Welcome to the bio optimized summit where we are exploring the next level of physical and mental health you can achieve through intentional and targeted optimization.

I am your host Dr AMY and today I am so excited because I have with us Rebecca blessed and she is someone who I've known for um maybe about the last year and she's like a soul sister from everything that I see her doing in her life and I'm so excited to have her come and share her experience and what um the benefits of gratitude and positivity that will surprise you. So she is a master educator speaker now a bestselling author and a self proclaimed positive change agent.

She truly has a passion for helping people feel and be successful because this has been her story. She believes we are all connected and as our individuals become happier. So does our collective, she uses her skills as a master educator and her knowledge of positive psychology to help people worldwide shift their thinking so that they can have the life that they want now. She just recently got the news that her book Ignite your happiness became a bestseller in 14 countries.

Right, Rebecca was actually eight countries, 14 stories, Eight countries, 14 categories. Congratulations! That is so awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah, I'm and thank you so much for having me. I mean, I mean I love talking with you. Like you said, we're like Soul sisters, I love it.

And um and the best thing about this book is not anything to do with the accolades is to do with the impact and the people that are reaching out to me that actually know me personally. And they and they have this idea of my life and the idea of who I am and then they read this story that is so raw and so vulnerable about my challenging times that I that I've gone through, I should say one of my challenging times, right? And they couldn't believe it.

Like they were they were they're so connected with it. Um and so connected with my story and had no idea that I had experienced that mm hmm And this is what really is happening in so many lives.

We all experienced challenges, challenges that will break us down. That will make us question everything about ourselves even whether we can get through this and to see So someone who has arrived at a place where they look happy, they look successful and we think they've never been through something like this.

They've never experienced this challenge. And so I'm never going to get where they are because I'm having to go through this challenging time. And one of the things that we talked about was this idea of I will be happy when this finally happens in my life. You have found that not to be true.

So, let's just jump right in and talk about challenging times and happiness and the goal. Absolutely. So yeah, let's talk about just the book. So like I got the news that it was a best seller in eight countries and I surprisingly you think that I was ecstatic, but no, that was not what created the happiness, it was the process. It was a process of learning how to write, it was a process of telling my story which was actually very therapeutic.

It was a process of being in this book with the other authors and hearing their stories and and and then and then like putting the book on line like the process was where I got the joy from, right? Not the ending.

And and if you um if any of you have taken any like that course from dr laura santos that yell corset, like a million people have now taken, they talk about it like we we believe our brains make us think that happiness is going to be getting this thing, this job, this person, this event, this amount of money.

And then we arrived and we were not happy you actually want more, right? And so there is a difference between happiness and positivity, right? And happiness is chemicals and you're happy, chemicals are meant to go up and down, right? And your But you can also have a level of positivity that can stay the same. So no matter what is happening, like you return back to this base positivity right?

And in our society we're chasing after the happiness, that car, that person in that job, that event we arrived and I know everyone can relate. And then the next day it's like, well, what's the next thing, Right? Right. And so it's really it's about the process.

And then of course, you know what we're talking about is creating habits that get your positivity level higher, right? And instead of like relying on that dopamine shot or that endorphin or those serotonin is right?

The happy chemicals is what I call them. Yeah. And from like, I love that you're bringing this up and the way in which you're describing it, because it's it's a different way to describe what is also happening in our actual nervous system and you have the three different states of the nervous system.

The middle window is where we want to be, because that's when we are connected, we are fully alive. We're creative, we're able to do our best and live our best. But even that is not a flat line.

And this is what I tell people, we're not going for a flat line, even within that zone that you want to be your day, your life has ups and downs, but you still stay within what you describe as positivity.

And I say that state of feeling that everything is going to be okay, knowing on a gut level, feeling, feeling it in your body, that I know that I'm taken care of. I know that I have everything that I need, I am going to be okay, even though I may not see the answer or see the end result at this present moment, right? And what happens is that you talked about the like the neural systems like the parasympathetic and the sympathetic, right? So you need them both.

But what happens is unfortunately in our culture, we are in the sympathetic way more than we should be like almost all the time, right? At the point where we get addicted to it, like we get addicted to that adrenaline.

