It’s 8:30 PM and you
finally find yourself getting off work far too late and you pick up your starved,
sleep deprived scrapped together body who now must face the woes of the long
drive home to your beloved bed. All you can think about is grabbing a Chipotle
burrito and carb crash into eternity for twelve straight hours. You get home,
open snapchat and see your coworker entering a yoga studio hash tagging about
meditation, being organic, or something about Jamba Juice. Just before your
tension filled face hits the pillow, you feel a tinge of envy that you cannot
be that coworker right now who just seems to have it all together.
Is it even possible to be
this person of envy? How do you get there? Where do you even start? The truth
is, Jamba Juice girl has her own problems and anxieties that you aren’t seeing
on snapchat. But at least she is doing something about her daily struggles that
we all endure. There is no “magic cure” to reducing stress. We have set ways
that we are unaware of to guide us to a more stress free life, we just have to
walk those avenues to find them. For some, it's yoga and a smoothie. For others,
it’s simply driving with the windows down or going for a nature walk. So which
one do we choose? Well, here are a few proven science backed methods to rev up
your amazing resiliency building machine that is your brain.
1.) Mindfulness
Mindfulness has gained
lots of traction recently and for one good reason, it works. Mindfulness is
essentially a type of meditation that allows a person to simple be aware when
done correctly. There are no fancy mantras, positioning or clothing. Mindfulness
is being aware of the sensations that you see, hear and feel around you. We
take for granted the sounds of the air conditioning, bird chirping, or the
texture of a keyboard beneath your fingers. All these play into a person being
wholly present in a given moment. If a person focuses on these sensations, the
mind no longer wonders to the fears that are often not based in reality.
It’s natural for our
brains to come up with stuff that bother us, it’s what it does. But when I am
in an anxious state and my brain decides to bring up that one time in eighth
grade 15 years ago when Sarah Anderson rejected me, does not mean it’s a healthy
response. We know that the amygdala plays a role in fear and stress response.
We also know that by reducing stress, we can actually change the structure of
the amygdala itself, therefore changing our stress response-incredible! Take
that Sarah, you have no power over me. When these types of thoughts do occur,
mindfulness can teach us to bring it forthright in our minds, but just
recognize it as a thought and only a thought-nothing more. The thought has zero power over you and therefore is not worth being anxious about. This is when you
focus back to the sensations around you.
2.)
Power-Posing
This sounds silly and is
pretty much what you are imagining it is but is a personal favorite. I learned
about this one in college while getting my degree in neuroscience. It’s
actually a TedTalk and totally worth checking out here. The study had
participants perform a powerful pose such as standing with arms raised as if
you had just crossed a finish line and another group do a more timid pose with
arms closer to chest and hunched over. The power posers (Cue Richard Simmons
dancing) showed a large decrease in cortisol and an increase in testosterone
compared to the timid folks. This means that the stress hormone decreased and
gave the participants more confidence. They only struck the pose for one
minute, that’s nothing. I personally did this before my shifts on the
psychiatric ICU and even speeches, and feel it helps tremendously.
3.)
Affect-Labeling
This one is fairly new to
western culture but promising and also just as easy as power-posing because all
you need is a pen. It’s been around for ages with those old school philosophers
with the killer beards. Anytime you feel an emotion filled with anxiety or
fear, write one word down that describes that emotion. This method seems to
affect the fear pathway in our brains that involve that pesky amygdala again.
Researchers believe it allows our brains to actually “see” the fear rather than
just imagining it. We can face it and be comfortable with it. Combined with
mindfulness, this is a useful tool.
Overall, you have to
choose what you think works best for you. Your work is not your life and your
life does not just start when your workday ends. We need to learn to be
comfortable no matter where we are during the day. It is no easy task, but our
brain does respond to certain methods that have been proven to work. So grab a
pen, strike a pose, and listen to those annoying birds and appreciate them in
the moment. I am not paid by Jamba Juice for this article. Cheers.
References
Hölzel, B. K., Carmody, J., Evans, K. C., Hoge, E. A.,
Dusek, J. A., Morgan, L., . . . Lazar, S. W. (2009). Stress reduction
correlates with structural changes in the amygdala. Social Cognitive and
Affective Neuroscience, 5(1), 11-17. doi:10.1093/scan/nsp034
Carney, D. R., Cuddy, A. J., & Yap, A. J. (2010).
Power Posing. Psychological Science, 21(10), 1363-1368.
doi:10.1177/0956797610383437
Berridge, K. (2007). Faculty of 1000 evaluation for
Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in
response to affective stimuli. F1000 - Post-publication Peer Review of the
Biomedical Literature. doi:10.3410/f.1087927.540874
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