Shawn Phillips | Start Strong Monday

The brain doctor, Dr. Amen talks about it. Wayne Dyer believes it’s essential to well-being. My brother, Bill, has an entire chapter in Transformation on it.

I manage to integrate it into the Strength for LIFE daily rituals; first thing each morning. What is it?

Gratitude!

What follows is an excerpt from a TED talk by Martin Seligman PhD, the “father of positive psychology.” Seligman pioneered the move from psychology as a way to reduce “pain” to a focus on increasing happiness. Here’s he shares a powerful practice for enhancing your positive emotions and happiness. It’s called the Gratitude Visit. Watch it and then… what you say? Ready?

A Dime for Your Experience!

What’d ya think?

Have you ever done anything like that–or that? If so, share your experience please.

If not, what’s ya say we get on with it? Come on… give it a test drive and start sharing.

Nothing Like Feeling Positive Pressure
© Scott E. Wolff

Go, Go, Go…

To many of us “finding our way” in this success resistant world, life often seems like a relentless challenge.

How awesome would it be to relax, to get a day off. To sit back and get comfortable?

Yeah! Sounds nice…

Alas, as I find the sought after moment reading reminds me of the irony…

“The comfortable life is no less challenging; it’s simply less courageous.”

Fail to set significant goals for yourself and life will continue to serve up challenge after challenge–and this constant battle for survival consumes as much or more effort and energy to maintain the status-quo as true success does.

When you choose to aim high, a new path opens—one of greater purpose and lasting impact. There’s no promise you will receive all that you aim for, but rest assured that your aim will open you to new possibilities you would not known otherwise.

In addition, with each choice you make to reach higher, you strengthen your belief and confidence. You come to know what you are truly capable rather than rely hope and a fight fear. And I’m not talking only about abs or even fitness. The realm of the body, the quest for fitness stands as the single most self-reliant, self-fulfilling arena for achievement that one can engage in. To succeed in both small and great ways it to enhance your Strength and confidence, inside out.

May I suggest… Aim high!

The Face of Fear is Deeply Programmed in Our DNA But What's It Doing To Your Body?

You’re walking down an unfamiliar hall in pitch black darkness filled only with ghoulish sounds of ghosts and goblins. Then BLAM! Out of the darkness a bloody decapitated corpse leaps, his head in hand.

Even though you’ve been expecting it, a shock wave of energy shoots through your body. Your system is on red-alert. And the first thought that comes to your mind is, “Damn, I could sure us a big, juicy hamburger about now!”

NOT!

On this, the most frightening day of the year, I thought it the perfect day to take a look inside the frightened mind to answer the question:

Why is it that fear and hunger don’t coexist?

I’m sure you can attest from your own experience, when you’re frightened, chocolate cake, apple pie and hot dogs are the last things on your mind.

This phenomenon of the human condition is another example of something I’ve been preaching for decades, weight loss happens between your ears.

Let’s face it, packing on excess fat-baggage is not the result of a finely attuned body and mind simply managing “I’m hungry,” signals. Sure, it does seem like that hunger comes from your body—your stomach—but every bit of that experience is in your mind. Even the part where you know what a stomach is.

Your mind creates hunger, partly from your body’s needs but who’s to say that your mind is interpreting the signals it is getting from your body accurately.

Most often and most likely your mind is the hungry one. It’s needing something, be that a stimulation, to “wake up” or feel some pleasure or it may be programmed to use food to escape, both stress and boredom.

Fear Displaces Hunger

Fear is physical because your brain makes it so. It’s a chain reaction that begins with the brain interpreting a stimulus as stressful—a threat—triggering a complex release of chemicals that lead to a racing heart, elevated and shallow breathing, and a highly energized body.

Even the look of fear on your face shows is all driven by this deeply programmed ancient instinctive response. It’s not optional for the fear response is almost entirely autonomic: We don’t consciously trigger it or even know what’s going on until it has run its course.

The Chemistry of Fight or Flight

Fear triggers in you’re a survival response, called the “fight-or-flight response,” activating two systems: the sympathetic nervous system and the adrenal-cortical system.

The sympathetic nervous system uses nerve pathways to initiate reactions in the body, and the adrenal-cortical system uses the bloodstream.

When the sympathetic nervous system lights up your body speeds up, tenses up and becomes very alert. It does so by triggering the release of adrenaline (epinephrine) and norepinephrine (noradrenaline) into the bloodstream. These “stress hormones” cause several changes in the body, including an increase in heart rare and blood pressure.

(They also kill your appetite. Think about it; we would not have survived as a species if an attacking bear looked less like a threat than dinner.)

At the same time, the hypothalamus stimulates the pituitary gland to secrete a hormone that stimulates the adrenal cortex to release of about 30 different hormones that prepare your body prepared to deal with the threat.

The feeling is what most people would call, “a shot of adrenaline.” But as you can see that it’s much, much more than that.

The Impact of Fear

The sudden surge of epinephrine, norepinephrine and dozens of other hormones causes changes in your body that include:

• heart rate and blood pressure increase
• your pupils dilate to take in as much light as possible
• veins in skin constrict to send more blood to major muscle groups (this is the “chill” sometimes associated with fear.)
• blood-glucose level increases ** Important
• Muscles tense up, energized by adrenaline and glucose
• smooth muscle relaxes in order to allow more oxygen into the lungs (which is why stimulants are used to enhance breathing in treat related asthma conditions)
• nonessential systems (like digestion and immune system) shut down to allow more energy for emergency functions
• trouble focusing on small tasks (brain is directed to focus only on big picture in order to determine where threat is coming from)

All of these physical responses are intended to help you survive a dangerous situation by preparing you to either run or fight for your life. Fear and the fight-or-flight response in particular, is an instinct that every animal possesses.

