Your mind is designed to keep you alive. It's a finely tuned survival machine, but it's operating in an environment for which it was never designed.
So now the airbags keep going off for all the wrong reasons.
Learn how your body responds to stress and how to reprogram this default behavior.
There's no need to have a heart attack because you have a report due in the morning, so stop letting your "woolly mammoth" avoidance system tell you that you have a problem.
Thanks for listening.
Mat ~ The Gregarious Hermit
Show notes
Buy me a coffee, meet with me over zoom or sponsor an episode - buymeacoffee.com/TheGregariousHermit
------------------------------------------
So this primitive system seems to be working just fine. It's doing exactly what it's supposed to do and keeping us alive. Only now it's working in an environment for which it was never designed.
Here's another great analogy. Flippers are great for snorkeling, but they make lousy dance shoes. And your mind is no different. It's great for keeping a safe from immediate existential harm, but it's terrible when it comes to deciding what is a real threat. In the absence of real dangers in our modern world, it seems to get confused and triggered easily by the most trivial of discomforts.
Our ancestors faced imminent death on a daily basis, and so this system of shock therapy worked really well to keep us alive and evolve the species. There were very few things to worry about, lots of things that could kill us. But our world is so different now. There are not so many things that can kill us, but lots of things to worry about.
............
If I get mugged on the subway, I become wary of the subway.
And if I’m in a math class and the teacher asks me a question in front of everyone that I can’t answer or I get the answer wrong. If people laugh at me or I feel like they’re judging me, I will develop a fear of judgment.
I’m going to do an entire episode on this subject because I feel like this is the number one problem affecting society these days, and especially the younger generations that were brought up with smartphones and social media.
............
So this primitive system seems to be working just fine. It’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do and keeping us alive. Only now it’s working in an environment for which it was never designed.
Here’s another great analogy. Flippers are great for snorkeling, but they make lousy dance shoes. And your mind is no different. It’s great for keeping a safe from immediate existential harm, but it’s terrible when it comes to deciding what is a real threat. In the absence of real dangers in our modern world, it seems to get confused and triggered easily by the most trivial of discomforts.
...........
Fear of public speaking is apparently the number one fear. Although I disagree with that, and I’ll show you why in a moment.
So much for a survival of the species. Now, I’m afraid of speaking.
But am I really afraid of speaking? Or am I afraid I’ll say the wrong thing, forget what I’m supposed to say or my pants will fall down?
Okay, well, let’s take that a step further. What if I say the wrong thing? There’s no real danger there. What if I forget what to say? There’s no danger there either. And what if my pants fall down? There’s no danger there.
So let’s take it a step further again. If any of those things happen to me, there’s a chance that you guys will laugh at me and make fun of me. And these days, I could become a meme.
........
In a nutshell, stress kills.
Well, the good news is that it’s very easy to reprogram your mind. There are two steps. First, we have to stop reacting to the mind as much as possible.
If the problem remains just a thought and you don’t physically react to it, then your mind will start to understand that you don’t care about that. You don’t feel threatened. So it’s not something it needs to keep warning you about.