That's also where we can have the dopamine and so we get addicted to those levels of chemicals and it's hard for us to actually then have the motivation and do anything without that level of stress and drive and and seeking for something that will make us feel better and make us happy and and actually it's so unhealthy as you know for you to always be in that neural system versus the parasympathetic. So you're supposed to be going in and out of them more in the parasympathetic. But because we don't need to run from tigers anymore, right? But we're often in in the, you know, the fight flight or the freeze, right? And one of the things that I teach people, even if you are like, I'm not stressed, I'm not stressed.

But if you have symptoms like hives, rashes, insomnia, headaches, you are right And that even taking um like scheduling throughout the day, a breathing technique, right? Because in the parasympathetic, you have deep slow breaths and you can use the word trick your body into the parasympathetic right By And there's so many different techniques that you can use out there, you know, where you breathe in deeply and you release it slowly to drop you into that parasympathetic and I, especially with what's going on right now in our, in our world, I practice that at least three times a day and it takes less than a minute to like drop me back into and even talking about it.

I can feel myself go, oh, it's funny. Um, drop me back into the parasympathetic because um, we're in the other neural system too much and it is damaging our bodies.

It really is like, it really does have an impact on all of the other systems in our body, even our immune system, our digestive system. Right? And so that's where, yeah, you can have all these other symptoms where you're reacting to things or your stomach is always in not. So you've got all these symptoms, you're reacting to foods, your, your belt, you know, movements are off.

Like it can really wreak havoc on the whole rest of our body. But when we're able to, like you say, have those moments where we're intentionally bringing it back into the parasympathetic state. That's when we're gonna help train it to eventually be able to stay there all the time. And then we're actually being more aware of when we come out of it, I think for most of us and certainly for most of my life before I learned all of this, I had no idea that I was in this other state that I was that stressed and the effects that it had on my body. But even how to know the difference, I'm not sure that I even knew what parasympathetic felt like because whenever I would relax and my system would come out of the sympathetic, it would like go into this collapse because it was so exhausted from always being in the sympathetic.

And so it was this challenge for me. Um as I started to do more of the somatic work to learn where that window was and to be able to live in that window and even know what it feels like. So it's interesting that you do this several times a day because that's what I actually tell people when I'm working with them is I want you to create pauses in your day and pension pauses, set an alarm on your phone if you need to in order to just check in with your system and be like, where am I in this?

You know, in this spectrum of that, my nervous system, where am I? And if I'm not where I want to be, let's work on getting myself back there and then like you say when you're doing this several times a day, you're going to be able to build that more into your, into your daily practice.

Yeah. Like I think it's really important to me. Like you said, you have to even know what it feels like. So some of us have been in it for so long, you don't even know what it feels like not to be unless you're either go, go, go, you're collapsing right?

And so just even practicing it. So you, you understand what it feels like in your body when you're there, then you start recognizing when you're not there, right, the opposite. And then also some things that like I teach is, um because we don't do this very often is like savoring, right?

So saving is like really being present in the moment. We tend to worldwide or to not tend to wear wire to gloss over positive experiences and then really notice the negative ones. You actually get that little dopamine shot if you're thinking things in the future that are negative because your brain is created to keep you safe. So if you're aware of negativity in your environment, you're going to live right? And so you'll gloss over a positive experience and you'll like really think about that negative one.

And so really, I I really practice savoring and I just had something happened the other day where my 16 year old, she got a job. She said, we're excited and she was telling me about how much they're complimenting her on her work ethic, which of course I'm like, good mom, you know, But I wasn't really savoring it and I was talking to my partner about this and I was kind of like, oh they said this and kind of going on and he's like, wait a minute, Rebecca like savor this. He goes because you're so hard on yourself as a parent, like, oh you should have done this, you should have said this, you could have done that.

And then here's this moment, this really positive moment. Savor it. Which means like sit in the body like what are you feeling? You know, uh you know, mentally, physically and really like savor it, right? And and and hold onto those moments.

And I also teach people to schedule it because in the beginning like, you don't savor savor your shower, That would be an easy one, right? Savor when you're eating, you know, the food that taste your body, who you're with. And then it starts to become a habit more of a habit where you're like, oh this is a positive experience, I'm gonna sit and savor it.

And that's actually a trick that we can do with our nervous system where when we put attention and our focus on it, then it actually does integrate more into our biology and is changing the chemicals down even to the cellular level and what's happening inside of each cell. And so this is so important when we experience something positive and just even recognize a moment of you know what like with everything going on in my life right here right now in this moment I am safe and all is well and then when we savor that when we take that second and minute to savor it put our attention on how that feels in our body to know that I am safe right now then Yeah like it it integrates more into our system and allows us to build more of this parasympathetic positivity state that will last in our system and not just be you know sleeping and moments that it's hard to catch but it'll it'll settle more, it will become more of our normal the more we practice this year, I mean like you said you're literally creating, you call them highways in your brain, there are neural pathways and if you're if you you know growing up in a dangerous environment or a negative environment you have these huge pathways and and then here are here in this little trail and you want that trail to grow and grow and grow and grow.

So that becomes the highway in your brain and it just takes consistency right? Like doing it on a regular basis. Um and I want to go back to what you said about the chemistry so like the neural peptides right? So like candace pert, she was In the 1970s, she discovered you know the receptors and then the neuro peptides they have now proven with science. This is no longer like quantum physics, Wuhu stuff. They've proven with science that the mind and body is an integrated system and that your thoughts are literally creating through your neuro peptides a chemical reaction in your body. And like you're literally creating diseases from your thoughts. Isen't that incredible?

That is incredible. And I think of just like the opposite to write like everything that's going on your body is going to your brain and affecting your thoughts.

So that's another way that I can tell people, hey, if you're always stuck in anxiety thoughts or discourage thoughts, maybe there's also something going on in your biology that we need to fix. There's an imbalance there because everything that happens in the body is affecting the mind and everything that's happening.

The mind is affecting the body as well. Yeah. They're connected. And I think that is really becoming more um more of the consciousness of the public. Like before people thought they were separate and they're so integrated and you have to you have to look at both of them. Not one or the other.

You have to look at them together. Yeah. And and like we said, there's habits, there's things that you can purposely do to create these pathways in your brain that um that go both ways for your body and your mind.

Mm hmm Yeah. This makes me think of Melody And she is a person right now who's actually going through my online program shift to Common Liveness. And then a parts work that I've included after that.

And she's going through these exercises where I'm helping them bring to their conscious awareness right? Like what's going on in your body and what state is it in? And she for the first time recognized how much just her posture affects her thoughts. And I'm like, yes, like this is the level of awareness and insight that I'm wanting people to have is that we don't normally think of these things And we walk around with our head down, we sit kind of hunched over and then we wonder why we're having negative thoughts because our posture and this is how much our body affects our thoughts and our thoughts affect our mind, we cannot separate them. And so even something as simple as assuming a certain posture and all of a sudden the anxious thoughts arrive for her.

And then she assumed the posture of you know, someone who is sad and like it was it was so interconnected and just by changing her posture, the thoughts changed by themselves.

Like the this is such cool stuff because the body is like, oh in this posture, this is how we feel. You know about like when you're in the business world, there's the power postures. You know what I mean?

And that you feel more powerful if your arms are a certain way. I mean they've known this stuff forever. Right? And it's just, uh, it's so amazing. Um, I just love now that how science is catching up to what they knew, you know, in the spiritual realm a long time ago.

And the quantum physics and the sciences are all like melding together and, and I love that health care practitioners are understanding not all the healthcare practitioners, but I know you do like that. You have to treat the whole thing, not just the body or not just the mind, but them together.

And it's so important and you can achieve results so much quicker and permanent ones versus something that, you know, may last for a little bit. So let's go back to this idea of challenging times Rebecca, right? Because someone right now may be going through a really challenging time and they're like, yeah, I get it that I'm supposed to be thinking positively, but you don't understand what's going on in my life.

