Animals do not experience stress in the same way as us humans. Here’s a little bit about why and how you can be less stressed like animals.
Imagine the scene …
It’s the African Savanna and the gazelle is minding its own business, eating the grass. Then there is a rustle in the grass and the gazelle smells fear. Inside the gazelle, the flight or fight systems are kicking into gear. A lion is nearby. Of course, the gazelle isn’t going to fight the lion so he sets off running. Every part of the gazelle wants it to survive. Adrenaline is pumping and cortisol is helping as the gazelle’s stress levels reach a peak. Every bit of energy goes into the process of flight. There is no thought, only action.
A happy ending…
The good news is that today is the gazelle’s lucky day. The lion is not on top form and the gazelle outruns her and gets away. A short time after the incident, the gazelle is back on the Savanna munching the grass and 100% chilled out.
The gazelle is not:
Ruminating about what happened
Worrying about whether it will happen again
Creating an imaginary stressful incident inside his head
Human stress
This is the complete opposite of how the majority of human beings react to events. We can create the same level of stress as the hunted gazelle with only the power of our minds. We do this by thinking! Negative thinking about the past or the future can create an adrenaline and cortisol rush the same as that fleeing gazelle.
Stress is bad for you
This is not good for your health. Being stressed reduces our immune response and stops us sleeping. It makes it harder to concentrate and affect your mental health.
What can you do to be less stressed like animals?
The main difference between us and animals is that they live in the present. They react to what is happening around them in the moment and do not spend time in the past or future. Here are my top tips to help you live in the present and be less stressed like animals.
Meditate
I know I go on about this but meditation is one of the best ways to teach your brain to be present. Meditation teaches you to move your attention from the thoughts to the body and breath. Once you can do this in isolation, it gets easier to do it in everyday life.
Breath
If you feel yourself getting lost in time travel thinking, try deliberate breathing. Breath in for four, hold for four, breath out for four and hold for four (and repeat). Keep going until you notice your mind slowing down.
Slow down
Try slowing down and noticing what is happening around you. Pause for a moment and focus on each sense at once. Notice:
Five things that you can see.
Four things that you can feel.
Three things you can hear.
Two things you can smell.
One thing you can taste.
Be grateful
Pause for a moment and take some time to think about all the things you have to be grateful for. List 5 things in your head and notice how you feel.
Mindful eating
Whenever you sit down to eat, make sure you savour every aspect of your food. Start by noticing the colour and shape of your food. As you cut into it or bite it, notice the sound it makes. Feel the texture in your mouth and the taste on your tongue. Enjoy every moment of eating. Not only will this help you feel less stressed, but it will also help you eat less by noticing more.
These are a few tips to help you be less stressed like animals. I hope you have found them useful.
Find out about how I can help you be less stressed like animals
We all know that habit creation can be tricky. I am sure you have tried lots of times to establish new ones and never got to the habit stage. Whether it is eating better, exercising more or writing every day, these top tips to change a habit will help.
Why we need good habits
Having a set of positive habits in your life makes a huge difference in your health and happiness. The simple reason is that habits are what we default to when we are under stress. If your healthy behaviour is habitual, you are much more likely to carry it out at stressful times.
Be clear on the benefits/ consequences
Don’t choose a habit on a whim. Make sure you are clear about the benefits and consequences related to the habit. What will happen if you do not change your habit? How wonderful will life be with this new habit in place? How will it improve your health and happiness? Get clear on how this habit will impact on your life.
Write it down
It is much easier to make things stick in your mind if you write them down. Put your new habit on a post-it (or many) and put it where you will see it often. Even when you don’t notice it your subconscious mind will be taking it in. This will really increase your habit creation ability.
Start small
Do not try to make huge changes in your habits overnight. When you do this, your mind resists the change and you end up failing. Start small! If you want to start exercising, do not decide to go to the gym 5 times a week. Start by committing to put your kit on and do something! 10 sit-ups will do to start with. Start very small and have a slow build-up to allow your mind to adapt to the change.
Keep going for 30 days
Keep your steely determination for 30 days and you will be well on the way to permanent habit creation. Don’t miss more than one day because that will disrupt the flow and knock you off track. Once you get to 30 days, you will notice that the habit is becoming part of your everyday life.
Make your new habit daily
When you are involved in habit creation, it is best to do it every day. This helps your mind to develop that new neural pathway which will make the habit stick.
Find a way to remind yourself
Use the post-it notes above as reminders but also use other tools like alarms and habit tracking APPs. There are lots of tools you can use on your smartphone to remind you to do your new habit. Let your phone be a bit of a nag for a while whilst you are getting going.
Get a buddy
Sometimes we all need some help from our friends. Tell those close to you what you are up to and ask them to help by reminding you and checking up on you. This will be even better if it is someone habit creation same or similar to yours.
Use a trigger
Habits work best with a clear trigger. Your alarm might spark your morning meditation or getting home your exercise routine. Keep the trigger the same so your mind can make the connection between the trigger and the habit.
