Neurogenesis Now

Neurogenesis is a big word for the birth of nerve cells in the brain. Nerve cells make the nervous system work, enabling us to think, move, and react in a glorious symphony of chemical and electrical impulses.

For a long time, scientists believed neurons stopped reproducing shortly after birth. In spite of this, we continue to grow and develop, neurally speaking, because new connections between existing neurons continue to form throughout our lives.

Recently (as of the '90s) scientists have conclusive research evidence that neurogenesis can continue into adulthood. What affect could the creation of new nerve cells have on our lives?

• Improved learning, cognition, and better ability to access memories.
• Stress reduction through better stress regulation, bolstering the function of the hippocampus (responsible for memory, cognition, and navigation) and inhibiting the amygdala (responsible for fear and stress).

Less stress, less fear, and more brain-power? Sounds like Total Body Happiness to me! Thus, the quest for neurogenesis begins!

Let's start by eliminating the #1 inhibitor of neurogenesis: sleep deprivation. We already know that sleep deprivation increases stress, disrupts mood, and even causes our bodies to hold onto fat.

Speaking of fat, we may be able to increase neurogenesis by increasing voluntary exercise, emphasis on voluntary. Studies show that when the beta-endorphin (which elevates mood) is produced during exercise, new nerve cells are increased and sustained in the brain -- though this is not the case in the absence of the beta-endorphin. No wonder it feels so great to find fun and engaging ways to exercise, but it feels so lame to push through a boring workout. 

Quick side note (since it's bad to be boring) another study I find relevant and interesting comes from the University of Saskatchewan (2005) where cannabidiol (CBD), the biggest property of the cannabis plant second only to tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), was also shown to cause regeneration of nerve cells in the hippocampus. From procon.org:

 "Cannabidiol, the main component of the glandular hairs [of Cannabis] is a non-psychoactive cannabinoid; it exerts a plethora of pharmacological effects, including anti-convulsive, sedative, hypnotic, anti-psychotic, anti-nausea and anti-inflammatory actions. Cannabidiol is a potent antioxidant compound and it has been recently proposed to have a neuroprotective role..."

The many benefits of cannabidiol is why medical marijuana is a thing now. Get used to it.

Tools to use:

I was inspired to start playing more games after watching Jane McGonigal's TEDTalk, "The game that can give you 10 extra years of life" -- a must-watch. Check out the Lumosity app, or Lumosity.com. Lumosity lets you build a personalized brain-training program that focuses on memory and attention. I play 3 quick brain-games a day, and I've already noticed that my simple math skills, which were sorely in need of a boost, are getting just that. I also like to play Ruzzle, a word search game, and Lost Cities, "two player Solitaire with an extra portion of suspense" that helps me practice odds- and risk-calculation as well as quick addition. Do what's fun for you; fun is good for you. 

Another must-watch TEDTalk: Tony Horton's "Health, Fitness, and Happiness: Rules to give you all 3." He's the P90X guy, and he explains the brain-derived neurotrophic factor in this 10 minute video about the benefit of exercise. To see results and continue to grow, Tony emphasizes the importance of variety, consistency, and increasing intensity in exercise.

"Exercise should be like brushing your teeth, or eating your meals, 

or showing up to appointments, or making sure you go to bed at night. 

It should be part of who you are, 5 to 7 times a week, for the rest of your life."

--Tony Horton

The hippocampus, and in particular the dentate gyrus is the site of stem cell populations in the brain
(see Ming GL and Song H, Neuron 2011 70(4):687-702).

What can you do to strengthen your brain and your body today?

Thank God I can't have everything I want.

What do we see when we look upon all that surrounds us from the vantage point of our two eyes? There's my nose, the tops of my cheeks; my body sits below, arms and hands stretched out before me, fingers quickly typing these thoughts.

When I think about the astonishingly vast inner workings of the complex vessel that is my body, it makes it all the more ridiculous to believe that I am my mind and my thoughts. Try this thought on for size: the voice in your head, that of The Thinker, is just one among your brain's many functions. You don't call your iPhone "Siri" just because that's the function that can respond to you verbally and processes verbal requests. Nope, you know that your iPhone has an infinitely larger capacity to access the world of information. So do you.

