It’s not every day you are asked the question, “What were three things that made you happy today?”, but it’s something that’s asked of each #PremierFamily client every day before their session. With the holiday season officially upon us, it’s a great reminder to appreciate the things in our lives that we may start to overlook if we aren’t mindful about them. So, I ask you... What were three things that made you happy over Thanksgiving? It’s possible Thanksgiving means nothing to you and you didn’t do anything at all. Don’t worry, we have a question for you too: What are three things that made you happy over the weekend? I challenge you to respond to this email or comment below with what made you happy. I’m not looking for the surface level, materialistic types of things either. Let’s get deep people! I’ll start and combine both questions to form my answers
Whether it’s quality time with family, a new promotion at work, the sunrise, a goal scored in your most recent game, knocking out your To-Do list, or just getting a good night of sleep, the “things” to be happy about are endless. I showed you mine - what are yours? ;-) Local to the Towson, Lutherville-Timonium, Cockeysville, or Hunt Valley area? Friends & Family receive a FREE
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This week’s post is short, but sweet, and may be one of the most valuable techniques I can share with you. It’s about re-programming the script that runs through your head. When the script is tuned improperly, it drives negativity and unhappiness. It turns stress into anxiety, opportunity into dread, and gratitude into apathy. I call it the “I have to” script. It’s when we think things like “Today, I have to do x” or “Why do I have to do y?”. Because when we tell ourselves we HAVE to do something… we’re telling ourselves we have no control over our lives. We’re telling ourselves that we don’t have a choice to do what we want to do. In some ways, we’re training ourselves to be victims in our own lives. But life is about creation! And we get to choose every single minute who we want to become and what life we want to live. You literally don’t “have to” do anything, as long as you understand the consequences of your actions. You get to educate yourself enough to weigh the pros and cons of every decision in your life before taking action – a liberating thought. So how do we re-program the script? We’ve got to be guardians of our mind and teach it discipline. Every time you think of all the things you “have to” do, simply pause…. And re-frame it. Let’s take a look at a common one. I have to go to work on a Monday morning. Pause…. No…. I choose to go to work this morning. It’s not always the easiest to get out of bed, but work gives me a sense of pride. It gives me the ability to make a difference every day (no matter how big or small), provide for my family, who I am very lucky to have, and do many of the things I enjoy doing outside of work. If this job was affecting my life negatively more than it does positively, I would make the choice to find a different opportunity. That’s just one example, but I’m sure if you pay attention to how you speak to yourself throughout the day, you’ll find many more opportunities to start the re-programming process. It will feel extremely forced at first, and it’s not easy, but given time, commitment, and discipline, you’ll start to see your mind naturally starts thinking this way. When the mind naturally starts thinking this way, you’ll find yourself feeling more fulfilled, gracious, and ready to take on the opportunities that come your way. Local to the Towson, Lutherville-Timonium, Cockeysville, or Hunt Valley area? Friends & Family receive a FREE
Discovery Session at Premier! This week's blog post was written by Leah Zinnert, Clinical Director of Neuro Therapy. I think she did a really great job with it - hope you enjoy! ========================== I was working with a client the other morning, and the session started like any other at Premier - with a conversation. After a longer than usual discussion about his recent concerns, we got to talking deeper about his frustrations surrounding what had started to feel like a lifetime of pain. In the midst of this conversation I asked him “How would you feel if you didn’t have pain?” Local to the Towson, Lutherville-Timonium, Cockeysville, or Hunt Valley area? Friends & Family receive a FREE Discovery Session at Premier! His answer gave me chills... and maybe some of you can relate. “Terrified,” he responded, “the world would be too big.” I then asked him to envision a typical day if he woke up and no longer had his pain. He told me he would have to re-evaluate almost every action and activity. As long as he can remember, even back to college, he has had some form of pain. He bounced around between medical professionals, who gave him an array of diagnoses or suggested that if he just did this "one thing" the pain would go away (sound familiar?...) Eventually, it got to the point where he underwent complex surgeries on bilateral