You don't understand all that I have up against me. And I don't know if I'm going to be okay. And I would say that I get you because I was there, I get you.

And that that's what the story is about. So I am all at the same time. I went through some pretty challenging times of divorce and um, and there was a strike going on at my school. I didn't even know if I would have a job, you know, or work. And um, it was really, really bad, really negative. Um, I went from a beloved teacher to paint it as a criminal basically, and um, in the newspapers and um, uh, so, so my whole world and my whole view of myself changed right?

So now, like I'm a failure of my marriage, I'm a failure at my job. I'm not sure I even have a job, I don't have that second income. I'm a mother of like two small Children and I really went through such mental turmoil, like there was a point where I called it, Get out of life card.

Like I was in my showered wanting crying cause I don't want my kids to hear, right because I didn't want to upset them. So I'm in my shower crying, you know, I'm hoping they can't hear me because there's a door and another door like wanting to get out of life card, like that's how bad it was.

And, and I, and I realized that nobody was gonna come save me. They're not, no one's gonna come save me, right? And that it was up to me and I, and I realized it came from a more of an empowerment, even though it back then I might have felt a little angry if someone has said it to me, but I am responsible for my happiness, I'm responsible for creating it and that I'm responsible for taking the actions that I need to take to get out of the space because no one's coming to save me, even though I wanted someone to come save me, it wasn't gonna happen.

And um and so, and it didn't, it wasn't overnight, it was like, oh, you know, I just made the change and tomorrow I'm happy. Not at all. Like, I wouldn't call it dragging myself out, right? And at the time, looking back would have been great if I had reached out to a coach or someone to help me um instead of like doing it all by myself. But um and it came to like, really, um there are habits that positive people have and I wasn't doing that, like exercising, eating healthy water gratitude practice.

Um you know, being in all honesty Rebecca when you, when you want that out of get me out of life card, you don't you want to do those things for yourself.

I didn't, I just want to cry in my shower, like, so yeah, and so like I said, once I get you and I want to also say come from a place of empowerment, even though it might, you might feel angry hearing this, you're responsible. You are responsible and you can do it, You can do it and and maybe it takes some support and some help and some accountability from a coach or professional get it right, but you can do it and there's a, it's research back that you can raise your level positivity by up to 40% through these habits and so it takes consistency, it doesn't happen overnight but you can get there you know?

And just my advice would be just take a step and my number one advice would be a gratitude journal right? Because you can't have two thoughts, opposing thoughts, right? And we have what's called that negativity bias, We haven't evolved out of it, right? So you're you're wired, we're wired to look for danger in our environment.

We're wired for it, right? And and the people who worked good for looking looking for danger in the environment are gone. That D. N. A. And that gene pool is gone right.

The rest of us made it, we made it off the planes from the tigers. So we have not evolved out of that. And so like you're wired to look for negativity.

And so one of the ways that you can like I call it circumventing that is saving is one right? And another one is gratitude and like what I started with a gratitude journal at night and in the beginning it was hard. I know this sounds ridiculous because I live in America but I was like what am I gonna write in my gratitude journal?

Like I can't think of anything. Of course that's retarded. But back then that's how I felt, that's how low I was right And I every day I find something to write and now it's grown and what I find now because your brain likes to look for patterns during the day, my brain will be like, oh, this is a gratitude, when I'm gonna write this my gratitude journal. Right?

So I, during the day now my brain is now wired to look for things and be grateful for things that I get to write my journal that night because you want to be successful, right? So my brain is like, stockpiling things that I can write in my journal, and it's just a way of like, really sitting with things that you can be grateful for, you know, right? Like, and it was in the beginning, it was like, I'm grateful that my girls are safe, I'm grateful that I have a house, I'm grateful that I had food, you know, I'm grateful, I have clean water, like it was really basic in the beginning um when, you know, I was going through that troubling time, but but it's definitely grown and I love that practice and there's a lot of research by um robert Emmons, he, I think he's a neuroscience, it could be a positive positive psychology scientist, but he's a expert in gratitude and he's done so much research from ages 8 to 80 that is in the little as three weeks, there's like a 40% and it's it's all self, you know, a self diagnosis of improvement in people's positivity levels, just from practicing gratitude, you're making me go back in time Rebecca and uh there was a point when I started doing a gratitude list as well and everything that you're saying like was my experience as well. I came into Elena and so the 12 step program alan on at a very low point in my life, struggling challenged by some big things, some heavy things, some big responsibilities and they told me to start a gratitude list and I literally could not think of anything that I could be grateful for.