Allow mistakes
Be patient with yourself. Developing a new habit is a process of mind rewiring. Your mind is neuroplastic but it still takes some effort to change it. Be patient and allow yourself to make mistakes. Make sure you pick yourself up and start again as soon as possible.
Surround yourself with positive people
When you are trying to change any aspect of your life, having positive people around you is vital. Make sure you spend time around people who support your goals. Even better, if they are people who have similar goals to you.
I hope you have found these Habit Change Top 10 Tips. Changing habits can be challenging but if you adopt this strategy it will help.
Still stuck with your habit change process then get in touch now. I can use my powerful mindset change tools to help you change your habits so you can be happy and healthy.
If you are ready to book a complimentary discovery session so you can find out more about how I can help you with habit creation, click here to access my calendar.
I think we are all aware of how important habits can be in maintaining our physical health. We all know that some habits, like smoking, drinking alcohol every day and eating takeaways for every meal, can be detrimental. We also have some physical habits which most of us would not be without like brushing our teeth and taking a shower. Many of us spend a lot of time trying to increase the healthy habits in our life like getting more exercise, eating more fruit and vegetables and getting to bed earlier. I suspect many of us have at least one physical habit we are trying to install in our lives at any point in time.
Habits Create Freedom
This is
probably because we realise that habits are important. When we install a good
habit, it frees us from the swings and fortunes of that old devil called
‘willpower’ and its illusive little friend, ‘motivation’. When those two are
absent, our habits are what we fall back on. When we are ill, tired or
stressed, we will fall back into our habits which is why it is important to
have as many good ones as possible. The other thing about good habits is that
they free you up to think, to create, to problem solve and to tackle all that
stuff that pops up in average days in our lives.
Habits Make You Who You Are
Your habits
also make you who you are. If you have habits which help you to overcome
procrastination, you will become an organised person. If you have habits which get
you being active regularly, you will become a fit person. if your habits mean
that you eat good, nutritious food, you will be a healthy person. When
Aristotle said, ‘We are what we repeatedly do.’ he was utterly correct.
What this Looks Like in Reality
A great
example of this has come up for me in the last few days. I developed an awful
stomach upset a few days ago which has left me feeling washed out and weak but,
I have still meditated every day and the last two days got up, got into my
workout gear and did some yoga. Both habits I probably did on a lesser scale,
but I still did them. The key to this is that I am not saying I am tough or
strong to keep doing these things, it is just that now, these things are who I
am! To not do them would be so much stranger than doing them. As I already
said, once a habit is established, it becomes part of your hardwiring and is
just what you do. You will all have habits you can relate to like this. Ones
like brushing your teeth for example. The sort of habit where you just know you
would not feel right if you didn’t do it.
I suspect
that many of you would love to feel like that about a healthy habit you have
been trying to establish for a while but I also imagine that you can’t remember
how the habit of brushing your teeth became established because you were very
young at the time and began doing it way before conscious thought and internal
blocks began in your mind.
How Do We Establish a New Habit
I have
recently been reading a lot about habit formation and the most important thing
I have learnt is … start ridiculously
small.
If you have
ever made a commitment to go to the gym several times per week (probably as a
New Year’s resolution) and failed, you may have realised that some changes are
just too big for our minds to accept. It feels too hard to make such a big
change because your mind suspects that you are trying to change your
personality overnight and it just will not accept that. We all have a set of
beliefs and values particularly about ourselves and if you try to change those
too quickly and drastically, your mind kicks back and point-blank refuses. To
overcome this, start very, very small. It’s a bit like making a stealth attack
on your belief system, sneaking in the back door, under cover of darkness,
completely undetected.
How Small is Small?
Let’s
continue with the concept of exercise. In order to sneak past the guards
protecting your belief system (where the belief that you are a lazy layabout
who doesn’t exercise is held!), you could start by just putting on your workout
gear and trainers and standing at the place where exercise will start. In his
book, ‘Mini Habits’, Steven Guise just commits to one press-up each day but consistently
did so much more on each occasion he started small. When you have done that, you
will probably notice an urge to do some exercise but still stay small. One
sit-up will easily sneak past the guards but if you tell yourself you are going
for a 2-mile run now, it might be too much. You can play about with this –
setting your very small habit goal each day until that feels utterly
comfortable. What you will notice over time, is that you consistently do more
that your very small habit but never change the small goal as that will be your
fall-back habit when the going gets tough.
Change the Beliefs You Have About Yourself
The key here
is to overcome the self-sabotaging blocks you have to exercise; to change who
your mind thinks you are. Once you establish your small habit, your mind stops
believing that you are that lazy layabout, and the resistance to exercise is
reduced. Remember that the key to this initially is not the exercise itself but
changing the belief and establishing a new habit.
By starting
small, you can begin to change who you think you are and establish a whole set
of new habits which can help you thrive and be happy.
Ready to change your habits and be happy and healthy, get in touch with me and let me help. If you’re really ready to be happy and healthier through changing your habits, book your complimentary discovery session here.
Slim Habits is an amazing and unique course containing 11 hypnotherapy tracks and lots of educational content to help you change your eating habits so you can attain and maintain your ideal weight, shape and size easily and naturally.
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