Cognitive Neuroscientist Explains Why 'You Are What You Think'
"If you don’t forgive people, you’re basically letting them control you.”
What you think affects the whole body. This is why many say, “You are what you think.”
Although we all have toxic, negative thoughts that constantly come to us both from within and without, Dr. Caroline Leaf, a cognitive neuroscientist with a PhD in Communication Pathology who specializes in Neuropsychology, believes you can reprogram your brain in just four days to think properly and thereby dramatically increase the percentage of your brain that you use.
The average person today only uses 0.001 percent of his or her brain. But Leaf argues that if we learn to (and consistently choose to) think properly, we can use up to six or eight percent of our brain in our lifetime — and maybe, in rare cases, up to 10 percent. But even using just 1 percent of your brain would significantly change how you act.
About 95 percent of people on the planet today are not using their brains correctly, which means only about 60,000 are. Of the 95 percent of individuals who are not, only about 3 to 5 percent of these people actually have issues that would prevent them from using their brains properly.
Given that a single nerve cell can grow up to about 70,000 branches and the average human has 100 trillion nerve cells, most people have roughly three million years of storage space in their brains. To put this into perspective, one nerve cell with 70,000 branches can store all of the information we need to graduate from high school.
However, since positive memories cannot be built on top of negative ones, because the two storage structures are incompatible, in order to fully use the brain we must eradicate negative memories and then replace them with positive ones through forgiveness, release, repentance, and a conscious letting go.
If we don’t do this, Leaf says those toxic memories will impact our thoughts, attitudes, behavior, health, wellbeing and, ultimately, our longevity. So, if our thinking is toxic, then our communication and behavior will be toxic — and vice versa.
This is why it’s so important to never let our thoughts go unchecked, to “capture” any negative thoughts we generate or which come from the external enemy, and then make a conscious decision to let go of any toxic strongholds or thoughts that are not our own.
Leaf has researched and studied the mind-brain connection since the early 1980s, when she received her bachelor’s degree in Logopaedics (speech therapy) from the University of Cape Town South Africa. She has since received her Master’s degree and PhD in Communication Pathology from the University of Pretoria South Africa, where she graduated cum laude with distinction and honors.
Leaf went on to develop the Geodesic Learning™ theory, which explains the Science of Thought by outlining how thoughts form, how we process information, and the power of the non-conscious mind and its relationship to the conscious mind. It also explains how all of our actions originate as physical thoughts in the physical brain, and how what we think (and then do) can cycle back to that original thought and change both it and the memories connected to it, through a dynamic interrelationship.
How the Brain Works
If you can understand your brain, you can understand yourself.
The brain is made up of nerve cells that activate chemicals, which flood your body and create emotions. In other words, thoughts lead to emotions, which lead to attitudes, which lead to behavior. So, if we have toxic thoughts, we will have toxic emotions and then toxic attitudes and, ultimately, toxic behaviors.
While people often jokingly say, “It’s all in your head,” the mind-body connection is real and they are actually 87 percent correct. In fact, about 87 percent of current mental, physical and psychological illnesses come from our thought life.
The brain is not fully formed until we are 18 years old, which is why it’s so important to help your children think and make decisions. However, once it is formed, it is the only organ in the body that does not age; it matures. In fact, the brain develops throughout our lifetime, if we use it correctly, and older people actually have better brains if they are thinking properly and their intelligence is not static or fixed.
Leaf says that although we used to think the left brain was for academics and the right brain was for artists — or that the left brain is linear and the right brain is creative — the truth is that both sides of the brain work together. The left brain is responsible for detail-to-big picture thinking and the right brain is responsible for big picture-to-detail thinking. Together, they create a double memory of everything--almost like a mirror image of the same information.
However, when the left and right brain are not working harmoniously, we experience toxic thinking because too much emotion without rational thought or too much rational thought without emotion makes it impossible to "hear" the heart.
Toxic vs. Positive Thinking
Negative thinking lowers serotonin and norepinephrine levels, and negative thoughts linked to emotional turmoil will distort our perception and make our thinking toxic.
But what is toxic thinking?
Negative self-talk revolves toxic thoughts such as:
“I know it won’t work.”
“I don’t have the energy to make a change.”
“I should care about it now, but I’ll wait until tomorrow.”
“Nothing ever seems to go right for me.”