Considering that our minds and thoughts are subject to change, and influenced by factors as simple, straightforward, and chemical as food and sleep, why then have I spent so much of my life hinged to something so discursive, passing, and transient as thoughts? What affect has identifying with my thoughts had on so many of my experiences and relationships?

The body enables my life experience and all of my connections, yet it can separate me from my experiences, and from others if I identify myself as The Thinker. The Thinker would like me to believe that I am just a voice contained in my body, and that the way I see things is the way things actually are, because that reinforces its own importance and guarantees its own survival. 

But consider for a moment that you'll never be able to see your own face, with your own eyes, in all of its three dimensional glory! Who are you and why are you so sure of yourself if you never will, and never have, so much as set eyes on your own face? Our viewpoints are limited. We must respect that.

Lots of lessons come of all this mind-boggelry. One lesson that I've been trying to experience as much as possible is to see other human beings, animals, and elements of nature as subjects, not objects. There is boundless substance in everything we look upon. Nothing is simply "what meets the eye." 

When I remember not to take everything that I see at its face value, not to flatten anyone else into one dimension, it reminds me to react more slowly and with more compassion. This creates more time and space in my experiences with my surroundings and with others. It increases my respect for my own vast complexity, while increasing my respect for the complexity of every aspect of my external world. When I stop flattening myself into a one dimensional view and voice, I also pause before objectifying others in this way. I take what they say with less gravity; I make a greater attempt to acknowledge the whole of who they are.

When we are in this state of knowing, when the Knowing mind, the God mind, the Soul, succeeds in being louder than the Egoic mind, The Thinker, the incessant voice that's always coming up with perspectives, opinions, and contradictions, there is less static, less conflict, less irritation, and less neediness. 

It's the needs that get me. Need to be warmer, need to elsewhere, need to be understood, need to be right. Need to be cool, need to be liked, need to be loved, need to be forgiven. Need to be seated, need to be served, need to be needed, oh God! The list could go on for a lifetime -- and that's exactly what I don't want to happen. I want to practice counteracting this tendency to follow every little thing my mind says, and I want to practice it now, before I've followed a lifetime of perceived needs to all the shitty places they'd love to take me.

Because most of our needs aren't really needs; they're just wants. And thank God I can't have everything I want. I'd be an absolute monster if I could. I'd probably just trample everyone; spend my life endlessly showboating in anticipation of a resounding applause; justify every tantrum, every shitty mood influenced by too much sugar or too little sleep. I don't want to be that person: ruled and fueled by my ego. Whenever I remember to be aware of the limitations of my singular viewpoint and experience, my ego lessens in volume and prevalence. Those are better moments of a better me.

Happy birthday (yesterday) to the late and eternally amazing Alan Watts, and happy birthday (today) to my incredibly amazing friend Ben, who I admire so much. Ben linked me to the video that I'd like to share, below. I've become a YouTube subscriber of HDvids101, the creator of this gorgeous video illustration to accompany this Alan Watts lecture (and others on the HDvids101 channel). I'm thankful for the wealth of knowledge that is so easily and freely accessible to us here in 2014! Please enjoy this inspiring Watts talk that discusses some of this which I've written about today, plus so much more, more clearly and eloquently than I can yet, but aspire to someday!

Fight those demons, day in and day out.

This year, I resolve to be happy. I will continue to fight the demons whenever they arise, stand up after I fall, treat myself and others with kindness, and fill each day with as much positivity as possible.

So far in 2014, I'm off to a mixed start. On New Year's Day, I slept past noon, lounged for a couple hours and napped again 'til 5pm. Impressive! This is highly unusual party-time behavior, woo! But it's not a good thing for me. There's something about falling asleep when it's light out and waking up when it's dark that has often been the kiss of depressive death. More than once, I've woken up from such a nap and felt a deep sense of life-hatred. But, somehow this 5pm wakeup felt happy and refreshed. I needed that day of rest, I told myself. It was the first day that the cold I'd had since Christmas Eve finally let up, and hell, it was my last full day of vacation. Sleep it up!

My good mood lasted through dinner, which was delicious and totally unhealthy -- my first trip to Five Guys Burgers and Fries. A+ on the pig-out joint rating list. At home afterward, I put some vodka into what was left of my paper cup of Mello Yello, lost a game of cards, and at 9pm, I found myself strangely devastated. Specifically, crying about the objectification and hypersexualization of women on TV.

