Today we are going to learn how your thoughts are governed by your nervous system (not your mind!).
This means you can change your thoughts by changing the state of your nervous system.
Before we start transforming our lives, we need to learn how to regulate ourselves. Otherwise, we’ll be making decisions for the wrong reasons.
Five years ago, before I began my journey with meditation and spirituality that led me to starting The Heart Space, I was working in London in the corporate sector.
Yes, I was chasing all the trappings of material success.
Something was off but I didn't quite know what...
I seemed to have 3 main emotional states.
I would either be feeling fine, stressed or depressed.
I moved around these states but, frankly, I mostly felt stressed.
I had a very busy life and when work became too much I would see it flare up in the form of eczema, anxiety, and trouble sleeping.
On top of these symptoms, I’d have negative thoughts. They seemed to spiral out of control and I would feel overwhelmed.
They would tell me that I couldn’t handle it, that I was an imposter, that I was miserable.
All the self-help literature talked about the importance of positive thinking. But my thoughts seemed uncontrollable.
A few years later, I discovered polyvagal theory.
It explains how our nervous system regulates our physiological responses to different situations.
And I realised that I had got it backwards.
It’s not that my thoughts were making me feel bad. It’s that I was feeling bad and this was leading to negative thoughts.