“I am at the end of my rope.”
“If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.”
On the flip side, positive self-talk sounds something like this, and releases a surge of endorphins, enkephalins, serotonin, and “all of the good stuff that make a person healthy and intelligent,” Leaf says.
“I know it will work because I put all of my effort into making this a success.”
“Tomorrow is not guaranteed. I won’t put off until tomorrow what I can do today.”
“I’d make a lousy anybody else, but I can be the best me in the world.”
“I don’t live my life on luck. I live my life by having faith, persistence and a positive attitude.”
But, since the brain takes 400 billion actions per second, we need to first understand how our brain thinks before we can successfully replace toxic thinking with positive self-talk.
How the Brain and its “Thinker” Work
Thinking is most easily broken down into three components: ask, answer and discuss. When we do this, our corpus callosum, a broad band of nerve fibers that joins the two hemispheres of the brain, (which Leaf calls our “thinker”), is under our control and shifts into a higher mode.
By thinking (asking, answering and discussing), we get the left and right sides of the brain to work together via the corpus callosum--the part of the brain that builds dendrites from the big picture-to-detail and detail-to-big picture and helps us decide whether to accept or reject information.
In other words, when you are actively engaged in the process of thinking, you build dendrites, where memories are stored. These dendrites look roughly like a human hand or a tree. The more formed the memories are, the more formed the branches of the tree are.
On the other hand, if you are only “sort of thinking” rather than actively processing information, the branches of these new dendrites will be limp rather than firm, which ultimately means they will eventually be removed by glial cells. Glial cells are supportive cells in the central nervous system that are responsible for cleaning up the “branches” of these nerve cells. After the information has passed through your short-term memory (about 24 to 48 hours), these glial cells act like vacuum cleaners and sweep up whatever has not been fully formed.
Leaf says the thicker the branches on a dendrite look, the more intelligent you are. She calls this collection of nerve cells the “magic forest of the mind.”
Healthy (Faith) vs. Thorn (Fear) “Trees”
Thick branches on a dendrite, however, may also indicate that a “toxic stronghold” is present. These toxic strongholds are built through intensely formed memories, such as when someone is abused.
The difference between a positive and negative memory — which Leaf says is either faith- or fear-based, respectively — is that a positive memory resembles a healthy, green tree while a toxic memory looks like a thorn tree. In fact, a toxic memory will actually push out points at the end of its branches and behave like a live weed that spreads anger, rejection and bitterness.
These toxic memories also have a different chemical makeup and electromagnetic field that puts the body into a stress reaction and can make us sick; and, if we decide to hold onto them, we ultimately give them a stronghold.
However, we can also actively decide to change them through release, forgiveness, repentance, and a conscious letting go. This is the only way to do it. Once we do that, the thorns will actually fall off so we can grow new memories over them.
The Structures of the Brain
The outside layer of the brain is called the cerebral cortex, which is the cerebrum’s (brain’s) outer layer of neural tissue in humans and other mammals. This is the structure that houses the “magic trees of the mind” or the “magic forest.”
On the inside of the brain are the structures of the limbic system, which are involved in motivation, emotion, learning, and memory; and inside the deep limbic system are the thalamus and hypothalamus, where all emotions are housed, along with their carrier chemicals.
The thalamus is responsible for relaying sensory and motor signals to the cerebral cortex, and for regulating consciousness, sleep and alertness. The hypothalamus is responsible for linking the nervous system to the endocrine system via the pituitary gland.
The hypothalamus is also responsible for certain metabolic processes and other activities of the autonomic nervous system, and for synthesizing and secreting certain neurohormones that, in turn, stimulate or inhibit the secretion of pituitary hormones. In addition, the hypothalamus controls body temperature, hunger, important aspects of parenting and attachment behaviors as well as thirst, fatigue, sleep, and circadian rhythms.
Together, the thalamus and hypothalamus form the “chemical factory of the brain,” which secretes the chemicals necessary to build memories by forming dendrites.
There are three groups of biochemicals that are released in combination, which are required for memory building. These biochemicals act like the glue with which memories are stuck on. They also carry emotions.
This underscores why emotions and learning are completely intertwined and inseparable. In fact, you must feel and experience while learning because doing so releases endorphins and enkephalins, which help you process the information more efficiently.