Whoah. Really? What happened there. Let me see...

I slept away most of the day, ate grease, and watched too much TV, including some dumb Miami crime show that mostly consisted of boobs and butts on rollerskates. Ads for other crime shows filled the space with headshots of missing and exploited women. I also watched one too many episodes of this trashy TV show called Hemlock Grove, which is addicting and the plot is good. It also features a lot of steamy teen sex and that part gets to be kinda blech after a few.

I have every right to engage in a rant about how women are portrayed in various forms of media. Our media-infused lives are filled with unreal images. There is abundant evidence that it greatly affects the self-image of the female population. Common knowledge. There is value in questioning it; if we don't, it infects us.

In the words of actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt: "We see these images on TV and in movies and magazines all the time, and if you don't stop and think about it, it just sort of seeps into your brain and that becomes the way you perceive reality." Check him out dropping this feminist wisdom in an interview with Ellen.

This stuff is certainly worthy of examination, even scorn, but never forget that you have the option not to expose yourself to an excessive bombardment of media bullshit. There's power in that. I can fill my life with subjects that inspire and fulfill me, instead of provoking my angst. Yes, the media is pervasive, and it affects our society, but there are many ways to escape it, by choosing how we direct our time and minds. The despair I felt wasn't really the fault of this programming's very existence. Watching it was my choice, and letting it creep into the cracks in my spiritual strength... that was made possible by my own behavior, too. I put myself in a weak place.

I decided to indulge this feeling of despair in a way that I haven't since summer, since before I began meditating in an effort to stop exactly this kind of emotional turmoil. Misery loves its own company; it seeks to perpetuate itself. When a depressive mood takes a strong hold, it can be hard to shake. My higher mind knew that this was optional. It knew that I was essentially doing this to myself by indulging it instead of moving past it. I knew that if I dragged myself to a quiet spot, I could try to breathe my way back into the quiet, calm state that knows that totally body happiness is a choice, but I just didn't want to. Depression itself told me that meditating was stupid, that I deserved to suffer for this moment. It also said that those around me would just have to observe and hopefully understand my suffering -- if they couldn't understand, that was just proof that we are essentially separate and alone. Hello, ego!

In the past 6 months, I've taken more responsibility for my behavior than ever before. I've recognized that I control my body, my attitude toward my body, and my emotions, not the other way around. I've invested time daily in order to do this, and it's made me feel radically empowered.

In this moment, it also made me feel alone. I felt the urge to rely on someone else for a change, to lay all my pain on the table like I used to, and see if someone else could sort it out. I'm so thankful that I don't feel a regular compulsion to do that anymore. It has only ever compounded my problems and made me feel much worse.

I guess this happens. We're only human and sometimes we do need each other. Sometimes we even need to sleep all day, eat crap, and watch filth TV. But as the vodka wore off, so did my total bummer of a mood. It left me even more resolved to take good care of myself, and to (in the words of UK band Dry the River) "fight those demons, day in and day out." I'm thankful that those demons don't rage up daily, but I do believe that strengthening the spirit with daily positivity works like a vaccine against the poison arrows of spiritual devils like pride and self-doubt.

Spiritual strengtheners and spiritual injuries both add up incrementally. In each moment of our behavior, we cast a vote about what knowledge and experiences we are filled with. We can multiply moments of happiness, and we can eliminate doses of things we know make us feel bad. Maybe if nobody watched those TV shows, or bought those magazines, they would disappear from existence. But I doubt that will happen tomorrow. So, just know that in any given moment they can definitely disappear from your own life. It takes some effort to snap out of it, but that is always within your power.

That night, I slept badly, dreamed wildly, and by 5am, was wide awake. By the time my alarm went off, I had already:

• Warmed up Dave's car 
• Toasted us both an English muffin with almond butter, and eaten mine
• Watched the weather/news while stretching
• Changed the sheets/made the bed
• Seen the sun rise
• Had a conversation with a friend
• Listened to an album and a 20 minute guided meditation
• Washed/dried/folded a load of laundry
• Retrieved the mail
• Cleaned Moose's litter box
• Taken out the trash and recycling

And that feels great. Maybe I needed a trip to the dark side to refuel my dedication to a peaceful and productive morning routine. Today, I am a master of this early morning thang, all I have to do is keep it up tomorrow... and tomorrow... and tomorrow... whenever possible. Best of luck to me! :)

Life is but a dream, sweetheart!

