Dealing With Stress
June 22, 2009 by
Filed under Conditioning
Have you ever met anyone who is rational when they are angry?
I certainly haven’t and to be honest, I must admit to succumbing to the red mist once or twice in my life 
The reason for this is simple, yet complex. It is to do with the way our brains are built.
Apparently, our brains make up around 2% of our weight but use up approximately 20% of the energy consumed by our body, and this doesn’t change no matter what we are doing. It’s the same whether we are active or sleeping, happy or sad.
Of that 20%, a small proportion is used for our working memory and conscious mind and the rest is used for the unconscious stuff, like regulating bodily functions, emotions, automatic tasks, habits and so on.
A problem arises when we get stressed.
When our brain senses a threat, as in fear, anger, stress etc. it allocates more resources to that emotion because it’s function is for our survival, to protect us as an individual and as a species.
Now, this increased demand does not increase the 20% of our bodies energy resources I mentioned earlier, it robs Peter to pay Paul and our working memory suffers, and onfortunately, rationality does too..
We go into survival mode.
The ramifications of this insight are significant because most of us go through life in modern society with stress levels that are way too high.
Do you think that this just might have an effect on our ability to think and act clearly?
Dealing with the pressures of life can be made alot easier by using someone who understands and is skilled in helping people move forward in life. More and more people are starting to realise that having a coach is a great way to achieve this.
Why not you?
Committed to YOUR Personal Productivity,
James is a productivity coach specializing in working with people who are procrastinators and those who want results quickly. His ability to get brilliant results with his clients is quite amazing…
The Productivity Coach
Extraordinary Results for Professional and Personal Freedom
To Find Out the “5 Secrets of REALLY Successful People” go to…
P: 0421 210444
Changing The Brain For Better Productivity
June 17, 2009 by
Filed under Coaching
Why Is Change Hard To Achieve?
The latest research in neuroscience confirms what we have already learned, that is, our brains are hardwired to resist change.
That’s the bad news…
The good news is that this hardwiring can be changed and there are specific ways to do this.
The brain is very good at making connections, it does it by literally hardwiring itself. When repeated and reinforced over time, these connections become very strong. Most of them support us in living our daily lives in things like walking, talking, driving a car etc.
Limited Memory
Because we only have a very limited amount of working memory, these regular tasks are done by the subconscious. Who hasn’t driven home on occasion when tired and couldn’t remember the drive home?
It is built to detect changes and is constantly dividing, comparing, contrasting and differentiating everything it comes across. Again, most of it done under the surface, subconsciously.
We know that these automatic and programmed actions and thoughts serve us well in most cases but some do not and can cause common problems such as self sabotage, procrastination, relationship issues and many others.
What Can I Do About It?
That’s great to know, but what can you do about unhelpful programmed hardwiring?
Well, as I mentioned earlier the brain is constantly hardwiring everything it can, good or bad, and it usually sees change as a threat, especially as you get older. Trying to remove unhelpful habits, beliefs etc. can be extremely hard work and can take years to achieve.
Making new connections however, is relatively easy to do but it is not so easy by yourself. How many people (maybe even you) have read the books, attended the seminars, know the theory yet still resist taking real action?
Gaining new insights and developing your focus on where you are going rather than what is wrong is best done by working with someone else, like as an experienced coach who is familiar with these principles and has a proven methodology for effective behaviour change.
Committed to YOUR Personal Productivity,
James is a productivity coach specializing in working with people who are procrastinators and those who want results quickly. His ability to get brilliant results with his clients is quite amazing…
The Productivity Coach
Extraordinary Results for Professional and Personal Freedom
To Find Out the “5 Secrets of REALLY Successful People” go to…
P: 0421 210 444
How to Reduce Stress
May 9, 2009 by
Filed under Productivity
What Causes Stress?
James Bryden
We’ve all heard of common solutions to relieving stress. Things like meditation, breathing, diet, exercise and positive thinking all come readily to mind.
Bridging the gap between our western attitude to life focussed on material wealth and an eastern or traditional approach to life centred on our beingness for me is a real key.
Our society today promotes the myth that striving to be more, producing more and having more will ultimately solve our problems and make us happy.
Anything less we are led to believe makes us a failure. Add to that the information overload we all suffer from, it’s no wonder many people suffer from stress, depression, frustration and addictions.
A quick look at health statistics, mental and physical will readily confirm these assertions.
What is Success?
So how do you measure this thing called success? I think before we can measure it we need to define it. It means different things to different people. One of my favourite definitions is:
Progressive Realisation of Worthwhile Pre-Determined Personal Goals.
Coming from this perspective, the enjoyment is in what you do on the way to the achieving of the goal. In a way, the actual goal becomes secondary to the unspoken real goal which is self actualisation.
How do you know when you’ve made it? We are conditioned, it appears, to always view ourselves as somehow inadequate, not quite making the grade, and so we continue to strive to improve ourselves, to work even harder in order to get better results, accumulate wealth, material possessions or even enlightenment.
It’s struggle that we are sure to lose. But every day we repeat the same pattern, unconsciously striving for whatever it is we think will make us complete.
The reality is, you’ll never make it, you ARE it. You just aren’t aware of it yet.
Be Happy Anyway
It’s a big trap most fall into and in this respect we are like Sisyphus who, in ancient Greek mythology, was doomed forever in Hades to push a rock up a hill. He would nearly make it to the top when the effort would overtake him so he and the rock would roll all the way down to the bottom. He’d then have to start the whole futile exercise over again, with inevitably the same result.
It is all too easy to get caught up in and overwhelmed by the demands we put on ourselves that it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that “Things” don’t make us happy.
Now, please understand there is absolutely nothing wrong with setting goals for anything. We , as human beings thrive on it. It’s the dysfunctional subconscious patterns, habits and beliefs that distort the whole process.
Why not be fundamentally happy anyway, BEFORE and DURING your quest, rather than putting unrealistic and impossible to meet conditions on yourself and those around you? Your sense of self worth stays with you regardless of what happens.
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Committed to YOUR Personal Productivity,
James is a productivity coach specializing in working with people who are procrastinators and those who want results quickly. His ability to get brilliant results with his clients is quite amazing…
“Fast Tracking YOUR SUCCESS… SuccessFULL Living!”
To Find Out the “5 Secrets of REALLY Successful People” go to…
P: 0421 210 444