These carrier chemicals or “molecules of emotion,” as Leaf calls them, actually carry a photocopy of the memory that you store in the “magic trees,” which is imprinted on that chemical and then carried throughout your body.
When this happens, the electromagnetic chemicals flood through the “magic forest,” creating a “breeze through the trees,” which activates existing networks in order to better use the incoming information. As the “breeze through the trees” wafts through, it also activates attitude, which then impacts behavior.
So, if a “molecule of emotion” lands in a toxic stronghold, where a negative memory is housed, it will release a series of toxic chemicals. Fear, for example, activates 1,400 different chemicals in the body and, if the body then feels attacked, that negative stronghold will be reactivated and reinforced.
Forming An Attitude
There are two stages in which attitudes are formed. The first stage is when the “breeze through the trees” occurs, which is when you first become aware of an emotional response and/or problem starting. The second stage is when you have a surge of adrenaline from your “gut reaction,” which happens after the “breeze through the trees” sends a message to the hypothalamus that then drops it into the amygdala, which functions like a library of emotions, where we store all of our emotional perceptions.
Many times we try to just ignore this response or “throw it in a dustpan and hope it stays there,” Leaf says. “But you cannot bury emotions.”
Emotions that are buried become volcanic and will explode.
In order to proactively process emotions as they occur, we must have a mature understanding of the amygdala’s reaction and then engage the prefrontal cortex to help us consciously deal with that emotion.
The Role of the Amygdala
The amygdala plays a central role in communicating with the prefrontal cortex, where rational decision-making takes place. In fact, the amygdala, heart and prefrontal cortex form a perfect triangle when they are working together.
The amygdala actually has extension cords to the prefrontal cortex, but these extension cords are not fully formed until we are 18 years old.
Although the amygdala connects to the prefrontal cortex, where our “free will” is housed, it also generates an intense physical reaction. When we react directly (and impulsively) from the amygdala response instead of waiting for the information to reach the prefrontal cortex, we can make mistakes.
“Even as adults, we don’t always use the pre-frontal cortex and we and just ‘boom!’ and react,” Leaf says. “If we don’t analyze our perception, we can make mistakes — and then that bad emotional response builds a bad memory.”
Information from the amygdala drops into the deep limbic system through the hippocampus, which acts like a “hose pump” and receiver of short-term info, which it stores for 24 to 48 hours. The hippocampus plays a very important role in consolidating information from short-term memory to long-term memory.
After the information passes through the hippocampus, it activates the corpus callosum — and that’s when we finally start to think and use our free will.
Our perceptions can be truth or fact. The fact may be that you can’t, but the truth is that you can learn to.
When we approach our reactions in this way, we can begin to replace negative perception with positive perception, and rationally work through how we want to respond to the incoming information.
The Five Doorways to the Depth of Our Mind
Our five senses are the doorways to the depths of our mind. In fact, our five senses are the main points of contact between the outside world and our inside world.
The information our five senses receive — with the exception of smell, which goes directly to our brain — are converted from light waves and/or sound waves, for example, into electrical activity in the brain.
Just because we perceive information with our five senses, however, does not mean we are automatically subject to it.
For example, if an individual has struggled with pornography and he or she begins watching a pornographic video, this person still has the ability to decide whether to accept or reject that information, if the incoming image has not yet his the “magic forest.” If this individual decides to turn off the video before meditating on it or engaging with it, the information will not penetrate the depths of his or her mind.
In other words, you can always make a free will decision to reject incoming information.
Changing Our Brains
Leaf says we can change our brains in just four days if we think correctly and reject toxic thoughts and information.
We can alter our neurochemistry and remove those toxic thorns. We are ultimately in control of what happens in our brain, and the biochemicals associated with love, faith and forgiveness are much stronger than those associated with fear.
If your brain is working as it should, you will look and feel fantastic. When your inside world is right, your outside world will show it.
You are ultimately the only one who can take responsibility for changing your brain, even if counseling or medication can help get you to a place where you decide you want to.
“God gives us the ability and a structure in the brain to make that decision,” Leaf says. “No one can override your free will.”
He also gives us a "heart brain" — a brain within the heart that works with our free will decision-making.
In fact, the heart, which is the strongest oscillator in the body and neurologically sensitive to the brain, acts like an inspection station that checks for congruence. It is a sphere of divine interfacing.
“The heart will advise you, but only if you are at peace,” Leaf says. “You can’t hear the voice of the heart if you’re not at peace.”
If the heart and head are incongruent, there is a disruption in the electromagnetic chemical feedback loop — and then the body is out of rhythm. For example, saying one thing and meaning another upsets the neurochemical feedback loop because it’s incongruent.
Stress Reactions & The Dangers of Toxic Thinking
The body and brain are interconnected, as are its nerves and chemicals, so what you think affects the whole body.
Stress is linked to two types of emotion: faith (positive) and fear (negative). When your fear increases and your faith level drops, you feel out of control and your stress goes up.
In other words, fear and toxic thinking are the root of most stress, and this occurs when we listen to the negative stronghold in our mind, Leaf says. Anger and bitterness act as internal stressors until you get rid of them, and these toxic thoughts create toxic reactions.
There are three stages of stress. The first stage is for survival, and the 2nd and 3rd stages are not.
When we become anxious, corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) — a family of related neuropeptides — is released from the pituitary gland. When we are afraid or anticipate fear, we release adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), a polypeptide tropic hormone produced and secreted by the anterior pituitary gland that is an important component of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and is often produced in response to biological stress.
ATCH travels from the pituitary gland to the adrenal glands, which then release adrenaline and cortisol. Cortisol in small amounts is good, but large amounts of cortisol are very destructive.
This secretion will stop if the body shifts back to a state of non-fear and anxiety. However, over time we can shift from Stage 1 to Stage 2 of stress more and more easily, which means our negative, fear-based stress occurs more and more quickly.
Many of us even shift into Stage 2 stress semi-permanently instead of going back into a state of peace. In fact, Stage 2 stress can last for 10, 20 or even 30 years in some people. This leads to many aches and pains in the body. It also makes it nearly impossible to hear your heart because stress chemicals are blocking it.
Stage 3 of stress is utter exhaustion. The organs and systems break down, the immune system is shot, and the individual can enter an emotional black hole.
Stress chemicals first impact the heart and attack the cardiovascular system, which can lead to angina, heart attacks, high blood pressure, etc. Next, they affect the immune system and, third, the brain. This can lead to depression, phobias, lethargy, insomnia and foggy thinking. Finally, stress attacks the digestive system.
Detoxing from Stress
Detoxing from stress is a constant process that requires us to ask God for help in capturing toxic thoughts and renewing our mind. It can also be extremely helpful to work through our emotions with someone else.
There are three main steps to controlling attitude.
Become Alert: Be aware of your response to information. Is it good or bad?
Don’t React to Your 1st Emotion: Stand back and analyze it
Control Your Thoughts: Accept the good, uplifting thoughts and reject the negative ones by using your free will.
While negative thinking lowers our serotonin and norepinephrine levels, we can take responsibility and take control back by consciously controlling our thoughts. We can engage interactively with every thought we have and never let a thought go unchecked.
For example, “could have,” “would have,” and “should have” are guilt thoughts that immediately throw the body into Stage 2 stress.
Protecting Our Children from Stress
The patterns of stress children experience in childhood form their patterns of stress in adulthood. This is especially important to take seriously as children today spend more time at school and doing homework than the average CEO spends at work.
And stress in children is catastrophic because they don’t have the same adult brain we do to process it. As a result, we have a huge responsibility to guide them through what they’re going through, reduce their stress and give them love.
It’s also important to note here that Leaf says children begin to realize at about two and a half years of age that they are not their parents. This leads to great confusion, which is why she says “terrible twos” should really be called the “confused twos.”
Physical touch is the best way to help relieve their confusion, by bringing them back into your personal space.
Another way to help children reduce stress is to have them play music, which calms down their chaotic thinking regardless of how well they play.
Conclusion
Leaf says she was instructed years ago to put this phrase on her business card, before she fully understood what it meant: “The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” Years later, she realized why.
Thoughts are for our healing or destruction. A lot of people perish for lack of understanding, but the thoughts we put in our mind are what’s going to heal the nation.
13 Steps to Detox from Stress
1. Capture Those Thoughts
Stop replaying painful and negative conversations or situations in your mind or revolving a situation that hasn’t even happened yet. Negative thoughts linked to emotional turmoil will distort your perception and make your thinking toxic.
