Meet Narl.

Narl is the little tiny orange bird that’s been on your shoulder your entire life, and you may not have even noticed it as it’s really small. They fly onto your shoulder to let you know if there’s danger around. They’re constantly scouring for signs of danger to alert you to. They also helpfully remind you when you’re hungry, when you’re thirsty, and when a report you’ve been asked to do is due.

Some of Narl’s comments are helpful, but unfortunately they also repeatedly tell you things over and over again that you already know, along with a whole load of other things you don’t need to know. They ask you questions about yourself, about people at work, and criticise you for not getting something right. Sometimes Narl can just be distracting with random comments about things which have no relevance.

Narl is your thoughts. Every time Narl flies onto your shoulder to tell you something, that’s a thought popping into your head.

The good news is that there is a way to stop being run by your thoughts, and disengage from the endless stream of Narl’s chirping.

• Notice the thought.

• Accept that it’s there, don’t resist it.

• Release the thought.

• Land back into whatever it is you were doing.

Know that you have the ability to notice Narl (the thought), accept that it’s there, and let it go, because most of the time you don’t need it. Then you can get back into whatever you were doing and engage with it more fully.

As I mentioned last week, on average you’ll have over 6,000 thoughts a day. So that’s 6,000 times Narl could be flying onto your shoulder to tell you something. They are mostly random thoughts that the brain is creating to try and keep you safe, just as autonomous as the brain telling you to breathe, eat and heal. Most of the time you’ve heard the thoughts before, and for the majority you don’t need to do anything with them at all. But Narl’s there, constantly chirping away in your ear.

Narl can even trigger stress responses and flood your body with cortisol and adrenaline that can make you feel like there’s a very real threat. That sort of response was incredibly helpful thousands of years ago when you would probably have been living off the land, and when danger could kill you instantly. Nowadays most risk isn’t going to kill you. And if there is a real situation where there’s a serious threat, say a truck swerves across the road toward you while you’re driving to work, you’ll deal with it. Narl is really helpful then, and may save your life. Your fight or flight response will kick in, and you’ll do what you can to keep yourself safe.

But most of the time Narl is just giving you thoughts you don’t really need. For a lot of people, they don’t even notice Narl is on their shoulder at all, and they end up living in a world run by their thoughts (run by Narl) and feel like they’re suffering. Other people can tell they’re having the thoughts but still can’t stop reacting to them, so Narl still ends up running their life and they feel like they’re struggling. Both of these are perfectly normal and are represented by the states of ‘Suffering’ and ‘Struggling’ in the Interference Window.

This is based on over 3,000 peer-reviewed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy studies over the past thirty years. Many showing that if you can notice a thought, accept that it’s there, and release it, it massively reduces the impact and interference it causes and lets you land back into your life and engage with whatever you’re doing.

In future posts, there’ll be more about Narl and how to notice and release your thoughts. This reduces the interference they cause, so you can engage more fully in life and whatever it is you’re doing.

But for now, keep an eye out for Narl today or tomorrow. See if you can notice a thought come, and maybe even picture a little orange bird sitting on your shoulder chirping away in your ear telling you the thought. They are there to try and help you but they’re probably just getting in the way.

Imagine you see a dog and want to pat it, even though it looks a bit rough so you ask the owner if it’s okay. They tell you that he’s fine but has bitten people before so suggests you don’t pat him. But you think the dog seems ok, so you stroke its head gently. It growls a bit but then wags its tail and looks excited, so you smile at the owner, and carry on with your day.

It was a bad decision as you were warned by the owner that you could have been bitten. But it was a good outcome, so when you think about the experience it may feel like a good decision. Nothing about the decision changed just because the bad thing didn’t happen. You still chose to ignore a warning from the owner, and the fact that it worked out doesn’t mean it was a good decision. But you might well look back and think it was.

The reverse is true too. You can make a good decision and have a bad outcome. An example of this is a couple I follow on Instagram called Expedition Ola. They go to Mexico, find street dogs that have been abandoned, and rescue them. They recently found a dog they called Birdie who’d been hit by a car. Both her back legs had been shattered and her spine broken. They took him back to California and looked after him but the big question was should Birdie have her legs amputated. So they took her to multiple vets, did lots of research and spoke to every expert they could find. The response was very clear: the best thing for Birdie would be to have her legs amputated. Even though the amputation carried risk, the danger of doing nothing was that the wounds she had from dragging her broken legs around behind her would become infected. That likelihood of an infection was high which had a strong possibility of being fatal. So they decided to have her legs amputated, and initially it was successful. But a few weeks later, there were complications and Birdie was not healing the way they’d hoped. The hundreds of thousands of followers kept checking their insta feed for an update, and while Birdie is in a better place than she was, she’s not out of the woods yet. Was it a bad decision? The answer is no. It was still a good decision based on the evidence they had available, it just wasn’t the good outcome they’d hoped for.

It’s easy for thoughts to creep in, telling you that you made a bad decision, because the outcome wasn’t good, but that doesn’t change the original decision making process.

The academic term for this is outcome bias, and it was first demonstrated by Jonathan Baron and John Hershey in 1988. Since then it has been replicated many times, including in 2023 with a much bigger effect. In that experiment, participants were all given the same information about a situation, and asked to judge whether a good decision had been made. Those that were later told that the outcome was bad, said it was a bad decision. So it’s not about judgment at all. Your mind brings in information and tells a story that only exists after the fact, and uses it to be right about the past.

It can be really helpful to check in on our own thoughts after we make decisions, as our mind can misremember the decision making, based on a surprising outcome. If you have a bad outcome, it doesn’t mean your decision was bad. And if you pat a dangerous dog and don’t get bitten, that outcome doesn’t change the fact that the decision wasn’t smart. So today, if something doesn’t go the way you wanted after you made a decision, see if you can ask yourself whether you made a good decision - regardless of the outcome. Because sometimes our mind will rewrite the past based on the outcome, and that’s not helpful at all. It can influence future decisions, and could make you more likely to pat a dangerous dog, and next time it might not end so well.

Are you someone that feels like their day is constantly tied up in thoughts, or maybe you’re really busy all the time and don’t feel you have much time for thoughts at all.

The average number of thoughts a person has every day has been floating around for years, ranging from around 100 thoughts a day, to an exaggerated myth that we had over 55,000. Thankfully now it has been scientifically studied by Dr. Jordan Poppenk and Julie Tseng at Queen’s University who used fMRI technology to detect “thought worms,” which are consecutive moments when a person is focused on the same idea.

