over the last ten years.

An attitude of peace gained through a simple but consistent practice lights up the higher order brain function that sustains peak performance.

It lights up the networks that make you happy and great at relationships.

A peaceful attitude also helps in building resistance to a long list of diseases that plague modern human beings, including heart disease, immunodeficiency, diabetes, depression, dementia, and even Alzheimer's.
Most of us do not see peace as a dynamic state. To the contrary, it is often seen as a rather complacent way of being that has no power in the "real world;" good on a Christmas card, but not for maintaining your "edge." Others even believe that the opposite of peace -- which is stress and fear -- is what drives success.


It's not so.
Science now knows that peace, as a way of being and relating to life's challenges, generates the brain structure and chemsitry that achieves what Aristotle called The Good Life, which he defined as the full use of one's strength along lines of excellence.
Stress renders the brain incapable of sustaining the level of performance that reaches excellence.
Stress causes regions of the brain associated with creativity, executive decision-making and goal-directed behaviors to shrink;


While causing regions of the brain involved in generating anxiety and habitual, unconscious behavior to expand, locking the brain into obsessive, compulsive action.
We become neurologically predisposed to doing the same dead end things over and over, rather than creatively seeking a new approach for a better result.

Happily, we can rewire the brain for peace and reverse the damage.

A small amount of time invested every day toward a practice of inner peace, a practice that virtually adds nothing to one's To-Do list, returns a huge dividend.

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The Question That Ends Stress

If you have been reading these blogs or attended one of my keynotes, it is now clear to you that stress and fear are biologically linked. Biologically, some form of fear must be present for the brain to fire off a stress reaction. Science has found that most of the stress reactions we modern human beings suffer from have little to do with a real and present danger, like a bear in a campground.

Stress is largely the result of perceptions or rather misperceptions of a threat that is generally not verifiably present. As Mark Twain once said, “My life has been a series of terrible calamities, some of which actually happened. We humans generate all sorts of stressful events purely in our heads. We can experience wildly strong emotions, provoking our bodies into an accompanying uproar, all of it linked to mere thought.

Thus, we can dissolve a stress reaction by penetrating the thoughts behind our stress reactions. We can do it by asking a simple question: What am I afraid of? I once conducted this exercise one-on-one with a prominent corporate lawyer who attended a training I presented. I’ll call him Andrew to protect his anonymity. Andrew was in litigation with another attorney representing a large corporation. He perceived his opponent as unethical, using words like crook and shyster to describe him. The opposing lawyer infuriated him, and Andrew was taking it home. He thought about it incessantly, lost sleep over it, and bored his wife with the base details at dinner. His wife was growing weary of hearing about it. As his stress level increased, Andrew began to lose his edge and make bad decisions. He came to the training desperate for techniques that could restore his power and allow him to pummel his adversary.

What Are You Afraid Of, Andrew?
I asked Andrew, “In this situation, what are you afraid of ?” Losing, was his answer. What are you afraid of if you lose the case? I asked. Looking like a fool, he said with affect. What’s the fear of looking like a fool? That I will lose my reputation. What’s the fear in losing your reputation? Losing my clients. What’s the fear in losing clients? Being asked to leave the firm. And what’s the fear under this? That I will end up pushing a shopping cart down Main Street.

We then delved into each of his fearful thoughts, asking if he knew 100% for certain that each thought was true and would become reality. It is not worth the debilitating effects of stress hormones on the body, mind and brain unless we are 100% sure we are in that much danger. Not one of his fearful thoughts passed the 100% test. They were all lies fear was telling him that his anxiety believed. Believing made these fearful thoughts appear as facts instead of emotionally charged thoughts producing an overreaction. Often, as I read back the fear statements to participants, they laugh. Some of the answers are hilarious. Of course, what is not funny is the brutal way this storyline operates unconsciously, behind the scenes. The flashes of fearful images and negative self-talk erode every ounce of confidence and optimism. You can perform this exercise yourself. Here’s how:Take out piece of paper and draw a line down the middle, dividing it into two columns.

• Close your eyes and bring to mind a stressful situation that occurred recently.
• Tune into this stressful situation. Experience it again. Make it real. As much as possible, make it as if it were happening all over again.
• Now ask yourself: in this stressful situation, what am I afraid of?
  When you have your answer, write it down in the left column, keeping it to one sentence or a phrase.
• Next, reference back to the previously stated fear, asking yourself: what am I afraid of if this happens? For example: say that your first fear is I am afraid that people are judging me unfairly. In that case, the next question would be phrased: if people judge me unfairly, what am I afraid of?
• Write it down in one sentence or a phrase.
• Repeat the process until you have identified five or more fears or until you feel complete.

The next step is to inquire if there is any real basis to these fears. Return to the first fear on your list. Ask yourself: Am I 100 percent certain that this thought is true? Not in part, but 100 percent? If not, refute it with a more realistic statement. One by one, inquire into each fear statement, until you have inquired into all of them.
Let’s take the example of Andrew again. Here is how his worksheet looked after inquiring into each fearful thought (clarification in italtics).

• The fear of losing the case. Clarified: I have not lost the case yet. There is still a chance to win.
• The fear of looking like a fool. Clarified: I am not a fool. I’m a competent lawyer who has served his clients well in the past.
• The fear of losing my reputation. Clarified: I’ve made my bones. I am regarded as a respected litigator in this county.
• The fear of being asked to leave the firm. Clarified: They are planning to make me a partner.
• The fear that I will end up pushing a shopping cart down Main Street. Clarified: I have always made enough money.

I asked him which scenario was closer to the truth: the fearful one or the one that refuted his fears? He said the latter. And which one, I asked, feels positive and less stressful. The answer was obvious. I asked Andrew, which of these two scenarios did you choose to believe when stressed? This answer was obvious as well. What was not so obvious when Andrew was stressed was the fact that it was he, not the other lawyer, causing his stress.
Once you have refuted the fears on your list, ask yourself: who would I be without these fearful thoughts? Write down your answer on a separate piece of paper. Post what you write where you will see it periodically over the next week. This is what Andrew did, and he quickly got his mojo back.

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