MHME 022: How You Can Better Listen To Your Heart to Improve Your Emotional Wellbeing with Guy Lawrence

Humans are built to be resistant to negativity.

That’s our brain’s coping mechanism. It’s psychology. It’s science.

Whatever you’re feeling right now can directly affect your overall health and wellbeing.

Sometimes, the situation that we find ourselves in can be difficult to accept.

Other times, we just let these negative thoughts and emotions take over our lives.

It’s just a matter of how we deal with these thoughts and how we surrender to them.

If you find yourself fighting against negative thoughts, trying to bust yourself out of your negative situation, resisting change, and resisting fate, then this podcast is just perfect for you as it will help you embrace, accept, and play around with your situation to better your emotional wellbeing.

In today’s episode on Emotional Wellbeing, we talk about:

• Listen To Your Heart To Find Your Purpose
• Acceptance Can Help You Learn and Grow
• Resistance is Hardwired Into Our Heart And Brain
• Internal Awareness Paves The Way To Acceptance
• Heart Rate Variability Helps Improve Emotional Wellbeing
• Having A Sense Of Commitment Practices Mindfulness
• Finding The Harmony Within You Makes You Live In The Flow
• Don’t Expect Instant Gratification
• Focus and Inner Awareness Helps Shift Pain and Anxiety Leading To A Better Emotional Wellbeing
• Playfulness Gives You The Freedom To Let Go Of Negativity
• Collaborative Meditation Enhances The Experience

Have you ever felt like you are in some kind of emotional turmoil and just can't seem to get out of your negative situation?

Feeling those negative emotions is normal.

Being frustrated, angry, or agitated is normal.

You can dwell on those emotions and beat yourself up everyday.

Or, you can just leave those emotions behind and start accepting your situation, focusing on the positive, and accepting that growth takes time.

For you to move on, the first step is always acceptance.

Acceptance is a key factor in improving your emotional wellbeing.

Resistance is natural. It's your brain's coping mechanism.

Once it starts thinking that you are going deeper and deeper into a situation that can bring harm to you, it automatically switches on the alarm bell, telling you to turn back and run away.

But running away can only cause your negative emotions to grow bigger and bigger.

What once was a grain of sand or a raisin snowballed and ultimately turned into an avalanche. 

However, by working your way around resistance, you'll know that accepting and playing around it can help you cope better with it.

Minimal stresses and activities can get you back on track and improve awareness.

You might think practicing mindfulness and awareness takes a lot of effort.

However, anything that is done repetitively and consistently can have great effects on yourself. 

Simple exercises such as walking a flight of stairs while counting the steps…

Or closing your eyes and focusing on one thing that's around you can already help you practice mindfulness and awareness.

Then, you can start looking inside you, meditate, and start listening to your heart, picking up your problems one by one, and solving them.

Mindfulness and collaborative meditation enhance the experience and overall effect.

There is something in social connections that urges you to do things.

You can meditate on your own.

But once you start doing it with other people, the experience gets amplified and the learning process is quicker.

Science indicates that meditation can improve your quality of life.

Imagine if you do it with more people.

Sometimes, you just have to realize that there are things that you can and cannot control.

And it is up to you how you want to handle it. 

Stop acting against those negative emotions and start looking inside you.

Meditate and pay attention to what your heart is telling you.

Only then can you move on and start living a better life.

 

 

About Our Guest

Guy Lawrence is a wellness coach and a fitness trainer. He hosts his own podcast “The Guy Lawrence Podcast,” and founded the “Let It In” program, a program that gives people insight on what they can do to achieve awareness, and lean into this life with purpose and vision.

You can connect with Guy on his website.

 

Emotional Wellbeing

Listen To Your Heart To Find Your Purpose

 

• Growing up, Guy had a rebellious side to him and played rugby. But he felt this nagging pull for something more.
• That nagging feeling inside of you gives you a clue about what and where you want to be.
• Guy spent years travelling, jumping from job to job, relationship to relationship.
• He realised later on that he was running on a lot of unconscious behaviours and patterns he assumed to be true about him. 
• Guy started looking at himself more internally and stepped into a world where he felt he had more meaning, more purpose, and more context.
• Listening to your heart and understanding what it is telling you can lead you to parts of you that need help and healing.
• He became a fitness trainer and started his own natural protein supplement company, 180 Nutrition, which became successful.
• Later on, he sold out of his company and started a new project.