You may or may not be surprised to know that the number of thoughts you have every day is around 6,200.

If you were to consider that every single one of those thoughts could be a thought that you think you need to do something with, that’s a lot of thoughts in one day to deal with. On average, that would be one thought every ten seconds for the whole of your day, including when you’re sleeping.

Imagine you had over six thousand emails coming into your inbox every day, for your entire life. There’s no way you would be able to read all of them. It would consume most of your day logistically, and leave you exhausted and potentially overwhelmed to actually do anything meaningful with them. Let alone what actually needed to be done during the day.

Fortunately the brain’s clever and it makes things simpler by filtering through most of them without you even being aware of it. This is made easier because the vast majority of these thoughts are repeated from earlier in the day, and thoughts you’ve already had many, many times. The good news is most of these thoughts you don’t need to do anything with. But for a lot of people these thoughts can seem to be very real and important pieces of information, or something that we have to act on.

So it’s no wonder that life becomes pretty exhausting if you spend all your time living in your head. The thing is, you don’t have to do anything with nearly all of your thoughts. Nothing at all - they are just repeated scenarios or ideas or comments that you’ve had loads of times already, or are just irrelevant thought bubbles. That is a good reason to just let them go, because trying to hold on to them is impossible, and mentally trying to is exhausting.

Learning to let them go isn’t always easy, but is possible, and the best way to start is ironically to notice you’re having the thoughts at all. From there you can learn to create space from them, and release them, knowing that you don’t need most of the 6,200 thoughts you have anyway. More on how to do that in upcoming articles.

For now, it can be helpful to focus on simply noticing your thoughts. So see if you can catch yourself the next time you find yourself thinking about something in your head. Just remember that it’s one of around 6,200 thoughts you’ll be having that day, and that it’s very likely not something you need to do anything with at all.

Have you ever sent an email or a message to someone and expected them to reply quickly, but hours or even days pass, and still nothing arrives in your inbox.

It’s quite possible that thoughts start appearing as to why they haven’t replied: did they take offence, didn’t they understand it, are they ignoring you? These thoughts might come in immediately, or take a little longer, but whenever they drop, they’re usually not based on facts at all. They’re just assumptions we make, but these thoughts can seem as real as if they were actual facts. The mind can then trigger stress responses as it reacts to the ‘facts’, when all they really are, are stories you’ve created about why you didn’t get a response, in place of any real information.

If this sounds like you, you’re not alone as there is evidence that demonstrates this is what the mind can do when it doesn’t have all the information. In his legendary book ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’, Daniel Kahneman calls this “what you see is all there is” (WYSIATI). That’s when the mind treats whatever information it’s got on hand as the whole picture and builds a really confident story from it. He’s shown that it doesn’t take long for the mind to think the reason you’ve created in your head is actually fact, even when you haven’t got any information as to why they haven’t replied, just the radio silence. You jump to conclusions, possibly thinking that it’s helpful, but typically it’s making things worse.

There’s no way you’d accept a decision in a courtroom that reached a verdict moments after the opening statements had been given, without any evidence being heard from either side. But for some reason, we accept the stories our mind creates with even less information, and don’t question whether or not there’s anything to back it up. Often this all happens so quickly that we don’t even notice the thought has triggered the story, which we then take as fact.

So today, see if you can notice a thought that jumps to a conclusion quickly in your head, without any real evidence. Try and notice whether you actually know this to be true, or whether it’s a thought that’s crept in and created its own outcomes. It’s not always easy to spot, but most of us do it, and it’s a really helpful skill to keep ourselves in check, and not getting stressed out about something that is probably not even true.

Most people would like a gap sometime on Sunday night for a quiet moment to yourself, but even when a space appears, within seconds a thought jumps in. Your brain has started running through tomorrow’s to-do list anyway, circling back to something someone said last week, or drafting a reply to a message you haven’t even opened yet.

It’s as if thoughts just start playing in your head without being asked for, and you inadvertently engage with them anyway.

In addition to the challenge of not getting the benefits of some quiet time, there’s often an additional layer that can feel like something’s wrong when this happens. Maybe you tell yourself you’re bad at relaxing, or you give yourself a hard time for not knowing how to switch off. It’s like you know you want to be relaxing on a Sunday night, but these thoughts just keep popping in.

It might feel frustrating, like your mind is letting you down by not being able to let you enjoy the gap, but it’s often the brain doing exactly what it’s been developed to do. Neuroscientist Marcus Raichle identified a specific network in the brain that switches on precisely when you’re not focused on anything external. It’s called the ‘ Default Mode Network’, and was first identified in 2001 and has been widely replicated since. When your attention isn’t occupied by a task, this network activates and starts generating thoughts on its own without any instruction from you to do it at all.

It's a bit like hearing a podcast playing on a device in another room that had been left on. You can't quite place where the sound is coming from, but the device is simply doing what it was programmed to do, quietly filling the silence whether you wanted it to or not.

And the same is often true of your mind when it generates thoughts during quiet times. The brain is doing what this particular network is meant to do. It’s very similar to the way your lungs keep breathing without you deciding to take each breath. It happens automatically in the background, without you having any say in the matter.

This is important to be aware of because so much of the discomfort and frustration around a wandering mind comes from the negative meaning we attach to it. If you believe a quiet moment should be completely silent and free from thought, then when a thought finds its way straight into the gap, it can feel like you’re doing something wrong. So you start trying to force stillness, which usually just adds another layer of effort and frustration on top of what was already there.

But the wandering mind is likely just the default mode network doing its job. It’s not worth berating yourself over, and making the situation worse. Often it's this extra layer (the thoughts about the situation) that create most of the stress, way more than the situation itself.

You can still aim to get to a place where there is silence, or peacefulness, through learning new ways of letting thoughts go, or through meditation or another technique (and there’s more about that coming soon). But it’s important not to give yourself a hard time just because you have a gap and a thought creeps straight in. It’s your brain doing what it’s meant to be doing, and that’s ok.

The next time your mind drifts off somewhere uninvited, in the middle of trying to rest, or in a moment you’d hoped would be still, see if you can notice it without adding a judgement on top. It's simply the brain running its normal background process, the same way it always has.

You don’t always have to silence your mind, but if you can recognise the activity for what it is, and not give yourself a hard time in the process, it’s more likely to make your Sunday night a little less stressful.

Within moments, your mind starts asking questions.

What if I’ve made the wrong decision? What if they don’t like it? What if this all goes badly?