Fear vs. Appetite

As you can see fear produces a complex chain reaction in your body. It turns a lot of functions up, to full volume and suppresses others. And as I’m sure you have experienced, the feeling of adrenaline surging through your veins, be it from a midnight walk down a dark alley or the anticipation of giving a speech in front of thousands of people, is an appetite killer.

Anxiety, fear and most high-stress response situations kill an appetite. Your brain and body is on alarm stage. Blood is surging elsewhere, besides your digestion—which is suppressed—and glucose is surging into your blood stream for energy.

So, why not just scare your way skinny?

Right? Why not use this natural reaction to get skeleton skinny?

Well, hate to break it to you but that’s not an altogether original idea. In fact, that’s essentially how weight-loss pills (aka fat-loss pills) have been designed to work for decades.

If you’ve ever tried a potent fat-loss pill you’ve felt it—the elevation of the very same system that is activated by fear—the elevated heart rate, the non-specific feeling of anxiety and stress.

And while the side-effects are often high, if you can tolerate the general anxiety and discomfort, the madness can work—for a time. (ain’t that always the catch, time?)
Unfortunately that time of effectiveness, of realizing results, is limited. Very limited.

Like Viagra, the flight-or-flight system is intended for “occasional use only.” It’s not suited for a lifestyle. That’s to say that literally choosing to live in a state of “capsule induced fear” is no way to live—and no way to lose weight. It’s at best a dangerous, life and energy draining dance with decay. For it breaks you down, from the inside out.

Try This:

Want to feel how rapidly fear fatigues your system—quickly becoming chronic stress?

Try going through a haunted house four times in rapid succession and see what happens. You’ll jump out of your skin the first time. You may get a surge of adrenaline the next. By the fourth time your natural responses will be worn down. You’ll stop getting the “high” from the surge of chemicals, as your body adapts to their presence and their release is blunted by cellular exhaustion of the chemicals.

Sure, some of it is due to the fact you’ve come to expect the surprises but a lot less than you might think. For, as we discussed, fear is not in your control. I happens even when you try not to let it happen.

More profound, by the fourth trip through rather than the surge of fear pulsing through your body, you’re more likely get irritated. A thwarted fear, a fatigued system and the result is not anxiety but agitation.

Weight-Loss Pill Fatigue

Just as the addict will require more and more cocaine for less and less high, so does your body adapt the hyper-stimulus of the fat-loss pills. It doesn’t take long before the benefit of a depressed appetite is offset by the negative impact of surging glucose, chronic cortisol elevation and fatigue of essential hormones which are needed to keep yourself operating at peak.

(cortisol is a “catabolic” steroid hormone which means that it’s involved in the break-down of tissue, including muscle, in the service of short term survival. This is in contrast to the “anabolic” steroid hormones, like testosterone, which “build” the body up.)

A quick look at the hormone-cocktail of fear says it’s unsustainable—and as Newton’s Third Law states, “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

In this case, the opposite reaction to fear and the stress cocktail that it brings, includes both elevated hunger and fatigue.

That means you’re going to be shot out, in need of rest and recovery and when you’re system comes back down, the surging glucose drops (most likely deposited as body fat) you’re going to be hungry. And I’m not talking about some light snackies—no. I’m talking a downright frightening sort of “eat the ass end out of” a ghost hungry.

Fear Weakens

Back to the brain. A the brain (or mind) of a fit person is not baked in fear. Fear, especially as a chronic state (which would be chronic stress as fear is unsustainable state) could promote a thin body—but it would be weak, frail and sickly as well.

No doubt you’ve seen this in people—and would agree, that fear, via it artificially created from fat-loss pills or chronic stress, is neither a desirable or vibrant and vital life.

The Opposite of Fear: Strength Awakens

Given that fear is essentially the ultimate trigger to the catabolic state—the breakdown and fatiguing of our vital body systems—is not the answer to a lean, vibrant body, simple logic would suggest the opposite path is.

The opposite of the brain and body depleting catabolic state of fear would be to go anabolic and Strength.

Strength is the presence to face up to your fear, to confront the chronic crap in life that can eat away your vitality and energy. Anabolic is the state of abundance, of growth, of strength from the inside out.

Strength begins with the quality of nourishment you feed your body and mind. It’s not in quantity of foods or even positive thoughts. The stronger, more robust the nourishment, in the form of food and thought, the greater the impact.
Take a shake break! Sit back, relax, take some strong, vibrant nourishment as you reflect on how spectacular your life really is.

Take a Shake Break for Strength

My advice is simple…

Be afraid of fear except the wise fear of poisonous snakes, high cliffs and dangerous fat-loss pills. Embrace a nutrient rich, protein plentiful diet that provides ample fuel for a powerfully positive and resourced brain-chemistry, and encourages anabolic activity (the growth of stronger muscles and more vibrant cells throughout your body and brain).

My ultimate prescription for a stronger, freer body and mind: