Are you overwhelmed with feelings of stress?  How often do you resort to anger in your reactions?  Is self-pity or sadness your 'go-to' emotion when faced with challenges?  If this sounds familiar you may need to be aware of the impact of these patterns. 

If you really want to address these habits, your task is to be aware of the emotional state you’re choosing to experience.  When a negative event occurs (eg, you get a speeding ticket in the mail, you hear about a problem that is going to have a direct impact on your results, you discover you need to work late on the night you planned to have drinks with a friend) thousands of neurons fire off in your brain.  At the same time, you create an emotional state (frustration, annoyance, helplessness, stress) and fire other neurons.  Those neurons that ‘fire together’ begin to ‘wire together’.  What does this mean?  This means that whenever you experience those negative events the neurons that fire will also trigger the emotional states.  When this happens often enough the neurological pathway created in the brain changes from a “small walking track” to a “major highway”.  This results in the reaction occurring faster and with more velocity. 

When these thoughts are triggered and are sent down the neuron super highway, your brain is also sending signals to your glands to release certain hormones that are associated with emotion.  These hormones attach themselves to your body's cells via 'receptors', and once attached the body experiences the sensation of that emotion (happiness, stress, anxiety, hunger, etc). 

Candace Pert (author of Molecules of Emotion) was the first to discover the "opiate receptor' in cells in 1972 - which was the first scientific evidence of the link between the 'intangible' mind and the physical body.  What I find fascinating though is research suggesting that each cell has multiple receptors for various hormones, and that those receptors which are used infrequently can transform themselves into receptors for the emotions that are experienced more regularly.  This means that if a person was to feel depressed most of the time, and rarely euphoric, their receptors for endorphins may actually diminish, making it even more difficult for them to experience the emotion of happiness or love.

Your thoughts represent your reality.  By changing the thoughts which underpin your emotional state consciously (at first) you begin to ‘re-wire’ the neurons, so that the event triggers more empowering thoughts, which become wired to the new emotional state at the unconscious level.  Asking yourself three questions in the face of a negative trigger can help to re-wire your response:

• What are my thoughts right now?
• What thoughts would be helpful?
• How can I challenge my unhelpful thoughts?

For example, if your mobile phone stops working you could indulge in "poor me" thinking and experience the emotions of helplessness, anxiety, anger, frustration or depression.  Instead, challenge your thoughts and look for opportunities to create empowered thoughts, such as "I choose to deal with this challenge with a certainty that all will be fine", or "This is only a challenge, it is not a disaster - other people have lost their phones or put them through the wash before" , and "There are some things I don't control, and I can control my next steps.  What is the next thing I can do to begin to overcome this challenge?"  Each of these thoughts is solution-focussed and avoids catastrophic thinking that generates the release of hormones associated with negative and disempowering emotions. 

Becoming aware that you are choosing the thoughts you think and your emotional state is the first step in taking control and beginning to re-wire your reaction to one that serves you better.

If you get a chance I recommend reading “The Brain that Changes Itself” by Norman Doidge, a book on brain plasticity and an interesting read, "Molecules of Emotion" by Candace Pert, and "The Biology of Belief" by Bruce Lipton.