Hey guys and welcome back to another episode of your Brains Coach podcast. My name is Angela Sharina, I'm your host, I'm your Brains Coach and it is my job here to bring to you all the best recent, cutting edge, most useful, interesting and effective brain-body tools so you could feel better, take control of your emotional states, so you could feel better, take control of your emotional states, so you could think better, take better control of your decisions and so that you could act better, taking control of your actions and, ultimately, the progress that you make and the journey of life that you design. Folks, today I couldn't feel more like a brain coach, because we are talking about curating, creating, coaching, our inner chatter, the conversation in our hearts that we all have. Actually, not having that conversation, believe it or not, is a pathology. It's something when you lose it, and there were instances of scientists, neuroscientists specifically, who lost their inner charter and at first they thought that is such an awesome thing to just not have it in your head constantly, but then they started to suffer.
Speaker 1As it turns out, that inner charter, that inner conversation we have in our head, evolved, evolutionary, to help us cope with life better, to help us succeed in life better. Because if you didn't have one who would tell you that you could do better in different situations, that you can improve, and these conversations that you had with your loved one or a friend or a co-worker might not be the best you could have and maybe next time you should handle it a bit better, or perhaps that your eating habits aren't exactly aligned with the vision you have for your health and fitness. So without that inner chatter, it would be very hard to navigate life, to shape your life based on your goals, your vision, based on becoming a better human, coping with life, succeeding in life much better. So your inner chatter is actually a very helpful, evolutionary based, evolutionary, evolved thing. So the purpose of today's podcast and mastering your inner voice isn't to remove it and all of a sudden stop thinking to yourself, stop talking to yourself in your head. It's not the purpose. It actually defeats a very well-adapted mechanism that nature that nurture well, that evolution developed for us. This is a bonus of our brain, having this conscious internal dialogue. But sometimes, just like probably a wild plant, when it goes unmanaged it can wreak havoc and it can lead us to depression or maladaptive coping mechanism or us not being able to make great decisions but instead being driven by emotions which can activate certain programs, automatic responses, and can completely ruin our lives, so that inner dialogue, when untamed, when uncultured and not trained, not worked on, can really make our life more difficult.
Speaker 1So how do we coach, how do we nurture, how do we train better inner dialogue and folks, it's not just important for your mental well-being or for your ability to reach your goals faster and better and more effectively instead of being stuck, is actually also very important for your physical health. Like, did you know, for example, that we have two different physiological responses to stress and which one is activated depends on the story you tell yourself? Will stress kill you or uplift you, make you better? Well, that depends on the stories you tell yourself, believe it or not. So there are two responses to stress, for example a challenge response and a threat response, which basically are defined by challenge response is when you feel you can handle the situation and your body and brain lean in and empower you to attack, tackle the challenge and then to strengthen you afterwards during recovery. Or threat response, when your body and brain is basically preparing to do their best to not die, restricting blood flow to the brain, to internal organs, kind of bringing it all in so if you're hurt you don't bleed to death. That kind of stress repeated makes your brain smaller, make your cardiovascular system worse and increases inflammation and makes your digestion and gut health worse, like all kinds of stuff when threat response is repeated and it becomes a chronic stress, especially Challenge response, quoting A challenge response to stress. Numerous long-term and in-depth studies show that there is a strong positive correlation between immune system functioning, cardiovascular health, aging and even brain growth and size. For example, the Framingham Heart Study, one of the longest-running epidemiological studies ever conducted in the US, has shown that people who exhibit challenge responses to stress have a greater brain volume across their lifespans. Their brain shrink less as they age.
Speaker 1This is from a book by Ben Romalinga, upshift Turning Pressure into Performance and Crisis into Creativity. We can tell ourselves that today's struggles will lead to tomorrow's successes. We can look at ourselves, our business, career, financial challenge and we can tell ourselves a story about how this experience is helping us to grow into the future we desire. We can tell ourselves a story how a strength today means thriving tomorrow and how we choose to go through this experience. Choose that we are in control. We can tell ourselves a story about how cutting our calories, eating less than we need and enduring hard physical effort actually contributes to our wellness down the road, versus panicking about starvation and dying or being raised by a lion, panicking about starvation and dying or being raised by a lion.
Speaker 1These stories trigger what's known as a challenge response to stress, which, as we know by now, has incredible health benefits. Did you know this, folks? Compare this to a threat response where your heart races, blood vessels constrict less blood flow to your organs, to your brain, which is never a good thing. Increased cortisol like too much, leading to chronic issues like ulcers, cardiovascular disease and mental health problems. The key difference between Whether you're going to have a challenge response, guys, or you're going to have a threat response the stories we tell ourselves. So your stress response equals stressor, like what happens to you and the story we tell ourselves. That's how also people survive all kinds of extreme experiences from different you know those torture camps which they had during war times, people who survived long-term during famine and wars. They had a better story to tell themselves about stress.