Don’t take ownership of problems or claim them or you will imprint that problem on your body. For example, never say, “My bad back…”
Use a journal to help capture your thoughts and make a conscious decision about what to accept and reject; never let any thoughts go unchecked, especially since many are from the external enemy and toxic strongholds
Remember that attitude, hope and free will are linked. If your attitude is negative, hope goes. So replace bad attitudes with hope and vision.
There are four steps to capturing thoughts:
1.Understand how a thought forms
2.Use the sieve in the brain (the magic trees, corpus callosum, limbic system, and free will) to sieve what you want to keep and discard the rest
3.Make a conscious decision to accept or reject the thought/attitude
4.Build a memory and deal with that emotional stronghold/attitude. For example, if you were abused, visualize that toxic stronghold and feed it positive statements to help build a new memory
2. Frame Your World With Your Words
Be mindful that if you speak negatively, you will rebuild those negative trees. Negative attracts negative through like waveforms, and you will get what you say.
Watch what you say about others. You imprint on them and frame them when you say, “That’s who you are.” For example, “You’re so naughty or lazy, etc.” This is especially true when interacting with children, who are more vulnerable to imprinted information but also heal more quickly with hugs and apologies. Instead, you must address current behavior rather than identifying the individual as that negative behavior.
Remember that when you release positive statements, you release positive chemicals, and when you release negative statements, you release negative chemicals. Negative chemicals then lead to negative memories that grow stronger and become more negative strongholds.
What you say must be in your heart or your electrochemical feedback loop from your heart to your brain will be incongruent. Your mouth, head and heart must line up.
We all speak without thinking, but we need to think through what we say and become more introspective.
There are 5 steps to frame the world with your words:
1.Acknowledge an issue or stronghold exists in your mind
2.Reflect on what is wrong without
3.Consider how you can come to terms with it
4.Ask whether you can do it alone or if you need help, so you can sort out what is ingrained in your mind and heart before you speak
5.Watch your mouth! How you frame the world with your words is different than your thought life, but it matches your thought life. What you speak is what’s currently in your heart
3) Express Those Emotions
Emotions make us human.
“Molecules of emotion” carry emotion throughout the entire body. They are housed in the deep limbic system, in chemical form, and are secreted throughout our thought life
Although men are not as linguistically fluent as women, it is just as important for them to express their emotions; help them
Just because you need to express your emotions does not make it okay to wallow in them like a hippo in mud
Admit it, quit it and beat it or you will drown. Acknowledge them, face them, and deal with them in a positive way as soon as you can
Don’t become an expert at *not feeling* what you feel
Dealing with your emotions is linked to attitude because emotions actually create your state of mind
Here are 10 signs you may be repressing emotion:
1.Irritable
2.Short-tempered
3.Over-reactive
4.Anxious
5.Frustrated
6.Fretful
7.Impulsive
8.Self-doubt
9.Desire for control
10.Perfectionism
4. Take Responsibility + Take Control (Through Active, Conscious Thinking)
Active conscious thinking forces the metacognitive (90 percent) non-conscious part of the mind, where most of the memories are stores, to interact with our conscious or cognitive mind, which is responsible for 10 percent of thought.
When we think hard, we push the two sides of the brain together and begin tapping into the depths of the unconscious mind.
Your “you-ness” floods up when you think hard, helping you to become the best person you can be. If your “you-ness” doesn’t come out, that’s toxic, too.
5. Dream On
We all dream!
The content of your dreams reaches your awareness as a story.
Physiologically, your dream state allows the psychosomatic network to retune itself and get ready for your waking life.
Shifts occur in your brain’s feedback loops as peptides spill out into the system and bind to receptors, causing activities necessary for homeostasis. Information about this process enters consciousness in the form of a dream.
Capturing your dreams can enlighten you as to what is going on in your thought life.
Writing down dreams will help you to detox and unblocks pathways.
The more chaotic the dream, the more chaotic your thought life.
Unprocessed emotion will bubble up into consciousness as a dream, as your body is literally discussing the condition with your mind.
Dreams relate to your body and your mind, and can be an early warning sign that something is going on.
6. Think Forgiveness
If you don’t forgive people, you’re basically letting them control you.
Forgiveness is a choice and act of your free will. It releases those toxic thoughts of anger, resentment, bitterness, shame, grief, regret, guilt, hate, etc.
You cannot grow healthy new thoughts over unhealthy, toxic ones.
Research has proven that forgiveness makes you healthy.