Pain as a pathway to presence.

I haven't suffered many injuries. I can count on one hand the times that I've been really stuck in bed. But last Sunday, a searing sensation came out of nowhere, drilling into my shoulder-blade like a hot poker. Unresponsive to stretches and pain relievers, it steadily grew over 3 days before exploding across my shoulders, up my neck, and down my spine. It felt like all my nerve fibers were on fire and twisting themselves into a tight fist in the center of my back. I've never experienced anything more painful.

By Thursday, I was forced to just lay down. It's a strange feeling: admitting you can't move. Unaccustomed to being incapacitated, you will turn your head, nod, shift positions, raise your arms, reach for water, lift things, only to have your body remind you with a sharp whip-crack of pain that moving freely has ceased to be one of your body's talents. It's scary, frustrating, and most of all, it hurts!

Like most people, I'd make a terrible statue. I'm prone to restlessness, I talk with my hands, and I enjoy expressing attitude with my neck. It took many unwise movements for me to realize that I wasn't just exaggerating my pain level; it wasn't going down, and the only way to manage it was to lay completely still. 

Harnessing stillness of mind.

So stillness, eh? I've been talking a big game about daily meditation as of late, but therein I'm usually referring to two easy-little-20-minute-intervals a day. But here I was, flat out, and forced into a state of total non-doing. Question: What's the opposite of doing? Answer: Being. 

I couldn't escape into the realm of doing because I couldn't even watch a movie, or do the many holiday errands and chores on my list. The only thing I could do was listen, focus on my breathing, and observe my state of mind.

I took deep breaths and listened to an audiobook: Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now. (I keep listening to these chapters over and over again because they are a meditation in and of themselves, and such a useful learning tool.) It takes such eloquence, wisdom, and grace to convey mindfulness in a way that awakens the reader. Tolle is so inspiring; he absolutely nails it. His wisdom and clarity cut right through the ego and speak directly to the soul. 

In listening to The Power of Now while laid up, I realized that the incessant thinking that accompanies most of our lives causes us to exacerbate things like pain. Our thoughts continuously tell us the story of our ongoing life situation in an unnecessary way, for example, "OMFG this hurts, seriously, I am in so much pain." Well, your body already knows that without your mind providing any commentary. Thinking about your pain just fuels the fire and adds emotional turmoil to your list of problems. If we can't change the situation, then we must accept it.

The bountiful benefits of simply being!

Pain can be a gift that enables us to see what we commonly take for granted. Laying there, I stared at the things that I commonly walk right past: the Buddha statue on my night table, the view out my bedroom window. It was a reminder of how much more there is to appreciate other than the typical subjects of my mental focus. I also felt so deeply grateful for the kindness of others. As I tried to resist help, my best friend reassured me, "Sometimes you have to take care of someone you love."

A feeling of wonder and curiosity transpires when we really see something or someone, past the surface, to the essence. People and things you've grown accustomed to can reappear as new, in all their complex authenticity. We give others the space to be themselves when we cease to cast judgement upon them. We are awed by our blessings when we stop focusing on our misfortunes. 

When we are present, what lessens: focus on the ego-driven experience of our life situations. 

What increases: love, awe, openness, and appreciation for the simple state of being.

When I am able to carry less subtext into each moment of my experience, I feel less agitation, dissatisfaction, irritability, and all the other emotions that typically tell us that something is wrong. In the context of pain, consider these very obvious equations:

The present moment of pain + several days of pain = An overwhelming amount of pain!!!

The present moment of pain + nothing else = The present moment of pain. Manageable.

When dealt with one moment at a time, the pain wasn't as severe as it was when I added thoughts like, "Jesus, this has been going on for hours, days, I cannot take it anymore!!!" It's usually when you get panicked and fed up that pain becomes overwhelming, and it only intensifies as we freak out! Instead, the anxiety accompanying the pain completely vanished as I focused on letting the pain flow through me, taking cleansing breaths, and relaxing my body as much as possible.

Life is but a dream, sweetheart!

And then, something happened! Something I have had many glimpses of, but have only enjoyed for a few hours at most. The magical present just clicked into focus. Awakening came, and it stayed. I felt a sense of taking an easy, natural step right into sync with the universe, like grabbing hold of a handrail on a bumpy train, or catching the chair lift on a snowy mountain. Suddenly you're not just getting pummeled by life; you're riding with it like a surfer on a wave. 

You know that feeling when you realize you're dreaming? You're suddenly fascinated with the dreamworld your mind has created. You look around, eagerly choosing which button to push, which door to walk through, whether to fly or to kiss someone: in short, the options seem endless and the experience itself seems fascinating and exciting. I think that is just how life should be.

I continued to feel this way for a full 48 hours. (Holy effing shiz that makes me so happy.) The feeling lasted through phone calls with family, at-home interactions, and continuing pain (which at least let me get back on my feet for the most part, after I got adjusted by a chiropractor). The pain still wasn't amazing, but everything else was so ridiculously much more fun! There were more laughs, more interesting conversations, my brain just felt freed, and I felt totally content just looking out the window, watching the snow fall. 48 continuous hours of total presence is absolutely astonishing to me: a major achievement for my practice and a clear sign that continued practice pays off.

If I keep putting money in the bank via daily mindfulness, maybe I can turn 2 days in to 3, and so on. The point, after all, is to make mindfulness the norm and unchecked runaway thinking the exception. What it takes is the full appreciation that the present moment is something truly beautiful that you only have access to right now. If your mind is anywhere else, you've missed it. See it. Breathe it. Feel it. Hear it. Be the present moment. The sense of peace and joy that arises from fully appreciating the present is more pure, pleasurable, and healing than any drug. It's free, and all of its side effects are incredibly positive. 

I stayed in bed meditating by necessity on Thurs and Fri. I enjoyed a brief weekend voyage to enlightenment on Sat and Sun, aah! Today, I was back to work, my back still hurts, but I'm so totally inspired to continue practicing the following:

• to appreciate the impermanence of everything
• to listen and receive without judgement
• to give and engage authentically and without doubt
• to tell everyone I love that there is an escape hatch out of emotional overload and pervasive thinking

Incessant thoughts seek to hold you captive while something much bigger and better is going on. Stepping out of your mind and into the awareness of this universal moment is not only possible, it's essential. Freedom, wonder, and total body happiness awaits!

Goodbye, nostalgia! Hello, Thanksgiving! Appreciation journals for the win.

As the holiday season approaches, so does nostalgia. The word itself is blended from Greek and Homeric words, combining both "homecoming" and "ache." It's a sentimental, melancholy longing for the past. 

Whether or not we genuinely long for the past, that nostalgic feeling is triggered by smell, music, and weather, so it's no wonder that this season transports us! Among all the ordinary, forgotten events of childhood and beyond, our repeated annual traditions have worn deep grooves in us, like the groove of Bing Crosby's "White Christmas," which is playing somewhere right now whether you like it or not. (I'm currently playing it. I like it.)

Whether it's the clean, cold smell in the air on Thanksgiving day, the taste of turkey, or just too many hot spiked ciders, we can easily find ourselves in that holiday time machine that our brains have built for us. Oh what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open time machine, right? Sure, it can be! 

But picture Scrooge beyond the windowpane, during his visit with the Angel of Christmas Past. We can't interact with our memories. Whether they're positive or negative, there they stand, out of reach yet sometimes holding tremendous emotional power over us in the present. When our minds journey to the unchangeable past, what judgments does it make?

Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now describes how, when thoughts are in the past, we either deem the past or the present to be better. Preferring the past can keep us from feeling at peace with the present: we want things back the way they were, and that's impossible. A painful past can also keep us from fully appreciating the present. Some of us "hate the holidays" because of the unfulfilled expectations and psychological injuries of childhood, formative years, or adulthood before dramatic changes like death, divorce, or disease. It's all what you make of it.

If you're like me, holiday memories are like most memories: a blend of happy and horrible. Now that I'm a grown-ass lady, I choose to take the good and leave the bad as much as possible. I'm cultivating the positive traditions that I want to create, like hosting a holiday party for friends. And, I'm making a special effort to focus on the present, and the positive, every day. 

Meet my appreciation journal. Each night, I write down 3 things to be thankful for that day. I've been doing this for a month so far, and almost immediately, I noticed myself reframing my thoughts of the whole day around the good things that happened. This practice grounds me in the present, and it makes me feel wildly fortunate and thankful, which is a total mood enhancer.

My journal.

Awareness of the present is the antidote to preoccupation with the past, and it can also cure melancholy. It works for both past-preferential and present-preferential nostalgics. Those terms sound real right? I invented them, but it's true. The cure for dwelling on how shitty everything used to be is realizing, well, it's not now! The cure for dwelling on how much more awesome everything used to be is realizing, well, lots of things are still awesome! It's hard not to feel more positive when you pause each night to think of the good things. 

A surprise benefit of writing daily appreciations is realizing that even some difficult moments have a silver lining, and thus can be reframed into good things. That's called cognitive restructuring (an actual term) and it will help you move past negative thoughts and experiences. It challenges the black-or-white, irrational thinking that leads to pessimism and the belief that negative experiences are likely to repeat. Recognizing the abundance of positive experiences we have every day tells us, instead, that positive experiences are likely to repeat. The result is a happier, more optimistic, more confident you. Appreciation journals for the win.

Thanksgiving might not be perfect this year. Not for those who can't afford a special meal, maybe not for you and your crazy family, and maybe not for me and mine. Addiction is a disease my dad has, and he's recently relapsed after a few solid years of sobriety. This turn in his life, and in our relationship, breaks my particularly vulnerable holiday heart. 

And although undeniably sad and stressful events like this one have often sucked me down the rabbit hole of similar holiday hurts -- all those unfulfilled expectations of how things ought to have been -- I now refuse to dwell on that. I recognize that doing so would draw my energy into a negative void. Instead, I choose to radiate joy and love toward the people in my life who, like me, are doing their best to live well and feel connected. This doesn't mean I forsake my dad: I hold a positive vision for his health and recovery.

Alongside any and all challenges, there is always someone or something to appreciate, and that's who and what deserves our attention most. Thank who there is to thank today, love who there is to love, and remember that one of those people is yourself. Happy Thanksgiving!

This is the thing that frustrates me most about life.

Here it is: the nature of life itself is just so damn needy. Do any states of being last? Anything worth having, loving, or feeling requires such continuous cultivation to maintain! You're never done 'til you're dead.

Let's say you've worked for weeks to create a new habit of daily exercise, better nutrition, daily meditation, or a more positive mental attitude. You begin to enjoy enormous benefits and results! You've got more energy; your body's feeling firm and flexible; your relationships are thriving; and most importantly, you're HAPPY. 

"How could I have lived any other way?" you ask yourself. The old you with those silly old problems seems like some kind of alien. You're convinced that, "this is me, from now on. I have arrived." 

Inevitably, obstacles and distractions creep into our positive practices, sometimes so subtly that you don't even notice until the damage is done. Riding a high of the arrival of health and happiness, you've mistakenly thought that you can work a little less hard and be a little less consistent. 

So it goes. What took days, weeks, or months to achieve takes half the time to let fall by the wayside. Suddenly, your pants are tighter. You've just snapped at your spouse. Last week, you were mesmerized by a beautiful sunset: your whole being buzzed with profound appreciation as you stood and screamed, "life is beautiful!!!" Who the hell was that? This week, you don't even notice the sunset because you're making a beeline for whiskey, french fries, and cigarettes. Instant gratification begins to take precedence; hard work goes bye bye.

Incredibly frustrating, don't you agree? There is, in fact, no such thing as arriving. There is, in fact, only continuous maintenance of how and who you want to be. It's a cycle of living well, riding the high, followed by a fall off the wagon, the return of suffering, and the need to start over and over again. 

Just noticing that you're feeling better as a result of positive behaviors ought to be accompanied by a little reminder that cultivation is the true cure! Wellness lies in the positive behavior itself, not in the outcome. We want to believe that our efforts are a one-time payment; we will receive something everlasting in return; we will be happy forever thereafter. But we've ridden the cycle full circle, and we've come to know that this is not the case. 

