Month: December 2021

It’s incredibly frustrating to feel as though you’re working against yourself. That no matter how hard you try, no matter what you learn, you somehow seem to end up sabotaging your own best efforts.

So why do we do what we do, when we know what we know? And why do we, at times, seemingly work against our own best interests?

There are many reasons but most often it comes down to what’s happening inside our mind.  

Here’s a useful way to think about our modern brain. We have two thought systems. You might like to think of them as old and new, or reptilian and adapted—for now, I will refer to them as Old Brain and New Brain. The former is rapid, emotional and intuitive (with ‘intuitive’ in this instance meaning a reactive, instantaneous processing that occurs based on prior experience – patterns and associations – about what kept us safe), while the latter is much slower, and able to apply logic, calculate and rationalise. The New Brain doesn’t automatically examine the Old Brain and understand why it does what it does. New Brain doesn’t usually even know that Old Brain has made a decision!

The Old Brain has a style of wiring that was laid down across the millions of years of our history to help us survive. That still runs much of the show today, whether we choose for this to be the case or not. This part of our brain and the thought system it generates is constantly alert to danger and is always scouting out for potential situations that may threaten our lives. Our New Brain can see and learn and understand how things have changed so rapidly. Yet, our Old Brain is busy creating meanings from the situations we are involved with in an attempt to keep us safe. The problem is, the meanings are made up. They’re not fact.

The lack of understanding between these two thought systems is a major driving force behind us being our own worst enemy. When so much of our behaviour and so many of our choices are made instantaneously by our Old Brain we need to actively employ New Brain to examine what Old Brain is doing. We have not yet evolved for them to find common ground or to start to rewire ourselves away from some of the outdated survival patterns.

Here are three ways to use your New Brain to stop being your own worst enemy.

1. Look to your past as an opportunity for growth

Too often we look upon what we perceive are our mistakes or difficulties we’ve faced and use them to judge and criticise ourselves or to cement a sense that life is unfair. This only perpetuates more judgement and more criticism and leads to us feeling even lousier about ourselves. Here’s the thing. All of us experience hardship in our lives, differing degrees, but hardship nonetheless. Most of it is out of our control. One thing that is in our control is how we respond to what has happened.

If there are things in your past that you feel ashamed of, or things in your past that have been difficult, instead of judging or blaming yourself or others, ask yourself these two questions:

1. If there were a gift in this situation, I wonder what that might be?
2. If there were an opportunity for me to grow from this situation, I wonder what that might be?

Leave judgement at the door and simply be curious about what you can glean from your past that may help your future to be more aligned with what you want. And remember: from pain we grow. Pain offers us insight into what our Soul needs us to learn and forms a solid foundation for a meaningful life.

2. Get familiar with your self-limiting beliefs

Your behaviour is the outer-most expression of your beliefs. The challenge is, most people aren’t taught to examine what they believe about themselves, what occurs in their lives, or their choices, and instead they just don’t really understand why they do what they do, even though they know what they know. Understanding that your mind creates meanings from what occurs every moment of every day, helps you to begin to unravel and gain deeper insights into your life and choices.

To become aware of your beliefs about yourself and the world—especially those that aren’t serving you—start paying attention to your thoughts. Your thoughts will be a reflection of what you believe, some more direct than others. I recently presented a TEDx talk on how our thoughts drive stress if you’d like to learn more about this.

3. Work on increasing your emotional intelligence (EQ)

Part of EQ is having an ability to recognise, observe and modulate your emotional response to what happens in your life and in your relationships. It’s not much fun walking around being triggered by every comment, action or situation; feeling sad, mad and hurt by more things than not. Contrary to what you may think, most of what we feel is driven by our beliefs and the meanings our Old Brain makes to keep us safe. It’s not the behaviour or actions of others or the curve balls life throws our way. It’s our response to those things. Creating some space between what we feel and how we react can help us to better understand what might be driving our emotions. That’s easier said than done sometimes, yet, with practise you will find it becomes much easier.

The next time you feel triggered, try to pause for a moment and reflect on what might be at the heart of it. If someone else is involved perhaps ask them what motivated them to behave or act in the way that they did. It might be for an entirely different reason than you perceived. Also ask yourself what meaning you made from what happened. Is that story true or based on past associations that may not be true in this instance? With a deeper understanding you will find you are better able to respond with consideration rather than reacting based on the meaning you created.

Some people love a good goal to strive towards and the promise of the achievement itself is enough motivation to keep them going. Yet, not everyone finds it easy to stick to their goals. Others don’t like goals and prefer to simply have a sense of the direction they’re headed. This might be based on their values, for example.

Over the years I’ve had many clients tell me that they lack ‘discipline’ because they set themselves goals or intentions that they don’t keep. Most of the time I’ve found it’s not about discipline at all. More often than not, it’s that the person (unconsciously) links more benefits than drawbacks to continuing the way they have been (perhaps after a brief time of making alternative choices in the direction of the goal). Or it’s that the goals that people set for themselves stem from a place of judgement and criticism, or there is a sense of deprivation or punishment around the goal. None of these situations is likely to lead to the result we seek.

If setting goals doesn’t light you up, it’s not the only way to achieve change so don’t feel like you need to do it. Yet if it is something that works for you and you just need a little guidance around how to be effective, here are four key ways to support you in sticking to the goals you set.

1. Start with small achievable steps

If you want to climb Mount Everest, you don’t just fly to the Himalayas and give it a crack. You train for months—years even—starting with small achievable mountains that incrementally get more challenging as your ability and confidence grows. Too often we set ourselves up to fail by not planning out how we are going to achieve our goal. We just expect ourselves to make radical changes that are often unrealistic to achieve in our lives.