Like I wanted, I wanted the plan, I don't want to be grateful for what I've got, I want the exit plan, I don't have anything to be grateful for. That's why I want the exit plan and very similar to you.

Like that's what they guided me on was no, you start with very, very basic things like I have a shirt that I can wear today, that's something you can be grateful for, because not everybody in the world has a clean shirt to wear that day. And by starting with something very, very basic. It did, it still did the trick, it's still put me in that state of gratitude and then I was, you know, able to build on that and notice all the other things that I could and was grateful for. And so that's something that that definitely changed my life to write was starting that that practice of gratitude.

But one thing that I want to ask you about Rebecca, something that I see somewhat frequently are people who have uh like they've they've taken a part of this positivity that you talk about.

Um but they seem to have only taken a part of it and they talk about the need for having positive thoughts in order to you know, change change things in and be happy, but they do that at the expense of actually having a realistic view of what's going on and what is their responsibility to do and act on. And so it's almost like this, I'm just gonna be positive and I'm gonna deny reality.

What what what would you say that like what's been your experience with that? And like give us more context in terms of no like this is actually what we're talking about, not just be happy and deny reality. Yeah. And um yeah my thing is called positive thinking revolution, which kind of people like, oh yeah, I'm just gonna pretend to be happy, that's not what it's about, right, It's not about pretending to be happy, it's actually scientifically backed um neuroscience positive psychology, like there's a somatic, there's so much stuff that backs it um practices that you can do on a consistent basis that increases your overall state and some people call even resilience, right? It's your overall state.

So you're here and then you'll have a happy, happy moment happen, you're you come up here, but then you come back down here or maybe you have like something tragic, you know, adept, so you drop down here, but then you're back up here and it doesn't take you as long, right? So, um like people who have a lower level of positivity or down here and they stay down here and then they have grief and they just stay down here, but you're able to, you have resilience, come back up fairly quickly, right? And it has to do with what you talked about those neural pathways in your brain, like which one are you using?

And and it has to do, like, so some people got lucky, they were born in a family that probably was part of their upbringing that practiced different types of positive habits, Maybe they grew up in a family, a healthy, that was outdoors a lot, that exercise that maybe didn't have a gratitude practice, but said it to each other, you know, maybe like around the table, they all said something, they're positive, that it went well that day or whatever it was, right? And so they have those neural pathways and then there's those of us who maybe didn't grow up in a great family, maybe there's a lot of arguing or poverty or abuse or whatever.

So you have different neural pathways, both can still be created, you can create them, it's all chemicals right. And so like when I talk about positive, I mean using practices to create those neural pathways in that chemistry in your body and your brain so that this is your natural state and it doesn't mean that you're not going to be have those really happy moments or like grieving moments but you can come back to this level and you also have what's called resilience so that you have a challenging thing come up and instead of oh my gosh, my life is over.

This is horrible. I'm never like, you know, I'm done. You catastrophizing, you realize, yeah, this is bad and I am really sad but I'm gonna be ok and things will be okay, right? And so you have more resilience and you also, people who are at the state have a better grasp on choosing the responses versus reacting and I can go into all kinds of things about programming and data waves and beta waves and your beliefs, but basically when an event happens, um we think that we're reacting to that event but most likely reacting to something that looks like that your brain is like, oh I recognize this pattern comes thoughts, behaviors, feelings and you think you're having new ones and you're not right.

But once you start shifting, you know those neural pathways in the chemistry, like you get to start choosing response, you can almost pause. Like something happens instead of like reacting, there's actually a pause and you're able to think and you're like not in the sympathetic, you're still in your parasympathetic because if you're in your sympathetic, you're not thinking by the way you're not it's just emotion.