It feels productive, as though you’re preparing yourself for what might come next. In reality, you’re often solving the same problem for a second or third time.

Our brains evolved to anticipate threats. This tendency, sometimes called a negativity bias, helped our ancestors survive by paying more attention to potential dangers than opportunities. Even today, our brain continues scanning for what could go wrong, often long after we’ve already made a thoughtful decision. Research in neuroscience suggests that once the brain perceives uncertainty, networks involved in threat detection can remain active, even when there is no immediate danger. For people experiencing ongoing stress, this effect can be even stronger.

The interesting thing is that if you’re someone who tends to worry, you’ve almost certainly already considered what could go wrong before you acted. You weighed the options, thought through the risks and decided the action was worth taking.

Continuing to ask “What if it goes wrong?” afterwards is not likely to improve the outcome. It just keeps your nervous system believing that danger is still present.

It’s a bit like packing for a hike. Before you leave home, you check the weather, pack some food & water, throw in a rain jacket and maybe a first aid kit. That’s sensible preparation.

But once you’re walking, you don’t stop every hundred metres to unpack your bag and check that the rain jacket is still there. It doesn’t make you safer. It just slows you down and distracts you from the track beneath your feet, and what’s coming up.

Our thinking often works the same way.

Once you’ve prepared and committed, rather than thinking ‘what if it goes wrong’ a more useful question becomes:

What if it goes well?

This isn’t about blind optimism or pretending things can’t go wrong. It’s about reminding your brain that success is also a possible outcome, one that our threat-focused minds often overlook.

From the perspective of The Interference Window, this small shift reduces unnecessary interference. Your attention moves away from imagined threats and back towards the present moment, where your experience is actually unfolding. As interference reduces, your thinking becomes clearer, your body settles and you are better able to respond to whatever happens next.

There’s another benefit too.

Each time you deliberately ask “What if it goes well?”, particularly in everyday, low-risk situations, you’re giving your nervous system evidence that uncertainty does not always lead to danger. Over time, noticing that things do sometimes go well, helps build new expectations about the future.

Studies on neuroplasticity also show that repeated patterns of thinking strengthen the neural pathways that support them. The more often you practise balanced, adaptive thinking, the easier it becomes for your brain to access those patterns again.

Start with the small things, like

- When you send an email

- When you make a phone call

- When you suggest an idea in a meeting

- When you try something new.

Step 1: Notice:

See you can notice when your mind asks, “What if it goes wrong?”

Step 2: Acknowledge:

Thank it for trying to protect you.

Step 3: Ask a better question:

then gently ask a different question.

“What if it goes well?”

You may not know the answer yet, but your brain doesn’t need certainty to begin relaxing. It simply needs to recognise that safety and success are both genuine possibilities.

(You can find out more about reducing stress through understanding your thoughts at www.InterferenceWindow.com)

It’s like when a message arrives from your manager, or someone makes a comment that normally wouldn’t bother you. On another day you may have handled it calmly, yet this time it suddenly feels overwhelming or personal.

Experiences like this often confuse people because the reaction can feel disproportionate to what is actually happening. We begin questioning ourselves and our thoughts become louder, harsher and more urgent. We may think we are failing, overreacting or not coping properly.

Sometimes we don’t even realise our nervous system was already under strain before the situation happened.

If you observe your own experience carefully enough, you start noticing something important. The mind doesn’t operate separately from the body and nervous system. The state of your nervous system changes the way thoughts are experienced, interpreted and believed.

When the nervous system is regulated, thoughts often feel manageable. There is more perspective, flexibility and emotional space around them. When the nervous system becomes overloaded, the exact same thoughts can suddenly feel intense, convincing and difficult to step away from.

It can help to think of the nervous system like the operating conditions of the mind.

This is often why people become confused by their own reactions. They judge themselves purely by the content of their thoughts without recognising the condition of the system those thoughts are arising within.

Psychiatrist Dan Siegel describes this through the idea of the “window of tolerance”. When we are within this window, we are generally able to think clearly, regulate emotions and respond with perspective. As stress accumulates and the nervous system becomes more activated, we can move outside that window into states of overwhelm, anxiety, irritability or shutdown.

In these moments, thoughts can become far more believable.

A passing concern suddenly feels catastrophic. A small mistake feels deeply personal. An unanswered message feels threatening. The mind starts searching for danger, certainty or control because the nervous system itself no longer feels safe or settled.

There isn’t anything wrong with you. Your nervous system is doing exactly what it’s meant to do, trying to keep you safe.

Your thoughts can sometimes work like a smoke alarm that has become too sensitive.

A smoke alarm is designed to protect you. When there is real danger, it activates quickly and loudly to get your attention. The problem is that over time, some alarms become so sensitive they start reacting to burnt toast, steam from the shower, or someone cooking dinner. The alarm still feels urgent and real, even when there is no actual fire.

Our minds and nervous systems can work in a very similar way.

After stress, pressure, uncertainty or difficult experiences, the brain can become highly alert to potential threats. A delayed email reply starts to feel like rejection. A small mistake at work feels catastrophic. A difficult conversation feels unsafe before it has even happened. Thoughts begin generating warnings and predictions, and the nervous system responds as though danger is present right now.

At that point, it is not just the thought creating the experience. The body is involved too. Heart rate increases, muscles tighten, breathing changes, and urgency takes over. This is why people often say, “I know I’m overthinking, but it still feels real.”

The important thing about this metaphor is recognising that the alarm itself is not the enemy. The alarm is trying to protect you. The real skill is learning to recognise when the system is accurately detecting danger and when it has simply become over-sensitive.

One practical way to work with this during the week is to pause and ask yourself:

“Is there an actual fire right now, or is my alarm reacting to a bit of harmless smoke?”

That small moment of awareness can create enough space to stop feeding the interference. It allows the nervous system to settle before making decisions, sending messages, reacting emotionally or spiralling further into thought.

Over time, this builds a different relationship with thinking. Thoughts can still appear, just like alarms can still sound, but they no longer automatically control your state or behaviour.

See if you can catch yourself next time this happens, even if it’s after the event. The more often you notice the alarm without immediately believing it, the more space you create between stress and reaction.

Maybe it was a message from your boss, in interaction with a colleague, or simply one more thing added to an already busy day. On another occasion you may have handled the exact same situation without much difficulty at all, yet this time it suddenly felt like too much.

Experiences like this often confuse people because the reaction can feel disproportionate to what is actually happening. We start wondering why we are reacting this way, why we cannot seem to think clearly or why everything suddenly feels heavier than it should.