Planning is an important part of goal setting, as is breaking the goal down into achievable chunks. Let’s say, for example, that you currently eat out for most of your meals and you want to set a goal of eating mostly homecooked meals to amp up your nourishment. If you draw a line in the sand from one week to the next and trying to cook all your meals straight up, it’s possibly going to feel like a huge amount of work and you’re probably going to feel like it’s unsustainable. Whereas, if you slowly and incrementally reduce your takeaway meals one at a time and increase homecooked meals one by one, it will feel more manageable and you’re more likely to sustain the changes you make. So map out how you’re going to get to your end goal and break it up into smaller more manageable chunks that will feel like mini wins along the way and motivate you to keep going.

2. Be realistic about what you can manage

Is your goal manageable within your lifestyle or achievable within your schedule? If you take small steps and plan it out as per the above recommendation, you may find that it is. Yet, don’t fall into the trap of setting yourself unrealistic goals that don’t match your lifestyle or fit within your schedule.

For example, let’s say you set yourself a goal of improving your fitness. If you tell yourself that in order to do that you need to go to the gym five days a week and yet you can’t find five spots in your weekly schedule, you’re not going to achieve this goal. Along the same lines, if you don’t enjoy going to the gym, you’re hardly going to be inspired to go five days a week—or even at all. It’s better to be ruthlessly honest with yourself about what’s manageable and what is going to feel good for you.

Be realistic about timelines too. Both how long you will give yourself to achieve your goal as well as how long you might maintain some. This is particularly important for goals where you give up or abstain from something. For example, it’s all well and good to commit to not consuming alcohol indefinitely—but will you sustain this? Or is it more realistic to set yourself a goal of not consuming it for one month? You can always extend it once you reach that end date if it felt easy for you. I know many people who have made significant changes to their patterns of alcohol consumption (or stopped entirely) by simply taking a break for a month.

3. Understand what is motivating you 

When you set yourself goals from your wounds—when you feel guilty or lousy about your behaviour or choices—you’re probably setting yourself up to fail. And that’s because you are already judging yourself poorly and will only look for more evidence to confirm what you already think of yourself. It will be more helpful in the long run to enquire within yourself as to why you might have behaved in a particular way or keep making choices that don’t align with what you want for yourself, than to set goals from that place of judgement. When you do, you may even find that your goals change entirely.  

4. Assess the benefits and drawbacks of leaving things as they are, as well as achieving the goal

When we set a goal, we are obviously wanting to make changes. It can help to take pen and paper and write down all the benefits of your choices continuing as they have been as well as the drawbacks of this. Really examine the points you note and focus your attention of the drawbacks of continuing the way you have been up until now. Then start a new list and identify the benefits and drawbacks to you of achieving the goal. Once you’ve finished, focus your thoughts on the benefits of this. Living each day in touch with benefits of our new choices can make the world of difference to us continuing on our new path.

Many people feel concerned or embarrassed about any sounds coming from their gut, however some sounds—such as a little bit of gurgling—can be completely normal and nothing to be concerned about. Gurgling can occur as the muscles of the gut contract to move food, liquids and gasses through the small intestine. This movement is a normal part of the digestive process, however the noise that can arise from it may be louder if more gas is present or if the bowel is overstimulated (which can also lead to diarrhoea).

A growling noise may also be heard when significant time has passed between meals and so people often notice this when they are feeling hungry. This noise can happen because of something called the migrating motor complex (MMC). You can think of this as your gut doing some housekeeping—once the party is over (the food you ate previously has been digested), the MMC springs into action to ‘sweep’ the gut. This process helps to maintain healthy gut function and plays a role in preventing an overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestine.

So, as you now understand, some sounds are a normal part of healthy digestion. However, if you are experiencing very loud or excessive gurgling and/or if there are other gut symptoms occurring alongside this, it could be an indication of an underlying issue and may warrant further exploration.

Here are some things to consider if this is something you are concerned about.

Tune in to your body’s messages

Your body will let you know if it is happy or not, so consider if you are experiencing any other symptoms alongside the gurgling, such as tummy pain, loose stools or diarrhoea, constipation, reflux, excess flatulence or flatulence that is newly highly odourous, and/or bloating. I also encourage you to reflect on when this started happening for you. For example, was it after a tummy bug or during a time where you were experiencing a lot of stress? Or has it only started occurring since you made some dietary changes? This may provide some clues about what might be contributing to this for you.

Consider potential triggers

In some cases, excessive gurgling can occur when an individual is having challenges digesting certain foods or drinks. For example, you may like to consider your tolerance of caffeine, especially coffee, as this leads some people to experience some gurgling and/or diarrhoea. You may also like to consider whether lactose could be an issue for you, as lactose intolerance is quite common and leads some people to experience loud gurgling. If you suspect this, you can test it out by omitting lactose-containing foods and drinks and/or switching to lactose-free options for a period of time to see if the symptoms resolve or not. Other people benefit from omitting all foods that contain casein (a protein in dairy foods). Some also find it helpful to keep a food and symptom diary for a week or so to see if they notice any patterns.

Focus on the foundations for healthy digestion

To support your digestive system, avoid drinking water 30 minutes either side of eating. Instead drink water between meals, rather than with meals. Slow down to ensure you chew each mouthful very well and do your best to eat in a calm, relaxed state. This sounds simple but it truly can make a big difference to our overall digestion. Sometimes it is more about how we are eating, rather than what we are eating.

Seek support from your healthcare practitioner

If you are experiencing ongoing digestive symptoms or new symptoms you are concerned about, please consult with your GP. Gut symptoms can occur for a variety of reasons and it’s important to rule out any underlying conditions that may require treatment.