WHAT MOVES ME FORWARD? part 3 of 4

By: Mark Frentz
www.akerahomes.com
mfrentz@akerahomes.com

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Moving Past Fear

In the first post of this series I discussed the fact that our 'reptilian brain' or limbic system is very good at reacting to situations. One of the most interesting things, for me, about our limbic system is that it doesn't matter whether a situation is real or imagined, we react the same. A quick example before we get into what you can do to help calm this part of your brain: If you saw a grizzly bear when you were walking through the forest, what would you do? Now what if you saw a huge dog, but thought it was a grizzly... what would you do? What if it was simply a clump of trees, but you thought it was a grizzly? Last question... What if you are laying in bed at night and imagine walking in a forest and coming across a grizzly? What is interesting about our limbic system is that whether a threat is real or even simply imagined, we will kick our sympathetic system into high gear. What this means is basically that adrenaline and cortisol are released by our brains into our body. This has a few physical affects in our body which include: restricted blood flow to our 'thinking/logical' brain, increased heart rate and breathing, tunnel vision, and restricted blood flow to our digestive system. When you are in danger, these are great things in many ways. When you are not in danger, they are terrible. If your sympathetic system is often or consistently engaged you will use up a lot of things in your body you need and can actually get sick more often as your immune system is compromised.

The Answer to Your Problems

The answer to reacting instead of thinking is your parasympathetic system! This is the system in your brain that slows the entire process down and allows you to digest and think again. If you want to do research on this look up the vagus nerve and how to activate it. For the purposes of this post I will give you a few ideas that help in allowing you to think better in the moment as well as learn not to react in the same way in the future if it isn't helpful.

First, you need to understand that in the moment it is best to take good long deep breaths and be close to a person who is safe. By close I mean actual physical contact. If you are touching someone who you feel safe with and you do some good, deep, belly breathing you will most likely calm yourself quite quickly.

Secondly, if you find yourself reacting to situations and losing control of yourself often you need to learn to change this response. This does not happen overnight, but can be done if you work at it. If you have fairly good mental health I would suggest you begin with exposure therapy. I'll give a quick example: If you are scared of saying 'no' to people because you are afraid of conflict I would encourage you to practice cold calling or making sales calls for a while or even saying no to people at work or at home. This will be really difficult at first and you will feel the fight, flee, freeze response a lot. You will sweat and it'll probably stink like 'scared sweat'. If you do this over and over however, you will begin to feel comfortable in more situations in life. Another way to practice this is by giving speeches in front of people. You can sign up for 'toast masters' and practice doing things that scare you, but are actually quite safe. Eventually you will become used to these situations and overcome some of your fears.

*** note: if you struggle with mental health (depression, anxiety, PTSD, bipolar disorder, etc.) then it is best to see a psychologist and ask how to improve your mental health before you try exposure therapy... You'll have to simply trust me with this.

Third, understand that fear is a great short term motivator to stop doing something... it is a terrible motivator for long term goals like investing well over 15 years or building a business. It'll simply sap you strength over time. You need to find a motivator that will bring you to reach your goals in a healthy way. Is it healthier to build a business to avoid disappointing you dead father, or because you see the benefits of how it can teach your children, your family, the employees you hire, and the value you bring to your community? I truly hope the answer is obvious to you right now.

Using Your Brain for Your Benefit

With these steps in mind you will need to strengthen your ability to work for something rather than work to avoid something bad (disappointing someone). Remember from the first post... our limbic system is involved in motivation and our emotions and senses. The way to use these to your benefit is to start imagining what you really want in life. But don't simply think about it, you need to vividly imagine it! involve your emotions and your senses. If you dream of making a ton of money so that you can begin a not-for-profit organization that helps homeless people in a poor neighborhood you can begin by imagining what your organization will look like when it is finished; imagine the people standing in front of you thanking you for your help and ask yourself: what are they wearing, what does the place smell like and look like? I invite you to involved all 5 senses if at possible even to the smallest detail. Also, how will you be feeling in that moment? How will the people around be feeling? Again, involve your emotions. A great way to practice this is by asking yourself 'why' you want something many times until you actually become emotional. If you want help with this I can provide a few tips. Email me and I will try my best to help you out in your specific situation. If there is enough interest I may simply post a simple way to practice this yourself in the future. Again, if interested let me know.

Last, and Most Importantly

This exercise of imagining and involving your limbic system will help you only if you practice consistently. My recommendation is you do this twice a day; once first thing in the morning and once just before bed. If you do this you must give it time to take root in your limbic system or what a lot of people call your subconscious mind. You may not notice a huge difference in the first week, but if you practice this consistently and correctly you will notice massive changes in the small choices you make each and every day. You will begin to do things that actually work toward your goal rather than seeming to sabotage yourself.

While this takes care of a lot of your limbic system, you still need to work on your 'thinking brain' if you want complete results and reach your goals much faster and will far less mental effort. We will discuss this in my next post.




Here's to your future of risk-averse investing!

If you would like to learn more about investing in real estate please contact me at the email address listed at the beginning of this article or go to my website at: www.akerahomes.com/investing-in-real-estate.html