And you actually get a an ability a chance to actually think through and then respond even if that's grief. And I would also say, I'm sure you teach it never never don't feel your feelings because have feelings.

That doesn't mean like I don't feel my feelings, that does not mean I'm not sad. That does not mean I'm not grieving. But for an example, like I still have times where I'm like I'm angry, something happens.

And I'm like I cannot I can I'm to the point now where I don't respond when I'm angry and I really sit with it how it feels in my body. But what I don't do is this I don't attach new stories. Oh yeah.

And then last time he did that and then he did that and he's probably gonna do this right? And you just think and think and think and think on it and all you're doing is keeping those chemicals going. So you feel the feeling you let those chemicals pass through and you're really present with your body but you don't attach stories to it from the past or the future, which is what we tend to do, right? Even have those having even like driving you're having these conversations, you know about this person that you're going to talk to and it's not a positive conversation, right? So yeah, I mean I just said a lot there.

But yeah, that's what I mean by positivity. Yeah, I find that anytime I'm having a very heated conversation with someone and I realize that it's all in my head, they're not even present. Then I'm not in a good state.

Need to shift myself back to parasympathetic and my brain has gone to that survival place that it's designed to do of looking for patterns to help us survive.

And that's where our brain is really good at. And we can we can change it. We can change these pathways by doing a lot of this work. And yes, like this is the work that I love to do with people as well when especially they're coming out of trauma or wanting to change these lifelong patterns that they've had. And it's this idea of giving them back choice of how to respond because so many times they feel like this is just how I react.

This is just who I am, this is my personality. I mean, they can, you know, say all these kinds of things to help explain why they react in certain ways in certain situations and it's giving them back that choice to do something different to choose something different. And in order to have that choice, you're right, they have to be able to first feel that emotion and not impulsively act on it. And so much of Western world now, we are uncomfortable with certain emotions. We are uncomfortable with deep sadness and grief. We feel like we have to do something in order to make it go away or lessen the intensity and that really sabotages our ability to process that grief to actually go through the full grief cycle and come back up to that resilient place that you talk about.

And same thing with the fear. You know, like when we have a true fear and threat happen, if we tend to just react rather than be able to sit with it and understand why am I having fear in this moment? What are some of the stories from the past that are influencing this fear? And and then sit with that.

It allows us to respond then in a different way than what we've always done in the past. And the thing the thing with responding, like you've always responded is you'll keep getting the same results. So, so and people like, so if you look around your life, I mean, look at your relationships, look at your job, look at your health, look at your purpose. Look, I mean, look at all that and you're gonna see a pattern. And until you change the thought process and those highways, you'll keep reacting. And and that means you'll keep thinking saying and doing the same thing and there's there's like A lot of science now that they believe 45-90% of what we're saying doing and thinking falls into the category of a habit habits you want to change those habits to get the different life.

And that's why when people look around, they're like, well, how come they have this? And they have that? I don't well, it's your habit of thinking, right, and this because then you're going to react in a certain way, but that can all be changed.

You can change it. Mhm. It definitely can. And it empowers somebody who has felt trapped. They have felt stuck. It really empowers them to know that no, like, you can change these things.

These are just habits. These are just patterns and you can change your patterns. And that's why we talk about, you know, the nervous system and it's you're a plastic ability which is, you know, one of the only tissues in your body that has that ability to change that much.

Where you can change how communication flows and in what situations. And you can build that tolerance for life. You can build your tolerance for stress so that you can have things happen. And rather than going into that place of either sympathetic and fighting and anger or collapse and shut down and freeze, like you're able to stay in that uh positivity state that you describe, you know that state of Common Liveness where you're able to sit with it, you're able to approach it with your mind and body connected rather than just only on emotion. Yeah, absolutely.

And like when you talk about Amy, I know you did this with your clients is sometimes you have to go back to the trauma, you have to revisit that because it's so in your body like you talked about the body talks to the mind and the mind talk to the body you actually store they they're proving this now. You can you store trauma in yourselves and so you do have to go back and revisit all the way to the beginning of where that story started and usually it's in your childhood usually. Yeah.