Acceptance Can Help You Learn and Grow

• The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a disruption in the lives of others that led them to question their preconceived notions.
• Acceptance is key. Sometimes you just have to walk away.
• Stop looking for external factors that are affecting your life and start looking internally
• Stop trying to dwell in your negative emotions and start realizing that you have full control over how you react to negative situations
• Guy started embodying the person he wanted to become. He started looking at his situation from a different set of eyes.
• He looked at his life experiences and saw the wisdom and lessons he learned and not the stories and things he was attached to.
• Look deep within yourself, find what really wants to come through, then act upon it, nurture it instead of trying to suppress it.

Resistance Is Hardwired Into Our Heart And Brain

• We are hardwired to stay safe so our bodies can maintain the balance.
• Our brain has a defense mechanism wherein once we encounter uncomfortable or painful situations, it automatically hits the brakes and stops you from trying to accept the situation.
• Resistance is natural, especially when you step out of your comfort zone.
• But there is an awareness, a curiosity that something is not quite right underneath.
• In your heart you may know the answer, but you refuse to listen to the message.
• When you don’t address your problems from the moment it appears, it only gets bigger and bigger until it becomes too much to handle.
• Guy had the opportunity to learn not to shy away from what he was dealing with and accepted the resistance. From then, everything started to flow again. 

Internal Awareness Paves The Way To Acceptance

• Focusing internally helps you realize that there are negative emotions inside of you that you have been all too familiar with and have been unconsciously disrupting your inner peace
• Awareness helps you remove resistance and put you back to the path of acceptance.

Heart Rate Variability Helps Improve Emotional Wellbeing

• The heart directly affects the brain which then, signals resistance.
• The heart rate variability assists us in improving our emotional wellbeing.
• Stop and find the present moment. Bring awareness to who you are at this moment to reconnect with yourself.

Having A Sense Of Commitment Practices Mindfulness

• Simple thought practices can help cut disruptions and bring you back to the moment.
• It’s similar to going to the gym. The repetitions of the work you put in bring the rewards later.
• Bringing mindfulness and establishing consistency of habit allow you to reconnect with yourself

Finding The Harmony Within You Makes You Live In The Flow

• Everything around us has its own rhythm and harmony. All we need to do is to listen to our heart to find ours.
• Once we find our harmony, we are able to live in flow, bringing mindfulness and acceptance into our lives.
• Everything is connected, but for most of us, we’ve lost that synchronicity.

Don’t Expect Instant Gratification

• Finding harmony and acceptance is not instantaneous. It’s a practice that builds up slowly but surely and not something that happens overnight.
• Anything that’s worth doing and having in life is done with love and labor.

Dealing With Pain

• People with pain and anxiety feel the weight of the world. It gets heavier and heavier, and we feed into that.
• Find a way to break the pattern of anxiety and suffering by practicing mindfulness and meditation. Give your brain something else to focus on.
• The practice of proprioception or awareness of the body or brain helps you bypass pain and anxiety.
• By doing that for a couple of weeks, the pain management and anxiety levels will shift considerably.

Playfulness Gives You The Freedom To Let Go Of Negativity

• Playing with your positive emotions and positive thoughts gives you a sense of openness.
• When you play, you give yourself this freedom and a suppression of the filter of your disbelief.
• Look for the joy around you and nurture the positivity in your heart.

Collaborative Meditation Enhances The Experience

• Guy ran a free mini live retreat online in April. Meditating with more people helps you gain experience, allowing you to learn quicker, even through virtual meditation.
• Social connections help you commit to meditation.
• Simple meditative exercises help improve your quality of life.

 

Previously Recommended Resources:

Articles

 

• Cheng et al, (2019) Psychobiotics in mental health, neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1021949819300158

• Prof T. G. Dinan  & Prof. J. F. Cryan : Melancholic microbes: a link between gut microbiota and depression? https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/nmo.12198 

• Dr. James Doty: The Alphabet of the Heart https://jamesrdotymd.com/alphabet

 

Books

 

• Psychobiotics Revolution by Scott C Anderson: http://psychobiotic-revolution.com. 

• Memory Wise - Dr. Anne Unkenstein plus blurb 

 

The Biggest Takeaway about Emotional Wellbeing

How you respond to situations plays a big role in how your life can go and how it can improve your emotional wellbeing. You can dwell in the pain and anxiety, or you can accept the emotional baggage and play around it.

Quotable “And moments of disruption like right now can be a significant lens, a trapdoor moment which drops us into the unexpected and how we respond and how we feel, whether that be pain, overwhelm, anxiety...but on the other side, awareness, growth, acceptance, and letting go.” - David Norris

What was your BIGGEST takeaway from this episode? 

 

All the best 

David 

P.S. Did you get the free guide?  If not, here’s the link

 

Disclaimer: Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.