So, just keep pedaling. You will gain speed, you will gain altitude, oxygen will flood your blood and you'll feel fan-fucking-tastic! Then, from time to time, you'll hit a banana peel, or get distracted by something shiny. That's okay; it's frustrating but it's life. Mindfulness is noticing when your focus has wandered; it's the strengthening of your mind's capacity to bring you back to the calm, peaceful, loving self that enables you to behave in ways that benefit you and those around you. The more you practice this resiliency, the faster you'll notice that you've strayed, and as a result, you'll fall less far.

News Flash! You are not your worst moments.

When that thing you said repeats in your mind like an overplayed song...

When a choice you made has affected the course of your life, and you wonder if your choice was right or wrong...

The urge to change something that happened long ago... to go back in time; rewrite your history...

Your most embarrassing, painful, or regrettable moments repeated again and again...

Few but Zen monks keep their minds completely focused on the present. Assuming you're not a Zen monk, repetitive thoughts affect you. Repetitive thinking can be positive when you're savoring past positive moments, or positively anticipating a moment in the future, but more commonly, repetitive thought is like a plague. It's the negative past moments, or the worrisome future moments, that intrude into our experience of the present.

By calling to mind past negative experiences, we relive them. Your thoughts are intangible, yet your body reacts the same way to things that are actually happening as it does to the memories that you are reliving. Think about a heated argument in the past, and your blood pressure rises in the present. Walk your mind through your most embarrassing moment, and your cheeks flush, your heart speeds, your breath comes out in a huff as you shake your head to will it away.

Repeatedly reliving past negative moments causes stress to accumulate in the body as if those experiences were actually happening over and over again. You age yourself when you live the past more than once. And whenever you relive a negative moment, you add to your stored consciousness of negative experiences. This increases your belief that those same negative experiences will repeat in the future, which leads to increased stress, anxiety, and even depression.

So, cut the shit. Here's a secret (that isn't really so secret): there's not a person on Earth who has never put their foot in their mouth, made a difficult decision that they sometimes question, or fallen up the stairs in front of the football team (metaphorically speaking). Life's not perfect, and you're not perfect. There's a reason why they say "shit happens."

Also, shit happens for a reason. Not only in the sense that everything happens to make you who you are and bring you to where you're going. Not being able to let go of a negative memory happens for a reason, too. Repetitive thinking is your mind calling upon you to face that past experience, head on. Acknowledge it, and accept it, and let it hit you full force. Ask yourself:

• Why is this memory powerful enough to keep me mentally stuck on it? 
• What did that experience signify to me? 
• What can I learn from it? 
• How can I behave, now, in order to fill my mind with new positive experiences?

When you mess up, it can feel like the whole world is watching, and judging. They're not. It's you who's watching most closely and judging most harshly.

When you mess up, it can feel like you just lost your last chance at happiness, or success. You didn't. Your life is so full of opportunities that you can't possibly entertain them all. To see even one or two of those opportunities, you have to be mentally and emotionally open and present. You can't see that your best moment is happening, or is just around the corner, if you're stuck thinking about your worst moment in the past.

The negative intrusive memories that plague you all have something in common: together they tell the story of your fear. You are reliving past events because you're afraid that event will recur, or you're afraid that event defines you.

"I can't be confident, because I am a person who has had this embarrassing moment." 
"I won't say the right thing because one time, I said something totally wrong."  
"I'm not good at that. Once, I failed at that so miserably that I'll never try it again."

Stop. You are not your worst moments. Replace those old scripts.

"I choose to be confident. Confidence invites a positive outcome."
"I choose to communicate, honestly and wholly. Communication connects me to those I care about."
"I'm thankful for what I learned from that experience. Now, I know more, and I can try again."

Past failure doesn't ensure future failure; only preoccupation with failure does. Each moment is a blank slate upon which you have the enormous opportunity to write your own history. Approach this moment with openness, a willingness to learn, a willingness to listen, apply, and try.

When a negative thought recurs in your mind, remember: reliving the past ages you. Why multiply your negative experiences? Painful things have happened, but they do not need to happen again and again in your mind. Breathe, experience the present, and engage with it as the person you want to be. The past does not define you; the present does.