And then and then like work through that process which I'm sure you have lots of things that you help people, you know due to work through that process.

Yeah. And the trauma actually disconnects us. That's one of the results of trauma. And and again by trauma we just means something that overwhelmed your biology, your nervous system to respond to that threat.

It doesn't have to be something big. It doesn't have to be something major. We call those, you know big t traumas, it doesn't have to be a big t trauma can have been small t traumas. It can have just been having to live a stressful situation for a long time without having many resources.

But whatever this trauma was, whatever the source of it was, the end result is always the same. It disconnects our mind from our body. Like I think it was doctor keisha, I was talking to her I think was her, I can't remember but she said Rebecca any rejection is trauma.

So growing up any time you were rejected, that's trauma right? And um and I have this story, this gentleman, he um he was in junior high and he tripped in front of some girls that he liked and spilled his try and that's not that I mean okay a little bit of trauma and from then on it affected him so much so that he almost lost his job as a high paying ceo because he couldn't get in front of groups of people and and they were able to finally back it all the way back up to that to that to anyone else.

I mean that might not have affected me, but it affected him so greatly that he and he was so traumatized by it that it affected him as a 40 year old in this high powered like situation.

So like you said sometimes the trauma doesn't it doesn't have to be a big a big t it could be something as simple as tripping in front of some friends in a cafeteria when you're in junior high and just the way our Western world has has developed into our um our pace of life, our schedules, our work schedules, our work responsibilities, it's it's more common than not to have many small relationship disruptions with our Children that creates small t traumas and we don't even realize it as parents because we've got so much going on that it's not ever reaching our level of awareness of consciousness and so like this is trauma is just becoming a normal part of our world, a normal part of society, which is fine as long as we understand it and we know what to do with that. The problem is when we don't see it, we don't understand it and it's it's affecting all of this, it's affecting our biology, it's affecting our mood, our relationship, our outlook, our perspective on life, it's affecting whether we feel safe enough to grow and be seen or if we need to stay small and heading away, like it really affects so much and what I love about this is that it's so predictable, like because we're working with the biology and the nervous system and you know, the mind and the body and we understand how they work now and that allows it to become so predictable, that we can uh manipulate it right?

Like we can use that knowledge in order to get it back to a place of health and it doesn't need to stay as something that's confusing us and we don't understand it and why are my emotions this way? And No, no, like we can understand it, it's very predictable and here is what you due to set up these new habits, these new patterns and so much of it has to do with a lot of things that you talked about where you've got to be doing these things that we know build positivity, the exercise, the diet, the sleep, the relationships like these are core elements that people have. And I'm right now thinking of many of the people that I work with and seeing how they have come through these last several months with the pandemic and all of the changes that that brought and the people who have done well with it um have have maintained a level of stability in their life versus the people who have fallen apart. Like that's what separates them is the people who were able to get through that were ones that had these routines in their life, had this built into their life already, and the other ones didn't have that.

And so their world changes, their structure falls apart. They may have had changes in their work and they either lost work and or they're having to work from home and that's big enough of a change that without these other things in place, they fall apart. Absolutely. Absolutely. And i it's like a framework, right, that you can just fall back on. And um I mean there's so much that you just said they're like, but yeah, it's it's um it's not hard.

I mean it's knowing what to do, right? But it's not hard and there's so much science now that backs this stuff up and you're not guessing, it's not a mystery.

It's not like, what do we do? Like, there's so much research and so many case studies that we know now we we understand how the mind and the body works.

We understand what to do to create the neural, the neural highways. And we do know now that the neural plasticity that we can change anything now in our brains and our neural pathway, we didn't used to know that.

But there's so much like science that backs us all up. And um, here's why I say, I tell people it's not hard, it just takes consistency, right? So it's but you're gonna have to be consistent, right? And so that's where, like, and and knowing what you need to be consistent with, right?

But it's not hard. So, it's not this hard thing that's going to take hours and hours and hours and hours. It's like micro micro minutes, consistent micro minutes, right? Yeah, yeah.

And it doesn't need to be hard in the sense that it's confusing and I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing and trying to figure it out. No, it's it's, it works. It takes work.