Speaker 1And there are different kinds of stress physical, like sickness, emotional, anger, sadness, unaddressed. Social, not fitting in, feeling like your social environment is not supportive. Existential feeling lost, losing meaning, purpose. Mental, when you feel overwhelmed, like too much on your plate to handle environmental, safety issues, access to different resources in the place where you live. This is called deep health and it does depend on the story you tell yourself. You can be in the most difficult and challenging situations in your life going through loneliness and not having a good place where you live and having health issues and you can still be getting better and benefiting from your life and getting stronger. Obviously, some sort of physical recovery is needed, but humans are more resilient than we think we are when we tell ourselves the right story of what this means and whether we can handle it or it's going to kill us.
Speaker 1So the practical takeaway understand this mind-body connection between your chatter, your conversation, the conversation in your head and your body. Understand that the stories you tell yourself. You can choose those stories. You can choose the framing, how you look at situations. You can choose to look at them differently and choose the stories that make you better, that improve your health, that empower you and don't forget people around you. The stories that you tell as a leader, as a coach, as a parent, as a friend, as a partner. They will empower people and improve their health, or disempower them and increase their stress and worsen their health. Realize this power and, most importantly, I always tell my clients whenever you're going through difficult times and you find not such an empowering chatter in your head, just ask yourself this question is this serving me?
Speaker 1And just ask yourself this question is this serving me? Does it make me feel empowered, strong, capable of handling this? Does it increase my creativity, my solution-seeking, problem-solving muscle, or does it make me feel disempowered and weak and incapable of solving this, making me less energized and making my immune system work worse? Right, is this serving me? Because if it's not, you can change it. And speaking of changing, so I recently finished the book the Chatter, the Voice in Our Head, why it Matters and how to Harness it by Dr Ethan Cross, who is a leading expert on controlling the conscious mind hidden brain. With Ethan and from there, I learned quite awesome science-backed strategies to become a master of our inner charter, which will help us not to just manage our stress better and make stress make us stronger, but also it helps us to become less emotionally driven and reactive and instead turning on more often our logical thinking when emotions fly high and low and we need to make good decisions, learn and keep on living living better. So today I'm going to share with you five of those strategies.
Speaker 1One you already know it's to activate that challenge versus threat response. You got to look at a situation with the attitude of try me, instead of asking why me and how do you do that? Well, you do that by focusing on the resources, your social network, people. You rely on your inner resources, all the skills that you developed. You focus on the resources you have available to handle this moment. You focus on all of your experiences where you nail challenging situations. You realize that it's a challenge you can take on, not a threat that they're to kill you, and then you get a completely different narrative and emotions driving your day's decisions and actions. You can change your perspective. So try me not why me? And that's going to completely change your physiology, your emotions and your inner narrative.
Speaker 1The next tool coach yourself like a friend. What do I mean by that? Well, have you ever had a coaching conversation with yourself? I'm telling you it's a game changer. Now I'm such a better coach to myself and, because of that, also to my clients and I also teach the skill to my clients one of the most vital skills to reach any of the long-term, but also short-term goals and to motivate yourself, to empower yourself, to give yourself resources instead of thinking that you know you can't handle it and you should just give up. So examples before a big talk how I coach myself.
Speaker 1Angela, you got this. You prepped, you rehearsed, you did this before. Get out there and own it. Plus, you know you do better when you calm down your nerves just a notch During a workout. Just did it. Angela, when it's challenging, that's where you improve. Stay in it. You've got more than you think in you, girl. Push through, show yourself. You've got it. In an Uber running late for a meeting, angela, chill out. You can't control the traffic. Just prepare to blow people's minds while you're driving so they forget you're late and get excited about the project. This puts you back into driver's seat of control, empowerment and better thinking, instead of being emotional, complaining and ruminating on things and thinking how things should be better. Things as they are. So it's in your own interest to pay attention to what is and improve the odds of the future, right. So coach yourself like a friend.
Speaker 1The next way? Fly on the wall perspective. Zoom out and look at the situation from a bird's eye view. Or, as William Ury, a top conflict negotiator from the book Possible says, go to the balcony. Imagine you're a stranger watching a scene unfolding. Did you know that meditators, by the way, can do this much better? Fly on the world perspective. Imagine like you're a stranger watching a scene unfolding. What advice would you give? What actions would you take? Like Imagine watching a series and you're like, if I were in their position, I would do this. So talk to yourself like you would advise those strangers.
Speaker 1Disengage yourself from the situation Temporal distancing. What if you could travel into the future? Did you know that your human brain can do this for you? Ask your future self from a perspective, even a week, a month, a year, five years. Will this matter? Is it worth getting this emotional over? Is it worth losing your mind over this? Or is it just another speck on the beach of the universe, speck of the sand? So look at this from the future perspective. Again, meditation will help you to develop this skill. Try me not. Why me? We talked about that. And then routines and rituals to the rescue, automatic programs and responses our brain develops aren't all that bad. Quoting lean on routines and rituals to provide stability during periods of disorder. Routines offer a sense of practicality, predictability and stability when everything around you is changing. They also help you to activate yourself by automating decisions, so you need not rely as much on willpower or motivation, both of which tend to be in short supply during significant difficulties. Brett Stahlberg Master of Change how to excel when everything is changing, including you and folks.