Sometimes we don’t even notice it happening at all. We become so mentally involved in the situation, the thoughts and the feelings surrounding it, that everything simply starts feeling like too much. Often the response is to push harder, keep going and try to force ourselves through it, while quietly carrying the feeling that we should be coping better than we are.

But if you observe your own experience carefully enough, you start noticing something important. The exact same situation can feel completely different depending on the state your mind and nervous system were already in before it happened.

Psychiatrist Dan Siegel described this through the idea of the “Window of Tolerance”, the range in which the nervous system is regulated enough for us to think clearly, respond effectively and remain present with what is happening rather than becoming consumed by it.

Inside that window there is more psychological space available. Thoughts still appear, emotions still arise and pressure still exists, but there is enough capacity in the system for perspective, flexibility and choice to remain accessible. Outside that window the mind becomes louder, reactions become faster and even relatively minor problems can begin feeling unusually personal, urgent or emotionally overwhelming.

What narrows the window is often not the single event we blame in the moment, but the accumulation that has been building quietly underneath the surface.

Poor sleep gradually reduces resilience. Constant mental engagement keeps the nervous system activated. Background worry, emotional tension, overstimulation, sustained responsibility without proper recovery and the endless habit of mentally revisiting problems all slowly add load to the system.

It’s similar to trying to run too many applications on a computer at the same time. At first everything still appears functional, but the processing capacity gradually becomes stretched thinner and thinner in the background until eventually something small causes the entire system to slow down or freeze. Most people focus only on the final moment the system struggles, while rarely noticing the enormous amount already running underneath it.

This is one reason why thinking itself can become such an important part of stress. The mind keeps reopening loops, replaying conversations, predicting outcomes and trying to mentally solve situations that cannot yet be solved. Even while sitting still, the body can remain subtly prepared for threat because the mind never fully steps out of the struggle.

Then one more email arrives, one more inconvenience appears or one more interaction feels difficult and suddenly the reaction seems far bigger than the situation itself would appear to justify.

Usually it’s not about that single moment at all. It’s about everything the system has already been carrying before the moment arrived.

This is where awareness becomes incredibly useful. Instead of immediately believing something has gone terribly wrong, or telling yourself you should be handling things better, simply notice what is happening. Notice that your system has had a lot running in the background. Notice the thoughts, the tension and the feelings that are there without trying to immediately fix or judge them. That’s often enough.

Because the moment you stop fighting the fact that stress is happening, a little more space starts to open up around the experience. And from that space, things often begin settling far more naturally than when the mind is trying to force its way back into control.

In many situations it feels like stress is coming from what is happening around you. The meeting, the deadline, the conversation that didn’t go the way you expected, the email that never came. It all feels very real and very justified.

The situation still matters. Some situations are genuinely difficult. But alongside that, something else is happening.

There is what actually happened, and then there is everything your mind adds on top of it.
Most of the stress sits in that second layer.

Someone didn’t call you. That’s the situation.
Then the thoughts start. “Why didn’t they call me?” “They should have called.” “They don’t respect me!” “This always happens.” Before long you are no longer with the simple fact they didn’t call. You’re in a whole world your mind has created around it.

That is where the Interference Window comes in.

It is a way of seeing the gap between reality and everything that gets layered on top of it. The thoughts, the emotions, the assumptions, the judgement. That layer is what drives a lot of the stress we experience day to day.

It’s like a layer running alongside reality. The situation happens, and at the same time your mind is interpreting it, adding meaning, predicting what comes next.

Most people spend a lot of time in that space without realising it.

Thoughts appear all the time, which is what your brain is designed to do. It’s wired to look for danger signals, scanning for risk, trying to protect you, predicting what might happen next. It goes back to our primal origins, and can be helpful in certain situations, but it can also create a lot of unnecessary noise when it’s not needed.

That noise is interference. Not because something is wrong, but because the mind is doing what it’s designed to do.

It pulls attention away from what is actually happening and into a version of events that may or may not be accurate. It can create tension in the body, emotion in the system, and a sense of urgency. From there, your reactions tend to follow and things can soon get out of control.

A useful way to step away from this interference is simply to start noticing what’s happening in your mind.

Notice you are having thoughts, and the story that is forming in your mind. A simple technique used in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is to name the thoughts or feeling your experiencing by saying to yourself: “I’m having the thought that they don’t respect me.” “I’m noticing frustration” or “I’m feeling anxious.”

That small shift creates a bit of space between you and your thoughts.

The situation still exists, and there are still thoughts and emotions. But now there is also an awareness of them, and more room to choose how to respond.

The meeting is still happening. The deadline is still there. The person still said what they said. Now though, when you have noticed the thought, the added layer of commentary in the mind can begin to soften. It doesn’t have the same control over you, or give you the unhelpful sense of urgency that you need to do something with the thought as if it’s the most important thing in the world. It’s not.

With practice, this becomes easier to recognise. Thoughts still come and go, and they tend to have less pull. Attention can return more easily to what is happening around you. Conversations with people feel clearer, and decisions can feel more grounded. There is more capacity to stay with the situation in front of you, rather than being carried away by what the mind is doing with it.

Over time it becomes less about trying to change or control thoughts, and more about seeing them as part of the experience rather than the whole experience, which opens up a different way of moving through situations, especially the ones that would normally create stress.

Just a thought: Today, pick one small moment and notice the story your mind is creating.

What are the actual facts here?
What is my mind adding on top?

You don’t need to change anything. Just notice it.

That awareness alone can begin to loosen the grip of the story.

It’s a great muscle to build so that when you are really struggling, overwhelmed or stuck, you are able to step back and notice the thoughts your mind is creating. That awareness can be all you need to relieve your self from the stress of the situation (which is often the story, not the situation itself).

More at The Interference Window

It’s been a while since I wrote here, and it’s great to be back!

I’ve been developing the Interference Window, a simple way to see how our thoughts create stress and affect performance.

More on that soon, but first I want to shine a light on the role our minds plays in creating stories.

Consider this:

Your manager gave you some feedback recently. It was given professionally, and with positive intent, and most of it was positive. Yes, one part wasn’t, but the overwhelming message was that you did a good job. The trouble is that days later you’re still thinking about that one part.

Your mind added extra stories to it too, so now you’re worried that other people are thinking the same thing, and your job may not be safe. All the positive comments are a distant memory, all you can think about is that one negative piece of feedback.