shoulders in an attempt to alleviate the painful sensations down his arms. Unfortunately, the surgeries were met with little success. What was interesting to me is that because he had been in pain for such a long time, it had become something that he described as being able to fall back on. He could use it as a way out of certain situations, almost like a crutch. So much so that he was fearful of the pain going away. Could this thought process be what is keeping his body from letting go of the pain? Let's break this down a little further... The traditional biomedical health care model focuses on purely biological factors and excludes psychological, environmental, and social influences. In this model, pain has nothing to do with how you think about it (which we know is incorrect). For certain people, especially those who receive a wide variety of diagnoses and are repeatedly told their bodies are "damaged", this traditional model can wreak havoc, and often times leads to and endless cycle of frustration and failed attempts at a solution. Simply put - this traditional model leaves people suffering from chronic pain feeling lost, hopeless, and fearful. The conversation highlighted above raised my awareness to the idea that everyone sees life (and pain) through a different lens. Therefore, it's important to have an awareness of how all aspects of health (some of them highlighted above as biological, psychological, and sociological) impact pain. In this client's case, there were clear psychological factors affecting his pain. Healthcare needs to be patient-centered, holistic, and focused on individualized clinical reasoning and communication. Your health professional must take in not only what is being said, but how, and when, and in what environment. They must take the time needed to listen to you and hear what you are saying. I bet there are so many people reading this that can relate to my client’s response about being fearful of being pain-free, and have felt unheard by provider's in the past. Your healthcare professionals are doing you a disservice if they do not strive to better understand the individuality of your situation AND help you to let go of those fears surrounding it. Local to the Towson, Lutherville-Timonium, Cockeysville, or Hunt Valley area? Friends & Family receive a FREE
Discovery Session at Premier! This week's post was writtien by Premier Neuro Therapy co-owner, Zach Michael. It’s the holiday season and one of the season’s traditional songs inspired this week’s post. “Joy To The World” But just what is “joy” and how can we bring it to the world? Is it just another word for happiness? Not necessarily. Brene Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston explains the difference in her book “The Gifts of Imperfection.” “People were quick to point out the difference between happiness and joy as the difference between a human emotion that’s connected to a circumstances and a spiritual way of engaging with the world that’s connected to practicing gratitude.” In other words, happiness is something we experience when good things happen to us. Joy is a state of being. So how can we bring Joy To The World? It starts by experiencing the state of joy. When you experience joy, you can be the best version of yourself, and truly bring this state of being to the world. Here’s 5 ways you can start cultivating a lifestyle of joy today 1. What are three things that made you happy today? This is a question we ask every client before every session, and you’d be surprised at how hard it is to answer. By dedicating a few minutes each day towards answering this question, you’ll start to reinforce pathways in the brain that seek gratitude. You’ll develop an attitude of gratitude, and once you do, you’ll be well on your way to a state of joy. 2. Stop comparing yourself to others The social media world makes it way too easy to compare ourselves to others. But social media is only a reflection of the best 5% of everyone’s lives. Meanwhile, the other 95% of everyone’s life is just as full of ups, downs, twists, turns, and even mundaneness as yours. The challenge here is to have confidence in your own efforts. Constantly reinforce the self-belief that you are doing the best you can. If you don’t believe you’re doing the best you can, be honest with yourself and start doing it! 3. Write a thank you note When’s the last time you sat down to send a hand written thank you note? Writing a note will allow you to reflect on and re-experience a time when someone went out of their way to do something positive for your life. When you reflect and relive these experiences, your brain will be constantly on the look out for more opportunities to be grateful. Plus, you’ll also make the receiver’s day when they open the note! 4 Spend time with joyous people As one of my favorite podcast hosts John Lee Dumas (and I’m sure many before him) says: “You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.” Plain and simple – your attitude will be influenced by the people you spend with. If you want to develop a joyous state of being (and bring Joy To The World), make sure you’re spending time with joyous people. On the flip side, evaluate the people you’re spending the most time with. Do they uplift you or bring you down? 5. Know who you are At the end of the day, at the center of joy, is knowing who you are. What is your mission? What are you trying to achieve? What are your values? How are you impacting others? Knowing the answers to these questions will help you to stay focused and feel less of an urge to compare yourself to others. Always strive to be the highest version of yourself, and you will bring Joy To The World. Local to the Towson, Lutherville-Timonium, Cockeysville, or Hunt Valley area? Friends & Family receive a FREE
