How To Keep Stress From Shriveling Your Brain Into A Raisin

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Hey, it’s Marie Forleo and you are watching Marie TV, the place to be to create a business and a life that you love like this. Now today, I want to talk to you about something that we all do that is scientifically proven to make us dumber. Now the good news is that we can all stop doing it immediately, and the fix really is quite simple. So what are we doing that makes us dumber? It has to do with stress. Now, don’t stress out about this because as I shared, there is a fix.

But first, let’s make something super, super clear. In life, there is good stress and there is bad stress. Now good stress can spur your body into action. Say if you’re getting chased by a big bear, or you heard there’s just one more cupcake left in the break room. Oh, not vanilla. See? If you embrace stress in high pressure situations, it can actually help you perform at your best.

But what I’m talking about here is the bad stress, the chronic stress, the kind that makes most of us just crazy pants. The kind of stress that makes you feel anxious and frustrated and like everything is happening outside of your control. Now here’s what’s super scary about this bad kind of stress. Research shows that this kind actually makes you stupid. Neuroscientists at the University of California Berkeley have found that chronic stress triggers long-term changes in brain structure and function and the stress hormone cortisol can kill, shrink, and stop the generation of new neurons in the part of the brain called the hippocampus, which is vital for learning, memory, and emotional regulation. Meaning stress makes you dumber and more prone to anxiety, depression, meltdowns, and embarrassing hissy fits.

So you might be asking, what’s the fix? Well, it actually comes from one of my favorite teachers of all time, Mr. Eckhart Tolle. He says, “All stress is caused by being here, but wanting to be there.” Now another way to say that is that all stress comes from wanting something to be different than it is. Wanting whatever’s happening right now to somehow not be happening right now, which is impossible because whatever is happening in this moment already is, and wishing it was different is totally useless, and as we said, it does shrink your brain.

So let’s make this actionable so that the next time you find yourself in stress mode, you have a simple toolkit to not only quickly get yourself out of stress mode, but also to save yourself and your brain from some unnecessary shrinkage. Shrinkage stopper number one, make isness your business. So that means you want to embrace whatever is happening right now. So you want to say yes to your isness. Really just like hug the moment so to speak, because wishing it wasn’t so or going into any drama about what already is done does you nothing but harm and it hurts your brain. Plus making isness your business doesn’t make you a doormat and it doesn’t mean that you’re not going to take action to change the situation. It means that you get yourself tight and right on the inside so that if you do take action, if you can take action, it’s actually from a place of clarity, not from a place of ah!

Shrinkage stopper number two, recognize you have only two choices, so pick one. Now here’s what I mean. Once you make isness your business and get yourself tight and right on the inside, realize you have two options to move ahead. Option number one is take action, meaning do something about the situation. So pick up the phone, ask for help. Set a game plan in place. Have that tough talk. Be an adult. Do whatever you’ve got to do if there is something that can actually be done, and if there’s not something that can be done, there’s option number two.

Option number two, car dance. Now some situations are like being stuck in traffic. There is nothing you can do about it, so you’ve got to make the best of it because really, like what other choice is there? You can of course curse, you can melt down, you can honk your horn at all the other cars honking their horns, or you can crank up the tunes and you can dance it out. Now that’s what I used to do whenever I was stuck in the Holland Tunnel when I lived in Jersey trying to get into the city, and I got to say, not only did it help me not stress myself out, but I also gave myself a six-pack. And that my friend is how not to make yourself dumb.

So let’s wrap this up on a tweetable. “Stress comes from resisting what is. If you want less stress, make isness your business.” Now, I would love to hear from you. What’s one specific situation that seems to stress you out on a consistent basis and what negative impact does that create for you and, of course, for those around you? And what would change if you no longer allowed yourself at all to stress about that situation? Now as always, the best discussions happen after the episode over at marieforleo.com, so go there and leave a comment now.

Did you like this video? If so, subscribe to our channel because it rocks, and of course, we’d be so appreciative if you shared this with your friends, and if you want even more incredible resources to create a business and life that you love plus some personal insights from me that I only talk about in email, come on over to marieforleo.com and sign up for email updates. Stay on your game and keep going for your dreams because the world needs that special gift that only you have. Thank you so much for watching, and I’ll catch you next time on Marie TV.

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