It takes time. It takes intentional effort to change these things. And that's why I like, this is very much a part of the intentional optimization that we can do in our system to feel better and do better.

But yeah, like it can it can be done. So review with us Rebecca kind, like, where would a person start if if they are finding themselves in a challenging time or they've been through a challenging time and still having a hard time coming back up to that level. That state of feeling well, feeling happy positive, what should they be doing in their life, where would they be starting?

And then let's talk about the resource and the gift that you have for people. Yeah, absolutely. So the number one thing that anyone can do is gratitude is practicing gratitude. And there's like I said, there's so much research behind it and that of all and there's lots of different things that you can do but gratitude is the easiest and one of the most powerful things that you can you can do to help. That would be a step.

There's lots of steps, but that would be a really good first step. It's inexpensive, right? You can describe paper, um pen, pencil, whatever it is. And then really and I would recommend people start small. Like you said when we, we both started it was like I have no idea what I'm gonna write. Like I didn't even want to write anything?

I didn't want to either write one thing like start with one thing like one thing that you can be grateful for. Like do you have a house, do you have closed? You have water, you have food, like basics and just write one thing, right? And then what you're gonna notice is you're gonna want to start running more and you're gonna start becoming more grateful.

But that is such an easy and powerful way to start that shift and do it daily every single day and find a time where you can tie it to a previous habit.

Like so for me I brush my teeth at night, I write my gratitude journal right? So I don't forget it because it's tied to brushing my teeth which I hopefully we all brush your teeth right? But like I've been tied to something that you already do. So you don't forget about it because consistency is the key word here. And we've been talking about it like it's consistency. It's not doing it a little bit or once or twice or once a week. It's like every day.

Right? And so I would say a gratitude practice writing in your journal every single day. Start really tiny one entry. You know and if you want to just write a word like food right?

You know right? And then tied to a previous habit like something that you're already doing so that you'll do it right after it. And that's the key to the consistency part of it.

And then um my free gift is called gratitude power. And it is an e book full of different types of gratitude practices and there and I'll give you one just to give you like a sneak peek. So it doesn't have to be journaling.

Especially if you're like I'm not a writer, I don't want to write the there are so many gratitude practices that you can use. And one of them I really, really like it for families and what you do is you get to go to the dollar store whatever and get a journal and you put this journal in some type of writing utensils in a high traffic area.

Usually it's the refrigerator and and what happens is during the day you write things that you're grateful for for towards people in your family, your Children or I'm grateful that you picked up your shoes or I'm grateful that you um put your jacket away.

You know, for your kids or I'm grateful that you made your bed or to your husband. I'm really grateful that you brought home dinner. And what happens is especially when they're and they're just scribbling or drawing a picture.

Um, and then you do it through the years. You can see it go from the pictures and scribbling to like full sentences. But what it is is the whole family gets to see, especially for the Children. This is really powerful gratefulness expressed towards other family members. Right?

And then there's family members, which I wish I had done is you take them, you can take these books. These spiral notebooks at the end of the year. Get them bound And then you have like, you know, whatever Jones family gratefulness 2020, right? And then you have them like every year you have this journal and this is like and there's all kinds of practices in this book that I'm giving there are like this, right? So it's not just you don't have to journal if you don't want a journal, there's all kinds of practices that you can use and there's practices that involve the entire family, which is what I really like.

Awesome. Good. Thank you Rebecca thank you so much for having me. I've always enjoyed talking with you. Likewise, I love talking with you and thank you for yeah showing up and is always giving us your best and I am very grateful for you. Very grateful for having you in my life and grateful that you were able to share with us and use this time to share with the audience.

This yeah, this mind body connection and how much of it we can actually change. Absolutely thank you so much and thank you for joining us today. I'm dr amy, your host for this bio optimize summit and be sure to purchase the discount while it is still available. Once it is gone, it is gone forever. And I would just love to see you inside and together. Let's find that next level of health and aliveness

Rebecca Blust

Challenging Times Don’t Have To Break You: How to Handle Every Obstacle with Grace and Sanity