Discovery Session at Premier! The word “stress” tends to carry a negative stigma. In fact, many of our clients have mentioned that their stress levels elevate just at the mention of the word. Over the last couple of decades, our society has become pretty well educated on the long term effects of stress. Local to the Towson, Lutherville-Timonium, Cockeysville, or Hunt Valley area? Friends & Family receive a FREE Discovery Session at Premier! It’s been linked to negative health outcomes like:
Just to name a few. Such education over the last decade has led to the aforementioned negative “stigma” around stress. But what if that negative stigma is actually increasing your likelihood of poor health outcomes? A study in 2012 challenged this point by asking the question “Does the perception that stress affects health matter?” The study concluded: “Individuals who perceived that stress affects their health and reported a large amount of stress had an increased risk of premature death.” It goes on to estimate that, over the 8 years of the survey, 182,000, people died prematurely in the US due to their negative perception of stress. So what can we do with this information? The first thing we need to do is understand why the stress response exists in the body. The stress response evolved as a way for humans to “rise to the occasion” for big moments. In other words, stress exists to HELP us, NOT hurt us. When we understand this, we can start to identify stress as a POSITIVE thing in our life. When we identify stress as a positive thing, we can harness it’s power and use it to tackle the challenges in front of us. And when we tackle the challenges in front of us, we feel good about what we’ve accomplished. And when we feel good about what we’ve accomplished, the stress response is short lived. The problem with stress exists when we perceive it as a negative. When we perceive stress as a negative, we do one of three things that encourage the stress response to become ongoing.
If you’re dealing with stress in any of these 3 ways, you need to find a way to view stress as a POSITIVE in your life, or it will have a negative affect on your health. A few of the tools from previous posts (here and here) will help you to control your stress, tackle the challenges in front of you, and take the time to recognize your accomplishments. Local to the Towson, Lutherville-Timonium, Cockeysville, or Hunt Valley area? Friends & Family receive a FREE
Discovery Session at Premier! Over the past 2 months, Zach and I have been testing a daily 10 minute routine we discovered on one of our client’s podcasts, Suiting Up With Paul Rabil. Near the end of September, Paul interviewed Life and Business Strategist, Tony Robbins, on his podcast. If you're interested, you can click here to listen to the interview. The interview really got us thinking. Local to the Towson, Lutherville-Timonium, Cockeysville, or Hunt Valley area Friends & Family receive a FREE Discovery Session at Premier! Over the past 20 years, our society has stepped up its game in promoting physical wellness. Many of you reading this may have a strict exercise routine that takes anywhere from 3-10 hours of your week. But how much time are you spending on optimizing your mental health and performance? If you’re like Zach and me two months ago, you're probably spending 0 hours per week optimizing your mindset. Mindset has a tremendous impact on both controlling pain and optimizing performance. In other words, it can be the barrier that's keeping you from breaking through with your rehab program or performance levels. For those of you unfamiliar with Tony Robbin's work, he inspires people all over the world to break through the limits keeping them from the quality of life they desire. In order to do so, he brings incredible amounts of positive, infectious energy to each and every conference he puts on. As he puts it, he doesn’t wake up every day with this kind of energy (he is human after all..). There are days when he wakes up and says “What country am I in… what the hell happened to my neck?” Nonetheless, he must find a way to put himself in the right mindset to inspire others, and this simple, 10 minute routine is how he does it. I’ve provided written instructions for the routine below, but I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you listen to Tony’s energetic explanation of the routine (and associated psychological advantages it provides) on the podcast. Click here to listen to the interview. Tony's description of the 10 minute routine starts 40:15 into the interview. The 10 Minute Routine 1) First, he makes a radical change in his body with 3 sets of 30 of breath of fire (see video demonstration here – Note that no actual fire is involved). PS - if you're not into the "yoga" aspect of breath of fire, you can simply sit on your couch or at the kitchen table to do this activity. 