Latest / Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor / Mojo Monday - How Glimmers Can Help Regulate and Balance your Nervous System With Carly Taylor.

Transcript

Mojo Monday - How Glimmers Can Help Regulate and Balance your Nervous System With Carly Taylor. · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's Carli Tayley here and welcome back to
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: this week's Mojo Monday. So last week we were looking
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: at polyvagel theory and I kind of touched on this
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: concept of glimmers, and I wanted to dive a bit
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: deeper into glimmers because it's such a simple but amazingly
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: effective way to calm our nervous systems, or to help
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: calm our nervous systems. So if you're feeling overwhelmed or
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: stressed out or anxious, glimmers can help regulate you just
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: enough to create some space for making choices based less
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: on fear and more on what is important to you
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: and to those around you at that moment. So let's
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: dive into glimmers. So you would have heard of triggers,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: and if you haven't, you must be living under a
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: rock because being triggered is part of our seems to
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: be part of our everyday language, which is not necessarily
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: a good thing. But in general, triggers are those moments
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: that send your nervous system into a bit of over drive.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: So maybe somebody cuts you off in traffic, or you know,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: it could be just a stranger giving you a weird look,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: or the dishes are piling up next to the sink,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: or your child melts down at the worst possible time
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: and suddenly boom. You know, you go from feeling calm
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: to being in a fie or flight situation. And that's
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: your sympathetic nervous system firing up. So it's saying danger, danger.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: It's an evolutionary survival response, that response that has kept
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: us alive since the dawn of time. It's just that
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: now our environment is generally safe, but our nervous system
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: is reacting as if it's not so. Trigger they're just
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: a part of life. But when we live in a
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: state of constant triggering, our nervous system can get stuck.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: So we start operating from a place of stress or
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: hypervigilance and reactivity. And that's not a place that we
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: want to be stuck in. But the good news is
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: that you can get unstuck. And just as we can
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: be triggered, we can also be glimmered. So glimmers are
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: these tiny micro moments that que safety in our nervous system,
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: so they send a signal to the ventral vagual state,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: which is that calm and connected. It's that social part
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: of the parasympathetic nervous system. And when we're in Ventral
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: we feel grounded, we feel calm, connected to others, curious
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: and grateful, and Ventral is kind of like our home base.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: This is what deb Dana, who I spoke about last week,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: who's an expert in poly vaguel theory, she calls it.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: It's the home base. So we leave it every day,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: which is normal. We go in and out of Ventral
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: and move through the other states. We can't stay in
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Ventral twenty four to seven, but what we can is
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: move towards it when we're feeling stuck. Now, our brains
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: have a negativity bias, and some of us have more
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: of a negativity bias than others, and that I think
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: that really depends on a lot of things, on our
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: experiences from the moment we were born right up till now,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: and also our level of self awareness. You know, I
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: think if somebody asks you, or next time somebody asks you,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: how are you just notice whether your automatic response is
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: to tell them about the bad stuff or do you
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: kind of catch yourself on and then talk about the
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: good stuff. But if we want to support our mental fitness,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: we have to actively retrain our brain to notice the good,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: especially having an understanding of our brain having that negativity
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: bias and glimmer hunting can be part of that training.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: So let me share a few of mine. So a
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: glimmer that I was thinking. I have lots of glimmers,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: but one of them I was thinking the other day
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: is I've got this friend who is just so supportive
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: and she motivates me, she challenges me, and every time
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: we are together, I feel I feel a sense of
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: joy and a sense of kind of happiness. And so
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: that is a glimmer. So just notice the people you
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: are surrounded with. Are any of them glimmers in your life?
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: And are you a glimmer for them? I mentioned last
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: week there's a beautiful cooker barrough that sits on the
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: same wine near my house each day and I drive
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: past it and I smile. There's a glimmer. My dog
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: half asleep on her mat, so you know, letting out
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: those beautiful doggie soft size when I pat her. There's
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: a glimmer. There's a photo of my kids, So when
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: my daughter calls me or my son calls me, a
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: photo of them when we're on holiday shows up on
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: my phone and I look at it and it brings
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: me this beautiful sense of joy. So there's a glimmer.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: And I could go on and on and on, because
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: there are so many glimmers in our life. So just
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: start thinking about those small things each day that bring
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: you a little sense of calm and joy and connection.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: And of course these are not magic pills. They don't
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: make the pain disappear, or they don't delete any of
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: life's challenges that you're going through. But what they can
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: do is just soften the edges of them. They give
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: enough space to signal to your nervous system you're safe,
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: you're okay, you're connected. And that's not necessarily a conscious thing.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: So it doesn't mean that you've got to think about
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: being safe, but it's a message to your nervous system
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: that you're safe. I hope that makes sense. So since
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: I started intentionally looking for glimmers, I've just noticed that
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: I've become more grateful, Like even if I'm going through
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: a hard time, so when I was stressed, when things
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: went going to plan, when I felt overwhelmed, I'm still
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: seeing the glimmers, And the more I notice them, the
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: more they start appearing. And it's almost like my brain
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: is saying, Okay, you're looking for these, now let me
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: show you a few more. See, we're training our brain.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: We're wiring our brain to look for these glimmers. And
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: it doesn't matter what you're going through. Glimmers are there
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: if you look for them, and if you don't look
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: for them, you won't notice them. So this is like
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: an attentional strategy. You can choose what you pay attention to,
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: so shine that light of attention on the many glimmers
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: that you have at hand. So here's your Mojo Monday
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: challenge for this week. Each night, before you go to bed,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: write down your glimmers from that day. So it can
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: be three, five, as many as you want, really, but
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: they don't have to be big. Could be just a
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: smile from a stranger, or the smell of your morning coffee,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: or a lyric from a song that you know you
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: were listening to. The listening to in the car brought
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: back a memory from the past. And talk about your
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: glimmers with your kids, and you know, it's a great
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: dinner time conversation to have. Ask them what made them
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: feel calm and happy or connected today, and you'll be
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: amazed at what they actually noticed, and remind them before
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: they go to school to look out for glimmers, because
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: how amazing would that be if you could train your
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: children to start looking for glimmers, and what difference that
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: is going to make as they grow older. And make
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: it a daily ritual because if you do this every day,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: and you do this consistently, it'll become a habit and
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: then over time, your brain will start scanning for glitters
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: and maybe it'll cut down on scanning for the threats.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: So polyvagel theory teaches us that our nervous system is
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: always listening. It's always asking am I safe? Am I connected?
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: And when we feed our nervous system the glimmers, that
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: means we're not just surviving, we're building a life filled
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: with little moments of meaning and magic. So be a
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: glimmer hunter this week, because your nervous system is going
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: to thank you for it. So have a beautiful week, everybody,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: and I will catch you next week. See you