Speaker 1I've been a global traveler for 15 years and know how I kept my cool, no matter where, no matter what, and, believe me, there were some unstable times and crazy people wanting to hurt you. I kept on walking. Morning, night, I kept on walking. I have this ritual where I go for a walk in the morning and in the evening I kept on walking. Morning, night, go to sleep, repeat, have regular meals. You wouldn't believe how much balance and stability it gives you, especially if you're an entrepreneur with a lot of things all over the place, with a lot of hats to wear, a lot of balls to juggle, create stability in the environment of total chaos. It's in your ability.
Speaker 1Routines, rituals, habits that's a huge part, by the way, of my coaching practice as well. That's what my clients pay me for. Like Angela, help me create a routine, a routine that gives me this sense of order, stability among all the chaos. So I feel like I'm in control, like my mind is ordered, like I'm thinking logically and handling things, instead of emotionally reacting to everything and just running late and trying to keep up barely keeping my head above water. Right, water emits chaos. That's what routine can give you.
Speaker 1Routine is the ground you are rooted in when the winds of life want to blow you away. I was especially proud of this sentence this morning. Routine is the ground you are rooted in when the winds of life want to blow you away. Get one before you need one. Yeah, routines are programs you develop before you need them. So here you go, guys a whole library, five tools that you can use to control your inner chatter, to master your inner chatter, so it helps you to progress in life, business, relationships, health, versus holding you back. Let's repeat, let's review them Coach yourself as a friend. Imagine you are your coach and, amidst difficult situations, tell yourself the words that you'd love to hear from the best coach on the entire planet Fly on the wall, perspective, and also temporal distancing.
Speaker 1Meditation helps with developing those skills, guys. Fly on the wall perspective. What if you could zoom out and look at the scene, at the situation unfolding in front of you like it's a movie. What would you advise those heroes, those characters, what would you advise them to do? To think, to say Right, fly on the world perspective. Temporal distancing, zoom out again. Travel into the future.
Speaker 1Will this matter? Will this matter? Is it worth it losing your mind, losing your relationships, losing your health because you're so stressed out? Will it matter, even a week from now? Try me not. Why me? Realize that this is a challenge you can take on, not a threat that's going to kill you.
Speaker 1Routines and rituals to the rescue. Lean onto the stability of routines and rituals which you create beforehand, when the times are chaotic, disordered and the change is accelerating. Isn't it our world today? And here you go. Also, pick up the book Chatter the Voice in Our Head, why it Matters and how to Harness it. Or tune in to the Hidden Brain Podcast with Ethan Cross, a leading expert on controlling the conscious mind. And that is it.
Speaker 1That's what I wanted to share with you today, guys, all these amazing tools which, I must say proudly, have become a toolkit for me to use when my inner voice starts getting out of control and trying to bring me out or make me go inside my shell or under the blanket, hiding from reality, trying to avoid the problems because it seems so overwhelming and challenging, not allowing me to actually lean in and grow, because this is what challenges are for. It's kind of like leveling up in some sort of game In order to get to the next level, you got to slay the dragon of this one, and so challenges are this dragon that you have to slay if you want to move forward, or you can just run in circles that most people do, trying to avoid problems or figuring out shortcuts. Which one do you want? You want to grow and level up or you want to run in circles, like you know, taking the same level in Super Mario game. That was one of my favorites.
Speaker 1Re-listen to this episode again and again and again and again, when you need to remind yourself what toolkits, science-backed tools, are available to you to take control of your inner chatter, to empower yourself through your inner dialogue, to make yourself reach more goals and overcome more challenges because of your inner voice, instead of repeating the same pattern of failure over and over and over again because your inner chatter, your inner voice, isn't helpful. So re-listen and don't forget folks. Share this with at least one other person your friend, your relative, your partner so together you could talk about that, so together you could practice. When you teach it, you'll learn it twice. You remember it better. But also, now you have more people around you with the same operating system, the same framework, who will also help you to do better, becoming sometimes your inner voice to uplift you when your own doesn't work.
Speaker 1This well. Create an empowered network of people around you, support network that you can lean on when your inner voice is not enough. Share this with at least one person. Learn together, teach together, master life together. And folks, if you have some good words of praise for me, also feel free to reach out. Or if you have questions, would like a coaching session? Angela at BrainBreakthroughCoachcom. Angela at BrainBreakthroughCoachcom. Reach out. My email is open and available. And till next time, work on taming your inner chatter, because that is a life transformative skill. Chat with you soon, stay tuned and have an empowering inner dialogue.