2) Second, he thinks of 3 things in his life he’s grateful for. This isn’t as simple as saying “I’m grateful for the shoes under my feet, roof over my head, and food in my stomach” and being done. Tony actually spends 1 MINUTE of time not only telling himself he’s grateful for the specific things in his life, but truly taking his mind go to that place in time and feel the gratuity of the moment. Having tried methods like gratitude journals in the past (which are effective), I can tell you this is a much more powerful way to experience and cultivate a daily mindset of gratuity. 3) Next, he does 3 minutes of a blessing and a prayer. He imagines positive, healing energy flowing into his body, asking for whatever characteristics he needs (compassion, courage, strength, etc.) for a great day. After 2 minutes of imagining positive, healing energy flowing into his body, he takes 1 minute to send energy to others in his life (children, wife, family, friends, clients, etc.). In the interview, Tony elaborates on the psychological advantages of this activity. 4) Finally, he envisions his 3 To Thrive. He thinks of 3 results (1 minute each) he wants to achieve, taking not only the time to think about the result, but truly feel it. So if one of your 3 goals is to land that new client, you’ll allow your mind/body to feel as if you’ve already landed that clinet. Take 1 minute to envision, imagine, and feel the celebration associated with achieving your top goals! 10 minutes out of your day is all it takes to start seeing a SERIOUS psychological advantage. As we’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, controlling the mind plays an important role in controlling pain and performance. With just 2 months of persistent work, Zach and I have already realized many advantages with this routine like:
As Tony puts, it “If you don’t have 10 minutes for your life, you don’t have a life.” Try this simple, 10 minute routine for a few days and let us know what you think! Local to the Towson, Lutherville-Timonium, Cockeysville, or Hunt Valley area? Friends & Family receive a FREE
Discovery Session at Premier! Stress is a normal part of life. Everyone lives with it, and everyone handles it a little differently. At times, stress can feel overwhelming and like it’s eating us alive. You know the feeling- the palms start sweating, the heart rate speeds up, muscles start tensing up, and it can be difficult to get a deep breath. The body starts to go into a defensive, protective state. Local to the Towson, Lutherville-Timonium, Cockeysville, or Hunt Valley area? Friends & Family receive a FREE Discovery Session at Premier! But it doesn’t HAVE to be this way. Ultimately, you are in complete control of how your body handles and interprets stress. Studies have shown that people who perceive stress as a negative have poorer health outcomes (decreased lifespan, increased pain levels, decreased ability to recover, etc.) than those who interpret stress as a positive. What an empowering thought – you have control over how your body interprets stress! So what are some ways we can start to “re-shape” the way that our bodies’ are interpreting stress. One of the ways we can do this is through our breath. With each breath, your body is making neurophysiological micro-adjustments to the body’s “stress levels.” As you inhale, the brain slightly increases the production of a chemical called noradrenaline. Noradrenaline increases heart rate, blood pressure, blood flow to skeletal muscle, and decreases blood flow to the digestive system. These are all actions traditionally associated with the “stress response.” Too much noradrenaline production and you may start to feel the sweaty palm symptoms of stress start to come on. As you exhale, noradrenaline production decreases and heart rate and blood pressure follow. The human body is an incredible thing, and it’s amazing to me that these small adjustments are being made with every single breath. So how can we take this concept and use it to take control of our body’s interpretation of stress? When we feel stress levels rising, all we need to do is take 2 minutes to focus on our breath. By focusing on your breath, you can help noradrenaline levels to decrease before the stress becomes too overwhelming. Here’s the 2 minute exercise you can use to take control over your stress levels: 1. First, place your hand over your stomach and breathe normally. As you inhale, you should feel your stomach (actually your diaphragm) expand slightly. As you exhale, you should you feel your stomach (actually your diaphragm) contract slightly. Get a feel for this action with each breath before starting the exercise. 