Forgiveness is:
Not making excuses for other but forgiving despite their behavior
Not ignoring pain but rather choosing to let it go
Not letting someone off the hook, but releasing them into God’s hands
Not a flaw but a sign of great strength and courage
7. Love: Tune Into Your Heart
Positive chemicals in your heart (e.g. endorphins and enkephalins) pour through your body when you love and forgive.
People in love look different.
Studies show that love, caring and compassion create clear changes in the patterns of activity of the autonomic nervous system, immune system, hormonal system, brain, and heart
There is a direct link between positive emotions, improved health and increased longevity
The mini-brain in our heart “thinks” about info it receives from the brain and then the messages from our heart affects our behavior
The heart has the ability to pull every other system of the body into its own rhythm
When the heart is at peace or filled with love, the entire body (under direction of the brain, which analyzes the love) feels peace and love. The inverse is also true.
The voice from the heart is a gentle nudge or a voice of warning
Develop love and tune into your heart by:
1.Thinking of all your blessings
2.Having an attitude of gratitude; thanking people
3.Not thinking or revolving painful thoughts
4.Spending time with people who bring you joy; we all want to be around happy people
5.Focusing on happy memories
6.Not allowing fear to cloud the messages of your heart
8. Monkey Hug Therapy
This term is taken from a scientific study in which dying monkeys were completely healed through touch and hugs
When you hug or touch a person, you release endorphins and enkephalins
Touch is a part of love and an essential element of human development
Touch is also a critical component of the health and development of infants
Touch is a powerful, healing force and can break negative feedback loops by releasing endorphins and enkephalins
9. Play and Laugh a Lot
Play reduces aggression, fear and grief.
It helps give us mastery over our emotions.
It stretches our range of emotional expression.
Laughing is “internal jogging,” as Norman Cousins said, because it literally causes the peptides to flow. In fact, laughing 100-200 times/day is as effective as rowing or jogging for 10 minutes.
A good “belly laugh” reduces cortisol by 39 percent and adrenaline by 70 percent, and increases the growth hormone by 87 percent; it also boosts the immune system.
Laughing improves thinking skills and the flexibility of thought.
It rejuvenates our neurochemicals.
Laughing also connects us to others and turns our focus outwards, away from ourselves.
10. Exercise
You need to get your heart pumping in order to increase the blood flow, which nourishes and cleans your brain and all of your organs.
The added benefit of exercise is that it improves your mood by releasing endorphins.
Aerobic exercise helps to sweep away the debris left by toxic thoughts and emotions.
Find a form that you enjoy and stick to it
11. Diet
Our digestive system is neurologically sensitive to the brain.
Eating is a highly emotional and metacognitive event.
The large and small intestines are densely lined with neurons, neuropeptides and receptors, which are all busily exchanging info laden with emotional content — “gut feeling” is real!
The pancreas releases more than 20 different emotionally laden peptides that regulate the assimilation and storage of nutrients.
Comfort eating is bad — go for a run or jog, or get a good laugh instead
Don’t eat when you’re angry, not hungry or trying to bury an unpleasant emotion because the toxins generated by toxic thoughts interfere with the proper workings of the digestive system
Tune into your thoughts and what they have to say about what your body needs to eat, when, and how much it needs
Here are 6 steps to “Eat Yourself Clever:”
1.Control carbs — excess carbs dull thinking
2.Cut out refined carbs, which add to your body’s toxic load
3.Get enough unheated fats and avoid fried foods, which are brain killers
4.Your brain’s primary need is for oxygen and its secondary is for protein
5.Follow the 80/20 rule (if you eat well 80 percent of the time, you can cheat 20 percent of the time)
6.Drink loads of water
12. The Spiritual Aspect
“I am the way, the truth and the life. No man shall come to the father except through me.”
Build a relationship with God through prayer.
Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Spend time with the word.
We are all spiritual beings and any healing of the body or mind will not happen unless the spiritual aspect is addressed.
13. Relax
We need to learn to relax.
We live in an “acceleration syndrome: “Rush, rush, rush! Busy, busy!”
The toxic emotions experienced as a result of this cause disruptions to the autonomic nervous system, leading to erratic heart rhythms.
Relaxing is a necessity to keep the autonomic nervous system healthy.
Make a conscious decision to balance your work and rest before it’s too late.
