“Your physiology affects your psychology” Tony Robbins
In this segment we’re going to dive in deeper in emotional mastery. Your every moment emotional state is affected by 3 things: Your physiology, your focus and the questions you ask. Let’s start
off with physiology.
Remember this, “the body is the mind”. This is connected to the quote above which states that your physiology affects your psychology. I’ve split this into 6 segments: Posture, breeding, working out, stretching, taking cold showers and intermittent fasting.
Your posture strongly effects how you feel, it’s not a coincidence that the first rule from Jordan Peterson’s book “The 12 rules for life” is to stand straight with your shoulders back.
Be aware of your posture, never let your shoulders roll forward and your head looking down. Just pay attention the next time you’re having negative thoughts how your posture is looking. If you can picture a depressed person you would see them with hunched over shoulders and with their head looking down.
So apply some reverse psychology and stand straight with your shoulders back.
The next thing is breathing. Crucial! There’s a massive difference on how you’ll feel if you’re taking deep belly breaths or you close off your physiology and barely breathe. Become aware of that as
well and control your breathing when you’re in stressful situations, and in general.
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Working out is a massive state changer, not only does it affect your emotional state but your psychological state as well, in my life there’s not a single problem the gym can’t fix.
Stretching was a major change I introduced in my life because before that I was only changing my states through catabolic activities, such as working out hardcore for example.
But that approach has its limits because you can’t change your state forever with only catabolic activities, you will burn out eventually. But introducing stretching, backed up with relaxing music did
wonders for my psyche and on how I feel.
Taking cold showers, oh man! There’s nothing that will get you energized and focused faster than taking a cold shower.
And finally I’ve included intermittent fasting but this applies to nutrition in general. How you feel and think on a day to day basis is massively influenced by your diet. So clean It up.
When it comes to intermittent fasting, it’s a tool. If you don’t know what it is, it’s an approach of you getting all of your calories in a specific time window of maximum 8 hours and then fasting for 16 or more hours with only water. I don’t do it year ‘round but sometimes when I’m on a cut I do it for about a month or two and when I’m not I usually do it once per week. Know that your gut state has a massive influence on how you feel and your psychology.
The next thing I want to talk about next to your physiology is the focus segment. Remember this quote: “Where focus goes energy flows”.
What you focus on has a massive influence on how you feel. This is the perfect time to introduce to you the “focus point tool” in order to demonstrate this to you and you can implement it as a potential habit. It was a part of my morning routine for a long time and it always got me in the right mindset to start of my day right.
The focus point tool:
1. Name and visualize the 3 things you are grateful for:
- Name, visualize and send prayers to the 3 people of your choice
- Name and visualize the 3 things you will crush today
“Trade your expectations for appreciation” is another quote from Tony Robbins that got me out of tough times. Whenever you’re feeling overwhelmed and unhappy it’s usually because you forget
about the small things you should be grateful for and put focus on the things you don’t have, things you deem are unfair.
In that moment switch your focus from your unrealistic idealistic expectations to appreciation and your whole world will change.
Final segment out of the three that determines your emotional state is the questions you ask.
Our brain sort of works by the “garbage in garbage out” principle. If you ask it a lousy question it will give you a lousy answer. Just pay attention the next time you’re doing it to yourself and become aware. Questions like: “How come I always mess up?” “Why do I always _____________?”. It’s not necessarily always, or maybe even ever, but if you ask it a lousy question, it will give you a lousy answer.