2.Once you have a feel for the action of the diaphragm, inhale for a 4 count and feel the diaphragm expanding. 3. Now exhale for an 8 count. This might feel like a long time and like you’re running out of breath – as you practice, you’ll get better at controlling the exhale for 8 seconds. As you exhale, feel the diaphragm contracting. 4. Repeat this 4 count inhale, 8 count exhale action for 2 minutes (or 10 breaths). That’s it. By focusing on and extending the exhale of your breath, you’ll decrease noradrenaline levels in the brain and take back control of your response to stress. You can literally do this anywhere – in the car, in your office, in bed, or in the gym. If you’re someone who constantly feels stressed out, try to work this simple exercise into your daily routine 2-3 times/day. To live a long, happy life, you need to take the body out of auto-pilot and take back the wheel. This exercise will help you do just that. Once you give it a try, let me know what you think – it will be challenging out first, but with consistent practice, you’ll be on your way to mastery. Want help figuring out how stress is contributing your persistent pain or injuries? Click here to arrange a time to chat with a member of our team! Local to the Towson, Lutherville-Timonium, Cockeysville, or Hunt Valley area? Friends & Family receive a FREE
Discovery Session at Premier! In 1954, Roger Bannister became the first person to do what was considered by many to be impossible. He ran 1 mile in less than 4 minutes. For 70 years, runners had chased the goal, but none had been able to break through the barrier. In most of the world's mind, it was just not possible. Local to the Towson, Lutherville-Timonium, Cockeysville, or Hunt Valley area? Friends & Family receive a FREE Discovery Session at Premier! Within just over a year after Bannister's feat, 4 more runners accomplished the achievement, and thousands of runners since have done the same. The secret? A mindset shift. Seeing Bannister accomplish the goal allowed them to believe the feat was achievable. At Premier, we talk a lot about protective mechanisms that exist within the body. These mechanisms limit our ability to move freely and perform at our best. In many cases, these physically induced limitations can develop due to previous injuries or improper movement patterns. However, the race to the 4 minute mile demonstrated that the most significant limitations can often occur in our minds.. Psychologically induced limitations are created when we have negative beliefs, thoughts, and emotions about the goals we set out to achieve. Negative thoughts serve to protect us from the psychological damage of failing (which in 99% of cases really is never as bad as it seems, right?). In doing so, they drastically reduce our ability to set meaningful performance goals and strive for improvement. Instead, negative thoughts allow us to quickly say "no" to new ideas and move on. Just think about it for a second... when's the last time you had a great idea or ambitious goal? Maybe it was to decrease your 40 time, throw more weight around in the gym, or start a new project for your business. It's possible the idea ignited a fire of enthusiasm, but was quickly doused with a negative thought like "I could never do that." Within seconds, negative thoughts limited your ability to improve and do something great. On the flip side, having a positive thought in that moment would have expanded your vision, making you more receptive, creative, and likely to achieve your goal. If negative beliefs are the walls that we build around ourselves, positive thoughts are the ladders that allow us to peak over that wall to see if it's a barrier worth overcoming. Therefore, in order to perform at your best, we must work at replacing negativity with positive belief. Because negativity is a much easier thought process, it can easily become our default operating mode if we don't work at it. How to start shifting your mindset: One way that's proven to be effective is tallying the number of times you feel positive and negative emotions throughout the day. You can do this on a piece of paper, a word document on your computer, or the notes app on your phone. Positive emotions to key in on include:
Negative emotions include.:
By doing so, you'll place a focus on the positive, and quickly start to shift your mindset. Goals that previously seemed impossible will seem reachable, allowing you to constantly strive for better performance. Local to the Towson, Lutherville-Timonium, Cockeysville, or Hunt Valley area? Friends & Family receive a FREE
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About the AuthorEvan Lewis is a nationwide leader in Neuro Therapy and founded the Baltimore area's only specialist Neuro Therapy facility. Archives
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