If it had happened to a friend or family member, you know exactly what you’d be saying to them: “Ignore everything positive your manager had to say as they were probably lying, just take the one aspect that sounded a bit negative, and build as many stories as you can to make yourself feel as bad as possible”. Clearly (or at least hopefully) you wouldn’t say that. So why does your mind start adding all these thoughts?

The good news is that it’s not just you. Psychologists call it ‘negativity bias’, because our brains are wired to pay more attention to negative experiences than positive ones. It’s ironically a design feature that’s meant to help you, by noticing things that are a threat and then directing your body’s resources to it. The trouble is that in today’s world, most of us aren’t likely to be experiencing life or death situations, but our brains haven’t caught up with that, and still treat the situation like a predator.

You might be familiar with these sorts of stories “That comment means they don’t rate me”, “I’m not as good as I thought I was”, “ I better start looking for another job” “Why me?” . Or your stories might go in a different direction “I’m sick of being told off”, “They can stick their job if they don’t value me”. It’s not the feedback that’s the issue. It’s what your mind adds to it.

That’s where the interference comes from.

That’s what’s causing you far more stress than the situation itself.

Now contemplate this story. A child comes home from school after getting feedback from their teacher. “ I can’t stop thinking about what the teacher said. It was only one comment about my handwriting needs to be neater, but on the way home it made me so mad that now I feel sick.” The parent reassured their child that it would be ok, that they’d help them get better, and that the teacher was known for having very high expectations. Nothing made a difference, and at dinner time the child was still noticeably distressed. So the parent handed the child the glass of water from the table, and asked them to hold it out with a straight arm for as long as they could. After about 10 seconds the child started to wince, and soon their arm began to shudder. After a while, the child couldn’t hold it any longer and put it down on the table with a thud.

“What was the point of that?” the child replied frustratedly. The parent responded calmly, “the glass hasn’t changed, it weighed the same after 30 seconds as it did at the start, but for you it felt a hundred times heavier by the end, didn’t it? “Yeah I guess so”, the child conceded. “That glass of water is just like the feedback your teacher gave you today. The longer you hold onto it, the more pain it’s causing you. You can choose to put it down at any time, but there’s going to be a point when it feels too heavy.”

It’s the same with the feedback - the longer you hold onto your thoughts and stories about what the teacher said, the harder it’s going to be.

So next time this happens, see if you can notice these thoughts creeping in. Then ask yourself, are you responding to the feedback you received, or the stories that your mind has constructed around it? Just noticing this difference can reduce the grip that these thoughts have on you, and the power it has over your day. You don’t have to fix anything, or try and feel more positive, you just need to see it for what it is.

If this resonates, put down the glass of water and take a look at interferencewindow.com to see how thoughts are having an impact on you, and what can be done about it.

When we feel we have to go along with a situation that's in contrast, or even conflict, with what we think should be happening, we can get stressed. Take this example of a groundbreaking experiment by Solomon Asch in the 1950s which demonstrates it beautifully.

The group were asked to respond to a series of very easy questions about the length of a straight line. Everyone apart from the one person being assessed were actors, who were all instructed to give the same wrong answer. Despite knowing that the answer they were giving was incorrect, the subject continued to hear the others give the wrong answer time and time again, and also gave the incorrect answer when asked.

This caused stress and frustration because the reality they were experiencing was in conflict with what they thought was how things ‘should’ be.

This experiment has been replicated lots of times over the years, with consistent results showing this ‘groupthink’.

1. Thinking

People in the test got visibly stressed and frustrated by the situation and their thoughts amplified the stress.

When we think things should be a certain way, and they're not, we will invariably get stressed. In this example, the situation doesn't need to be stressful. The others in the group were giving wrong answers and the subject knew it because the questions & answers were so simple. The trouble was that they let thoughts creep in, double guessing, judging, triggering peer-pressure - all of which can add to stress.

2. Unthinking

You can reduce stress by first being aware of the situation and then accepting it, without judgement. By literally accepting what is happening - whether you like it or not - the frustration will dissolve.

3.Syncing

It doesn't matter if you're right or wrong, if you want to reduce stress, accept the situation as it is - in that moment. That doesn’t mean you can’t take action if want to change what's happening in a future moment. But resisting what is actually happening now is futile, and is just going to cause more stress.

This might sound like you're giving in to the situation but it actually takes more strength to accept something when every thought is telling you it ‘should be’ another way.

You can check out Asch's experiment on the Stresslessness YouTube channel.

An example of this from early in my career, was when someone in the team resigned and their manager reacted very angrily. He was furious about how unprofessional it was for her to leave, and got extremely defensive. All she had really done was take an offer to work at a different organisation, but the manager had let his mind and emotions get out of control and taken it as a personal attack on him. He didn't realise this was about her decision to progress her career, and instead viewed it only through the lens of his world view - as if somehow her career decision was based on how it would impact him. 

In Don Miguel Ruiz's bestseller ‘The 4 Agreements’ he explains how when people say or do things, they are expressing their own reality, not yours. By not taking things personally, you avoid being affected by others' opinions and behaviors, which are reflections of their own experiences, which have nothing to do with you. Ruiz suggests that when you take things personally, you become vulnerable to unnecessary suffering and stress.

1.Thinking

When something happens that we see as unacceptable, we would ideally have a rational response. But before we can process things in this way, our mind bypasses the Amygdala (which is what helps our thoughts process rationally), and we react. It may be anger, for others they retract completely, and someone else might seem calm but then the negative emotions come out in other ways.

And when the physiological response to the stress of the situation kick in - such as fight or flight hormones like adrenaline & cortisol - things escalate.

Our mind reacts to the drama, we come up with stories in our head, which adds to the stress.

2. Unthinking

As it's usually the thoughts about the situation ( not the situation itself) that cause the issue, we may not even realise that it's happening.

We take things personally when we see things only from our perspective, failing to realise that it's not about us at all most of the time.

We can learn to unthink about the way we respond and reduce our stress levels.

In the example above, the person resigning was doing it for their own reasons, not to spite their manager. But that's not how the manager saw it, or how it felt.

We can learn to unthink and shift the view from how it affect us to instead consider that it may be nothing to do with us at all. We can detach from these thoughts and not take these things so personally.

We can do this by taking a few deep breaths or literally removing ourselves from the situation in that moment. Then ask the question ‘is this a reflection of their experiences and not a commentary about me?’ Just by recognising we are having these thoughts is a helpful step towards detaching from these emotions and not taking things personally.

You can use some of these methods of staying out of your head here.

3. Aligning

Rather than resisting the situation and fighting against the reality of what is actually happening, accept the situation. You may not like the fact that they resigned but they did. It may be because of your managerial style, but it may be to do with their own career based decisions.

The facts here are:

• They resigned.

That's it. Their decision. They didn't do anything to you. Accept the situation for what it is, not how you think it should be.

When we don't take things so personally, things become a lot less stressful. It can take practice to make the shift, but it can make a big difference.

I used to manage a small business called Sliding Doors, that for several years supported people to find new roles, especially after redundancy. I would regularly see first-hand the personal impact when someone was told that they would be losing their job. This would have the obvious financial implications, but what caught most people off guard was the impact it had on a much deeper level - their identity. 

An example where I saw this on a large scale, was when I worked with a newspaper giant during the closure of their printing operations, where literally everyone at the site was no longer needed as a result of the digital revolution. People who had been printers all their life wrestled with the change that was suddenly thrust upon them.

“What am I going to be if I’m not a printer?” someone asked me. In addition to not being able to see themselves doing another job, there was a different question they were also asking themselves, which was ‘Who am I going to be if I’m not a printer?’.

1. Thinking 

For over 30 years, they’d thought of themselves as a printer. Working through the night to meet a high pressure deadline of getting the papers out by 3am, so everyone in the country could get the news before breakfast. It was more than a job, it was their identity. When they met people at a BBQ they would tell people they were a printer, and had interesting stories about ‘holding the front page’ on September 11, and how in the early days they knew what was happening in the world before everyone else. So when this was taken away from them, it was more than just the job, it rocked the foundations of their whole identity. 

My role in this wasn’t just to help them realise that they had transferable skills like working under pressure, attention to detail, and leading teams. I also needed to help many of them manage the loss of their identity as a printer. 

It’s also the same scenario for educators, when faced with thinking that they were losing their identity as the local teacher. C-Suite executives can find it just as tough when they think they’re not going to have the same respect from their title that they are perceived to have from those around them.

In each example, individuals are so closely identified with their role, that when it’s taken away, there’s pain and worry around who they would be now, if they weren’t a printer / teacher / accountant / CEO / support worker.

The mind gets us so closely identified with our role at work, that when that role is taken away, we question who we really are. There’s nothing wrong with being proud about the work we do, but it can have negative implications if we identify ourselves too closely with it.

2. Unthinking

To be able to detach from this identification we can unthink the way we perceive the roles we have. Shifting the perspective can make a big difference:

Instead of telling yourself  ‘I am a printer’, you can say ‘I am someone who prints”. 

It’s a subtle but very important difference. Rather than being defined by being a teacher - you think of yourself as someone who teaches. This still paints the picture of the work you do, and potentially who you are, and what you value. But you’re not so closely identified with the name of the role, and if it were taken away from you it wouldn’t be an issue.

If your role defines you, it’s not in your control - so when someone takes that job away - or you retire, or take parental leave - it can feel like you’ve lost your identity, who you are. This lack of control can add an extra level of stress. In some situations you’ll feel less of a person, or even grieve the ‘printer’ that was. 

3. Aligning

Thinking of yourself as someone who prints ( or teaches/plays/analyses/cooks/practices law/cleans) - means that the real you is not the printer, you are the person that prints. Not only is this liberating to people who can shift their perspective, it also helps them see that there are many more options for them. 

When an entire industry of printers ceases to exist, it’s very hard to move forward in a positive way. But by aligning yourself with what’s happening, and by accepting that printing newspapers isn’t a viable career any more, it’s easier to stay calm without stressing. It’s from there you can realise that there are jobs out there for people who have your skills (working under pressure / attention to detail/managing people). Otherwise, if you see yourself defined only as being a printer that no-one needs, the impact can be very damaging.

Have a think about how often you say or do things that define you as your role. There’s nothing wrong about seeing yourself as the noun (construction worker/electrician/singer etc) but sooner or later you will no longer have that role - and then you’ll have to experience life without that identity. It’s better to see yourself as someone who does these things (builds/wires houses/sings/parents), which you can enjoy doing, relate to and even be respected for - but you’re not tied to it as part of your identity. 

So next time someone asks you about your job - tell them what you do, rather than what role you have.

Better still, tell them why you do it - that’s far more interesting anyway. 

This was my first go on a VR game in an arcade, and I'll never forget it. I was instantly taken into another world that only existed in my mind, but one which my body was responding to as if it was real. 

That's the magic of a VR headset, and the power of our imagination.  Mark Zuckerberg has invested $50Bn into it,  with a vision that people will literally be living in the Metaverse within a decade. 

Whether that gamble will pay off remains to be seen, but it's a very real example of how we can live in our heads, with no connection to what's happening around us.

1. Thinking 

When you’re living in your head, focusing solely on your thoughts about a situation, you're creating your own reality of how you think things ‘should’ be. Your boss should have realised that your idea was worth backing. It stresses you out, because in your head that's how things should be, and you literally believe that there's something wrong with the world (because your actual reality isn't like that). 

You keep re-living it, going over and over things in your head, buying into the drama of it all - blaming your team mate/ manager/yourself. You may be in a meeting now but your mind is somewhere else. You're consumed by thoughts. 

It's like you're living with a VR headset on. 

It's almost impossible to talk to someone when they're playing VR (ask my kids), and it's the same when we're continuously paying attention to our thoughts about a situation, instead of what's actually happening around us. 

2. Unthinking

First you have to realise you have a VR headset on. That can be done by being aware when you're getting stressed. 

Then, you need to remove the VR headset. Once you've realised you're living in your virtual world, you need to get back into the real one around you. You can do this by taking a couple of deep breaths and really feeling your lungs inflate and relax. Then look at your hand. Not analysing it, or thinking about it - just observing it. 

3. Syncing - getting  back into the real world

Finally see if you can feel the inside of your hand, the blood moving through, and the energy inside it. You can do it with your arm, foot, leg, stomach. It changes the focus off the mind and into your body, giving a different perspective. It'll help you come back into your actual reality. As if you've taken off your VR headset. 

Practise it a few times in different situations, and you'll soon feel a bit more calm, and little less stressed. 

See how often you find yourself lost in virtual thoughts today.  And then see if you can come back to the real world. 

1. Thinking

"I used to race 100m, 200m and 400m and was able to block out all negative thoughts completely and focus solely on the race for that short time. But when you're on your own for 90 minutes, it's impossible to shut thoughts out completely, and it's only a matter of time before a negative thought creeps in, especially in high pressure events." 

2. Unthinking

"So I'm just aware of these thoughts and I don't respond to them during the race, which makes it easier to come back to my plans and what I need to focus on."

We always have a choice whether to respond to thoughts we have, but first we need to be aware of them. Whether you're in an Olympic race or a meeting at work, there are opportunities to become aware of the thoughts we are having. We don't need to do anything with most of them, so today see if you can catch your self when a thought comes in and just be aware of it - try not to respond or react to it, just notice it's there.

3. Syncing

Another great tip Jemima has is that she does not attach all her big goals to her identity. "It's a careful balance of wanting it and believing in yourself that it's possible, but simultaneously not attaching all your well-being and happiness to that outcome, because ultimately there are so many uncontrollable factors".

Acknowledging that we can't control our environment, no matter how much we train/practice/try, is an essential step to aligning with what's happening, rather than resisting or trying to control everything. 

To balance the identity of her athletic achievements, Jemima has other important projects that are aligned with her values, including ‘Play On’, which helps girls stay engaged in sport. You can find out more about this awesome initiative here, and learn about the importance of not getting too attached to outcomes.

 What a legend. Congratulations Jemima! 🏅

1. Thinking

Imagine you're sitting in a queue of cars waiting for a parking space at a really important event that's about to start. It can get stressful pretty quickly. Maybe you start to criticise the organisers for not allocating enough space. Or you blame yourself for not leaving earlier, or your kids/partner/friend because somehow their actions 2 hours ago led to you being in this situation (whether they did or not!).

Stress hormones get released in response to the mind's reaction and the feelings that accompany them make you feel even worse. Although the hormones are designed to help keep you safe (fight/flight etc ) they don't actually help here at all, and tensions heighten. You're now more likely to get into an accident or have an argument, which could ruin your whole event experience much more than being a few minutes late.

Obviously none of these reactions help improve the situation, but we still listen to the mind that gets stressed or angry or worried. We know it doesn't make it more likely to find a parking space, if anything it's risking you being later. But because the occasion is important we somehow justify these reactions, rather than learning to find a less stressful alternative.

To use the Drop the Banana 🍌 analogy, you hold onto the belief that somehow there should be a parking space for you, or that you should have left more time, and you hold on to that thought - even though deep down you know that no matter how much you stress about it, it's not going to make it happen. If you drop the banana (stop blaming others/ yourself/ the world ), you'll be more likely to spot a parking space, than you are if you're distracted by your thoughts.

2. Unthinking

The mind likes to think it's more important than it is, so you buy into all the drama. It's these thoughts about the situation that cause the stress, not the situation itself. You can unthink your way out (and drop the banana) by first becoming aware that you're caught in the drama of thoughts. It's hard to do in the moment when it's highly stressful but you can practice doing it in less incendiary moments, like waiting for a coffee, a bus or even when someone is late to your meeting.

3. Syncing

Next, to drop the thoughts and disconnect from the drama in your mind:

• Focus as much as you can on what's literally happening in front of you.

• Breathe in & out slowly for a few breaths.

• When the next unhelpful thought comes in, don't engage with it, just focus as acutely as you can on what you're actually doing right now.

Waiting in highly charged situations is not ideal to practice being less stressed. Standing in line for a coffee/bus can be a much better time to learn how to drop the banana, and accept the situation, rather than fighting it.

In The Psychology of Waiting, Dr Kate Sweeney studied this and found that you can use the time spent waiting to be a benefit. Rather than getting angry or worried, she says there's the opportunity to use this time to get into more alignment and even use extended waiting periods to do things that will get you into a state of flow (more on flow here).

Try it out next time you are looking for an elusive parking space, or waiting on line for something. Focus more on what's happening around you, and be aware of your breathing. This will help you get out of your head.

The more you can practice being calm in situations where your mind would typically get you sucked into drama, the better your chances of being less stressed when you're in more challenging circumstances.

1. Thinking (Something to think about):

The left hemisphere of the brain is responsible for the processing of information, memories, future ideas and creating order in your world. It’s here that worry originates from thoughts related to potential future scenarios, that may or may not happen.

If the part of the Amygdala in the left hemisphere detects something that appears dangerous, it can trigger an emotional response to prepare you for the danger. The left hemisphere processes the information it gathers and analyses it against things that it’s learnt, or experienced in the past, and creates the expectation of what you feel a situation should look like.

For example, if you’ve asked a colleague to prepare a report, your left brain may generate an expectation that it should be presented in a certain way - with clear coloured graphs for example. So when you’re given the report with no graphs, the right side of your brain experiences what’s happening in the present moment and registers that the report has been written solely with text and contains no graphs. The right brain doesn’t judge whether this is good or bad, it just experiences the current situation.

The left brain, however, is all about judgement and will come crashing in when the information hits the thalamus which usually directs it to the cortex for rational processes, it realises the expectation doesn’t match the reality and sends the data straight to the Amygdala in the left hemisphere. As Daniel Golemen described in his book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, your Amygdala gets hijacked and rational thoughts are ignored.

So the amygdala kicks in and fires off stress hormones to help you deal with the threat that something isn’t right. So if you’ve got to present this report to your boss in an hour, you may get triggered with an angry response where you react instantly to the situation, or maybe fear of being humiliated. The left brain goes into overdrive, and can create more stress through unhelpful thoughts (eg. what if I get fired because of this? How will I keep a roof over my head and feed the family? etc etc)

2. Unthinking (something to stop thinking about)

Whether you like it or not, the situation with the report isn't what you expected. The report doesn’t have graphs, and your expectation was that it should have. This difference between the expectation of your left brain, and the reality of the situation that your right brain is experiencing, is what can cause the stress. It’s what fires off the stories in the left brain, that trigger emotions that result in physiological responses.

If you can sit with the situation, and stay in the right brain, where there is no conflict, you’ll be able to remain present and be well placed to move forward and find a solution.

So how do I do that?...

3 .Syncing

There are different ways you can shift out of the spiralling thoughts in the left brain, such as focusing on what’s happening in your current situation right now, and getting in sync with that.

For example, focus on your breathing. Just listening to each of your slow, calm breaths, can break the circle of unhelpful analytical thoughts in the left brain, and keep you in the right brain, of just experiencing what’s happening right now.

Try it in a low risk situation today, and see whether you can feel the shift away from over analysing thoughts, and into a less stressed state of mind. Practise it a few times, and you’ll be able to use it next time something more important comes up.

