Mindful May

I love the start of a new month and the chance to set some new goals and start with a clean slate.  I had a little bit of a light bulb moment today.  You all know I’ve been on a somewhat long journey of ‘self help’ work recently and for the past two months I have been undertaking the Peak Persona Next Level program (shout out that the next cohort kicks off on Sunday – highly recommend!).  Several of the tasks during the program, namely obtaining feedback (of which I hardly looked at the good comments), a mind audit (all ten times I stopped and paid attention to my thoughts had me noting them as grumpy or negative) and undertaking some personality profiling, have made me acutely aware that I very much tend to focus on the negatives and this is holding me back in lots of ways.  This realisation has come as a bit of a shock to me as I would have described myself as a ‘glass half full’ kinda girl.

However, lucky for me, our Peak Persona Bookclub book for April was ‘Happiness Hardwired’ by Rick Hanson, Ph.D., a psychologist, Senior Fellow of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, and New York Times best-selling author.   According to Dr Hanson, it turns out that for us humans, “our brain has a negativity bias that makes it like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones”. This bias evolved to help ancient animals survive, but it really isn’t helpful to me now!

Anyway, thanks to Aaron Birkby – Peak Persona sharing some of his notes on ‘Happiness Hardwired’ and my googling/stalking Dr Hanson – I have learnt some fascinating stuff, that actually makes a lot of sense.

Firstly, the brain is the organ that learns, so it is designed to be changed by our experiences. Whatever we repeatedly sense and feel and want and think is slowly but surely, sculpting neural structure in our mind, in other words, what you pay attention to—what you rest your mind upon—is the primary shaper of your brain.  The problem is, due to our ‘negativity bias’ even short negative experiences can have more impact on our minds than a longer, positive event, which results in us feeling stressed, angry, worried – more often than relaxed, happy and content, and I know what I would much rather be feeling.

So, why am I telling you all this?  Well – there are actually some really easy things we can do to help retrain and re-wire our brains to help us feel more positive.  The idea is to create as many good moments as we can to produce the ‘love chemical’ Oxytocin – the more oxytocin in our systems for the more time, the more our body naturally gets better at producing it.

I think during this coronavirus time it is particularly important to pay attention to our thoughts and remember the impact they can have in the long term.  Now also might be a good time to have a go at some of the brain re-training things?  Given that it seems I am currently a bit of a negative nellie, debbie downer, I’ve decided to make this month ‘Mindful May’ and here’s a few ideas of things I thought I might be able to try, you might like to try them too!

1. A Hug – check out this poem for why this might work – I loved it.
2. Exercise – especially Yoga – I am going to check out Yoga With Adriene on YouTube
3. A warm bath – bonus points for candles
4. Relaxing music (surely we can find a spotify playlist that would work?)
5. Unplugging from our devices (tough one for me!)
6. Doing something nice for someone else
7. Do something fun or creative – or thrill seeking for the adrenaline junkies!  I’m going to try ‘Photo A Day’ from Fat Mum Slim again even though I am notoriously bad for sticking to these things!
8. Nap
9. Meditation (the Calm App is good apparently) and I think there are some free online courses getting around – would love a recommendation?
10. Playing with a pet (I reckon I can tick this one off easy with all our new kittens!)
11. Gratitude Journaling (I have really struggled with this – it seemed so naff, but I am actually liking it these days thanks to my Five Minute Journal.

I hope Mindful May will mean positive experiences we can do, think about, feel and take the time to absorb, the more we will shape or brains to feel positive in the future and that can only be a good thing for better living, working and playing in life as we start to come out of our coronavirus bubbles right?

This list is also a pretty good summary – have a good month everyone!

Love The Fealy Family xoxoxo