When your brain just gets too loud…

Core Article: When the brain just gets too loud

Paragraph I’m Pondering: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing…”

Powerful Affirmations to Inspire: “I am the embodiment of abundance

Book Review: Whole Brain Living by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

When your brain just gets too loud…

Have you ever had a business or personal relationship end either abruptly or slowly over time?

What amazes me isn’t just all the emotions, feelings, and chemicals running through the brain and body. It’s all the thoughts, memories, and emotions that get triggered and come flooding in.

You know the ones that question your decisions, motives, reactions, and more. Like, how did this happen? How in the world did we get here? Is this all cuz of me? Or worse, getting into the blame game.

Last week, this all happened when I had to end a business partnership. It’s never easy ending anything.

Whenever that happens, I go inside and do a deep dive into what I want and don’t want, and what I can do differently or better if this happens again. I asked myself, What is this partnership giving me? What are the pros and cons? I also ran it by my inner circle for feedback, advice, and guidance. I noticed how much I was beating myself up about my decision. My thoughts were running me, and I needed relief.

Alice and I had a 6-hour drive to Portland last weekend. On that drive, I was able to shine a bright light on how my brain was functioning and being able to find relief. Plus, the bonus was that I discovered how I have more control over my thoughts than I realized. Hence, I wanted to share this with you!

On long drives, we always pick podcasts to learn from. We queued two conversations with Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. She’s the neuroanatomist who had a stroke at 37 and lost the left side of her brain for 8 years. Her TED Talk impacted me years ago. She has two books, and the one she was talking about was Whole Brain Living. This conversation blew the doors off how I think, feel, and react.Dr. Taylor shares that each of us has four character profiles in our brains. Left and right each have an emotional system and a thinking system

Left Brain Core: Focus, complex thinking, planning, organizing. Point of view is either in the past or future, holds pain, old stories, contains anxiety, addiction, and trauma.

Character 1. Left Brain Thinking. Factional, organized, your brain at work, gets things done, focused, defines social norms.
Character 2. Left Brain Emotional. Reactive, anxiety-based in left brain memory, holds pain from the past, pulls us into blame and old stories. Fight, flight, or flee lives here.

Right Brain Core: More Relaxed, curious, innovative, in the present, right here, right now, peaceful, playful and creative.

Character 3. Right Brain Emotional. Present moment, playful, creative, curious, feels more relaxed, loves possibility.
Character 4. Right Brain Thinking. Big picture, peace, context, awe, gratitude, the spacious witness that helps us choose. It’s what you feel when you’re in deep meditation.

Your Feelings-Emotions are “energy in motion.” A feeling rises, builds, crests, and passes through the body in about 90 seconds unless we keep it alive with the Left Brain Emotional (Character 2) stories and loops.

Who’s Driving Your Brain: Use your own words and body as data.

In this moment, what personality is here in my brain?

Notice when Left Brain Thinking (Character 1) is at work, at play, planning, or trying to control. Notice when Left Brain Emotional (Character 2) is tight, threatened, or stuck in the past. Notice when Right Brain Emotional (Character 3) is spontaneous, open, or forgetting sunscreen because you ran to the beach. Notice when Right Brain Thinking (Character 4) is present, calm, and grateful.

Where do I feel this in my body?

Chest, throat, belly, jaw. Name the sensation, not the story.

What does this part need?

Safety and soothing for the Left Brain Emotional. A simple plan for Left Brain Thinking. Movement or creativity for the Right Brain Emotional. Breath and perspective for Right Brain Thinking.

Implementation: The 90 Second Practice When You Feel Something

This is the practice I am using. The key is to stay in your Right Emotional Brain. The moment you name the feeling, the left emotional brain jumps in, dredging up the past, creating stories, and more.

This exercise is the difference between letting your feeling(s) move through you, and staying in your right feeling brain. Or, let your left brain take over and keep you stuck for sometimes, minutes, hours, days, or even days… It may feel kind of weird at first, and the more you stay in the present moment, and notice, the easier it will become.

Step 1: Pause. Plant your feet or sit tall. Put a hand where the sensation is strongest. Don’t name the feeling.

Step 2: Feel without words for 90 seconds. Breathe in and out slowly the whole time. Track heat, pressure, tingling, pulsing. If a thought jumps in, notice it and come back to the sensation.

Step 3: After the 90-second emotion wave settles, choose what part of your brain will drive next.

Receive a difficult email/communication. Let your Left Thinking Brain lead with clarity.
Rumination or blame. Invite your Right Thinking Brain for a wider frame, and offer the Left Feeling Brain a little care.
Feeling Frozen or need a break. Give your Right Emotional Brain a tiny burst of play or movement.

Step 4: Take one honest action. One sentence drafted. One glass of water. One boundary spoken. Or a much-needed break or time out.

Step 5: Close with gratitude. Name one true thing you appreciate right now.

The biggest lesson for me was realizing how much holding on to the feeling and naming it keeps stimulating the emotional loop in the left brain. Feeling and letting it move through gives you a choice. I’ve done this several times now, and it’s amazing how it works.

Here’s an example: I came across something of Emma’s a few days ago and felt it in my chest, that sadness of grief. I did the exercise above. Some tears came. I breathed and stayed with sensation. When the feeling moved through, I felt grateful for Emma and all she gave us. Yes, I was sad, yet I didn’t let the left brain drag me down to the past and why this happened, my guilt, etc.

Biggest Breakthrough: You do not have to fix your feelings. Feel them for 90 seconds, then choose if you need some self-care. Remember to breathe through it. This is how you bring more peace, clarity, and integrity into your business and your life. That is the real work, and it is changing my brain, and it will change yours, one neural network at a time.

Let me know how this lands with you. I’m here for you, always…
Hands at your back,

Xox
Shannon

Paragraph I’m Pondering

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.”
~Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, Whole Brain Living:
The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life

Powerful Affirmations to Inspire

“I am the embodiment of abundance—wealth is drawn to my energy.”
“I trust my inner knowing; silence reveals my truth.”
“Each day, I make space to reconnect with my soul.”

Book Review

Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life
by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor

Weekly Photos

Pictures from our weekend adventure to Portland, OR, included some fun fall shots. So many beautiful colors and mountains. I do love the drive up to Portland, especially this time of year, before the snow. My only regret was that I totally forgot to take pictures of Alice and me! Yeah, I was too busy finding some cool mountains and fall pics…

My absolute fav is when I’m hiking and find a perfect heart-shaped rock…always grateful.
This is a pic I took from the car, going 75 mph. No, I wasn’t driving. 😉 This is Mt. Hood, which makes a very nice shimmer in the background of the trees.
This was a Presbyterian church right outside our hotel window in Portland. I loved the framing of the oranges and yellows of the trees.
The small mastermind event I went to was at an Oregon winery. Even though I haven’t had a drink for almost 10 years now, I still love looking at the rows and rows of grapevines.
Driving home, I got this sunset pink over the hills of Oregon, which could be a stained glass picture.
Oh, Emma and her ears… She would always be playing and getting her ears tangled and pulled back behind her, which always made for a funny photo.
Yep, there she is, Mt. Shasta, with lots of snow now. We had a bunch of storms come in last week, and it made her look pretty majestic. Very different from last week’s photo of her snowy veins…

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