1. Thinking (something to think about)

   If you see a shadow in the corner of your eye, your reaction will depend on what your mind thinks is there. If you think it’s a dangerous person, you’ll be flooded with stress hormones to prepare you for conflict or escape. Whether there is someone there or not doesn’t cause those stress reactions, it’s what’s in your mind. That may seem obvious, but it’s an important distinction. We think we’re responding to actual events (ie. there IS a person there and I AM in danger) but we’re actually responding to what we THINK is happening. Our reaction would be very useful if somehow we had a physiological response to danger regardless of whether we knew it was happening -  that even if we didn’t see/hear/smell the danger, our spidey-senses caused us to be instantly ready to protect ourselves. But that’s not the case. We depend on our senses to give us information to let us know if we’re in danger, but it’s our mind’s role to make the call on how we respond. 

   Your brain’s limbic system is responsible for managing emotions and it does a great job of it most of the time. You actually have more control over your emotions than you probably realise. I remember as a kid, there was a time when I was being really shouted at for misbehaving (probably with good reason!), and then the phone rang. I didn’t think my parent would answer it, as things were so heated, but to my surprise they picked up the phone and took the call. I remember thinking that whoever was on the other end was going to be in for a nasty shock and the wrath would be directed at them instead of me. What happened next was the exact opposite though. The call was from  someone at their work, and my parent switched emotions instantly to being polite and jovial. After 5 minutes, they were even laughing with the person on the other end of the phone, and it was as if my berating had never happened. I couldn’t believe my luck - now they were in a good mood, and the telling off would be over! But there was another shock in store for me. As soon as they hung up, they immediately switched back to the angry parent mode, and simply carried on where they left off.

   

2. Unthinking (something to stop thinking about):

   We often feel that the way we respond to a situation is completely outside of our control. It isn’t. It’s based on our thoughts, and experiences of how we’ve responded in the past. And as we saw in a previous blog, Dr Jill Bolte Taylor has shown that our physiological emotional responses last for a maximum of 90 seconds. You can bring the emotion back with another thought if you want, but you don’t have to. Not that every emotion should be stopped or ignored, but if you’re feeling stressed, it’s helpful to be aware that your mind is playing more of a role that it necessarily needs to.

   As Noam Shpancer Ph.D stated in The Three Laws of Emotional Mastery, “emotions and thoughts, are mind events, not world events”. In other words, it’s our thoughts about a situation that cause the emotion not the situation itself.

3. Syncing

   You have more power over your thoughts than you think. Next time you find yourself caught in negative emotions, see if you can snap out of it, even for a second -  Imagine you’ve got a call from someone really important and you have to speak to them right now.  Not always easy, and certainly not possible in all situations for the first attempt, but you may be surprised to find that you can stop the thought (and the emotion). 

   It’s worth trying on low impact situations first, like a bad driver cutting in front of you on the way to work. The more you try, the easier it becomes, and the more likely you’ll be able to get in sync with the world around you, and get out of your head.

   (If the monkey in the ‘Drop the Banana’ video had got a call from their boss, they may well have avoided capture!).

The good news is that there is another way.

1. Thinking (something to think about)

   It's your mind that's causing most of these issues, as you tell your self that things shouldn't be this way. This might come in the form of stress, anger, frustration, anxiety or upset. You may even try and force the situation to be the way you think it should be.

   It's your mental resistance that's causing the issue. As Michael A. Singer captures so well in ‘The Surrender Experiment’ we overlay our own set of preferences onto a situation that are based purely on what we want to happen. He says we can't control what is happening right now (because it's happened), but we can control how we respond. We do this by accepting that it's just our conflict of reality versus our expectation that we have the issue with.

   It's up to us whether we buy into that narrative, or just go with the flow of what life is putting in front of us.

2. Unthinking (something to stop thinking about): Stop thinking it should always be the way you expect it to be.

   You can't change the situation in this instant, but you can change how you respond to your expectations of it.

   If your expectation doesn't eventuate, don't hold on to the thought about why it's not happening the way you wanted, and how that makes you feel.

3. Syncing

   Let go for a moment of how it should be, and get in sync with how it actually is. Watch, listen, feel what's happening around you and get out of your head. Maybe someone didn't call you back when they said they would, or someone refused to do what you asked - again. Whatever it was, accept it for now, whether you like it or not.

   A future moment may be different, but for now accept how it is.

   

   If you can do that, stress will start to dissolve.

After that, you’re just triggering another emotional reaction by hanging onto the thought and re-running it in your mind. Unless you learn to drop the thought (drop the banana 🙊🍌) you’ll keep experiencing it.

1. Thinking (something to think about)

Dr Jill Bolte Taylor, is one of the world’s leading neuroanatomists and the first person to have a TED talk that went viral - ‘ a stroke of insight’. She discovered that when we have a stressful emotion and the body releases chemicals such as adrenaline and cortisol, they are flushed out of our blood within 90 seconds. They’re meant to help us in moments of danger, where we get ready to fight or take flight, and after that we return back to a normal state. But if we keep returning to the thought that triggered the stress hormones, we’ll keep pumping our body full of stress hormones.

If you’ve ever remembered something that someone did to you in the past that made you upset, you may well have experienced the same feelings as if you were in that moment again. The mind can’t tell if it’s a real situation or a thought about one, so it just acts to keep you safe.

2. Unthinking (something to stop thinking about): We all get stressed and angry. But if you can notice and then let go of the thought that made us feel that way, you can return to a state of stresslessness. You don’t have to keep reliving it. Drop the banana (thought) that’s keeping you in the stressful state.

First, you need to be aware that you’re having these thoughts. Most people go through life not even realising that it’s usually their thoughts about the situation causing the stress, not the situation itself.

3. Syncing

So next time you feel stressed about something at work, or at home, don’t fight it but simply be aware of the fact that you’re feeling stressed or angry. If you can notice you’re having these thoughts, it’s a huge step towards being able to let them go.

When you can unthink (detach from the thoughts), the body will physiologically return to a calm state within 90 seconds.

If the thought pops up again, notice it and then take a deep breath. Don’t beat yourself up about having the thought again, the mind is actually trying to keep you safe but you unless you’re actually being attacked, you don’t need it.

Today, and this week, just try and notice the thoughts you are having, especially when you’re feeling stressed, worried or angry. Become aware of the thoughts, and your reaction to them. You may even notice that you are reliving old thoughts, and they’re triggering emotions. Once you can notice your thoughts, you’ll be able to learn to let go of them.

(there’s more about that at www.stresslessness.me and in previous blogs).