Top of the morning to you all ☀️
But also, literally top of the morning... I'm up at 4am writing this email today because I've been awake for an hour now and all of my usual middle of the night tricks have failed so here I am, awake and alert, and writing to you dearest reader, with my unfiltered and uncensored thoughts 😉
I have a few ideas about the reason for being awake so early and one of them is definitely the thought of jumping out of a plane 15,000 feet above the Great Barrier Reef in just a few short hours. But strangely enough, I don't think that's the main reason I'm awake when everyone else is still sleeping soundly... I have a lot of thoughts right now about my business and the direction I'd ike to take it in and how I can best help others on their journey towards living a life that they're proud of, and THIS is the stuff that keeps me up at night.
I'm usually what you would term a 'heavy' sleeper. When I was a child, I literally used to sleep through the fire alarms and I know I caused my mother undue stress that one day when living on my own, the same would happen. I'm often very quick to fall asleep, very quick to wake up and often without an alarm, and I rarely wake in the night. I have, of course, had periods in my life where this wasn't always the case. I have had periods where stress, anxiety, grief, and other heavy emotions have affected my sleep and I have cultivated a bit of a routine with a playlist and a sleep a meditation and some breathing exercises that usually assist in getting me back to the land of dreams, but alas, not today.
I want to draw your attention to a few things this morning that I've had rolling around in my head for a few days, and which I think are particularly important to acknowledge, and for every single adult to understand.
The way our minds work is relatively new knowledge for me; I have been studying self-development on and off for about seven years now, but I really only started understanding the mind and how it works from a psychological and biological level in the last two years. And now that I know this, I can't understand why every single child isn't taught this in schools across the country because it has the ability to transform the way that you see yourself and your actions for the rest of your life.
I'm going to give you a very brief run down today, and if this is helpful at all please reach out and let me know and maybe I can continue this as a bit of a series. Also please know that I'm going to make this as easy and as accessible as I can, because I hated Science at school (sincere apologies to my Science teacher Ms. Gill and all other brave science teachers out there 🙊)
Our brain develops in three essential components. The first of these is already formed and functioning as we are born, and is often referred to as the reptilian brain, because it is the oldest and most primitive part of our brain focussed on ensuring our survival. It governs our most basic survival needs: eating, sleeping, waking, crying, breathing; feeling temperature, hunger, wetness, pain; and releasing toxins from the body in the form of sweating, and urinating etc. This reptilian brain is located right at the base of our heads, where the brain stem meets the top of our spinal cord. It controls our bodily functions without conscious thought from us, and ensures our heart and lungs, and other systems are working.
We often don't have to think about these systems, because they're hardwired to function without conscious thought, but we do notice the immediate impact that neglect of these key functions has on our body. For example, a night of no sleep, constant hunger, or constipation will drastically affect our usual capability to function... I'm sure I'll be feeling the effects of my 3am wake-up later today 😴
The next component of the brain is the limbic system, or the mammalian brain. All animals living in social groups and those who nurture their young develop this part sometime shorty after being born. The limbic brain is responsible for our emotions, memory, and behaviours and is formed by our experiences and observations as we grow up.
The reptilian and limbic brain make up our 'emotional' brain- they govern how we feel about situations and experiences and release the appropriate hormones at the right time so we respond to the stimuli. They determine what and when we eat, where we sleep and with whom, the music we like to listen to, our hobbies and interests, our friends, our partners, and those whom we dislike. They also govern our fight or flight responses.
The last component of the brain to develop is the neocortex: often called our rational brain. The frontal lobes of our brain start to develop after our second year of life and are the parts that are responsible for language and imagination. They are what differentiate us from the rest of the animal world, and have made civilisation possible- without imagination, we could never have dreamt up the numerous ways to improve and develop upon our lives.
We use the neocortex to plan, assess, attach meaning to experiences, storytelling, dream, play, and reflect. We develop the ability to empathise with and identify other's emotions as early on as two years old, so we can understand the motives of others to adapt and stay safe in groups. These experiences determine ours and other's behaviours as either 'good' or 'bad', determining how we perceive the world for the rest of our lives.
This component is important but it's also the first thing that shuts down in the face of danger: your emotional brain will completely take over to ensure your survival.
Why is any of this important??
Because in order for you to understand WHY you act and think the way you do, you first need to understand the HOW of your brain. It's not as easy as just changing because you want to- if you've ever struggled to stick to a new habit like rising at 6am to work out, or you've become frustrated that your first reaction is to snap at the ones you love when interrupted, or you've tried desperately to change that belief that you'll never be good enough but your daily mantras in the mirror aren't working... this might help to explain why it's not working.
Your entire being is governed first and foremost by your emotional brain and the hormones that it releases. Want to go skydiving? Your body is going to flood with stress hormones and you'll activate your fight or flight response and everything inside of you will scream DON'T DO IT. Your brain's job is to keep you alive, and that feels wildly unsafe, despite the fact that your rational brain can find evidence that more than 70,000 people successfully sky dive in Australia each year.
The key to overcoming the feeling of fear, is to acknowledge that you can have feelings and they don't have to mean anything. This applies to all of life's situations and experiences, not just for something as adrenaline pumping as a 15,000 foot sky dive 🫠
Thinking about setting your alarm and getting up earlier for a work out? Your emotional brain will come up with 100 excuses and feelings of why that's a bad idea, because it feels unsafe and unfamiliar.
Thinking about responding differently to a loved one because you're sick of the way that your automatic reaction sounds just like your mother's tone did? Your emotional brain will fight it because a softer, gentler tone feels unsafe and unfamiliar.
Thinking about how to start a new hobby/ raise your prices/ start a business/ ask for a raise/ try something new? Your emotional brain will fight it because new things are hard and unfamiliar, and they might put you in danger.
Your emotional brain can't distinguish between real, actual danger, and imagined danger. Your stress hormones will activate regardless of whether you're fighting a lion, your partner, or you're just worried about what Marissa from the office will say about you when you post that picture online.
Everything you do will alway come back to: does it feel safe for my emotional brain? Does it feel familiar? Can it predict the outcome?
The only way to bypass the feeling of fear and the fight or flight response, is to do acknowledge the feelings and then DO IT ANYWAY. Experience and repetition are the only two things that will change the way your emotional brain perceives the event- do it once to prove your safety, and then do it again and again until your brain understands and begins to rewire the way it perceived the event in the first place.
The more experiences that you have outside of your comfort zone, the more you start to trust yourself to take chances that feel risky, and the less you rely on those unreliable feelings that your body is putting out there.
I'm sky diving because I've always wanted to, but put off for too long because it felt too scary. Now, I'm doing it BECAUSE it feels scary. I'm doing it because I know that by overcoming my feelings of fear, I'm proving to myself that I can do hard things and stay safe. And I know that will translate into all areas of my life when I want to try something new, even if it is as silly as positing something on Instagram: If I can sky dive from 15,000 feet, I can absolutely do this.
Wishing you all at least one 'scary' and exhilarating experience this week in the name of growth, may we all put ourselves out there in an effort to cultivate more awareness of our bodies, our minds, and our spirits.
Sending love and warmth and receiving your well wishes for my jump,
Haley 🤍
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