Beat Business Stress – How To Influence Your Brain To Achieve What You Want
April 3, 2019
One of the problems we often face as small to medium business owners is a sense of frustration. We spend more time than we’d like going round in circles, repeating the same thing over and over again without getting to where we want to be.
What’s worse is our brain then creates even more frustration and daily problems, because that’s the way it operates. So how can we overcome it? By simulating experiences and learning to adapt.
SUBSCRIBE HERE: Email | Apple Podcast | Stitcher | Subscribe on Android | Player.fm | RSS | SpotifyListen to the podcast here or continue reading below.
Understanding your neurology
The brain is very multifaceted and is actually like a simulator. That means you can use it to remember the past, imagine the future, or be in the present and flip back and forth.
Using your brain - your simulator - to practise, visualise and create scenarios enables you to work towards that vision. So, for us to create a successful business and life, we need to habituate useful behaviour and thoughts within the brain to help us align with our vision of success.
Sometimes, no matter how hard we work, we just can’t seem to take the business to where we want it to go. We can become stuck and our journey to success plateaus, or we’re held back by obstacles. It's almost like a self-fulfilling belief; that ‘no matter what I do, I can't get what I want’.
Perhaps part of what you're trying to achieve is to develop your business as a vehicle that drives the kind of lifestyle you want for yourself and your team. The interesting thing is, we can only create within the confines of our current thinking and feelings. That's where we set up the circumstances of our future.
Mapping out your future
We invite you to change your thinking not only by listening, but to actually change your thinking to listen.
Too often, business owners use an old blueprint, if you like; old habits and ways of thinking and reacting to life, and wonder why they can’t get to where they want to be. They won’t reach their vision and full potential without creating a new blueprint for the life they want to lead.
So, it's a little bit like using our past habits of thinking, feeling, emotional states, and limitation of our perceived reality to create something that's in our vision.
In order to move into the vision, we need to be able to start to imagine and create a state of flow. We need to ensure the vision is so clear that we start to stimulate, within our own neurology, feelings of gratitude, enjoyment, relaxation. When we're in a state of relaxation and appreciation, our brain and heart start to come into more cohesive, effective thinking. So, that's the state that's going to be useful; allows us to see the obstacle as a pathway to new solutions.
Practising new reactions
How often do you feel frustrated and angry, or have feelings of sadness and hopelessness throughout your average working day? You’ll never find a solution to the obstacles if you continue to think and feel those things.
Instead, you need to practise and encourage more successful, more resourceful, proactive states of emotion. No matter what obstacle is in your way or appears to be in your way, respond with ability, which is what true responsibility and mastery is.
So, when things aren’t going the way you want, rather than getting frustrated and thinking negatively, take a deep breath and make yourself fully aware of the situation without judgement. Take the time to understand what your obstacles are, accept them, and connect to your vision. Think about what steps to take that would move you closer to your outcome, By doing that, you can actually influence the outcome, rather than surrender to the stress and drama - you can build a new simulation in your brain that will serve you better in the future.
You need to start to build and practise enough to create new neurological patterns that will allow you to change how you respond, in order to change circumstances for the future.
Ask the right questions
When you’re faced with a difficult time or stressful decision to make in your business, make sure you ask yourself the right questions so you can respond in a way that won’t make your situation worse.
Ask yourself: what do I actually want? What can I change now? What do I need to leave for later? Come up with a minimum of 3 alternatives tor strategies and think them through to their likely results over time. Which is most likely to take you towards your intended outcome. Weigh all that up, let go of being frustrated, and over time, you’ll learn to make the change and the tiny improvement in the mind.
The first place this initiates is in the brain. And the first place where you start to influence it is in the simulation ability of your mind - to imagine what you actually want and start to notice who you need to be to get there.
One of the qualities of a culture that survives is adaptability. So, rather than reacting, adapt. And slowly, brick by brick, you'll find you have the world that you really want more often.
At the end of the day, changing your life starts with you. If you continue to give in to the negative thoughts, and let the frustration take over, nothing will ever improve. Instead, stay focused on what you can improve and how, and be grateful for the ability to create and recreate circumstances moment by moment.
SUBSCRIBE FOR UPDATES VIA EMAIL OF THE MIND MATTERS PODCAST
We'll let you know via email when we release new episodes
