RECLAIM (WEEK 3)
DAY 18: SELF REFLECTION
On Day 18 of your workbook, determine what are the most important components of your value system. Hopefully, this will help make life’s decisions more manageable by framing what your priorities are.
DAY 17 MICRO-SCIENCE
Growth Vs. Fixed Mindset
Reticular Activating System in Brainstem
The gatekeeper between the mind and the body is called the reticular activating system and is located in the lower part of the brain. This is one of the oldest parts of the brain and plays a major part in wakefulness, as its the system that gets activated when a teacher tells you to “sit up straight.” It is the main communicator between what your mind decides to do and what your body ends up actually doing. The reticular activating system is also what gets activated when a person goes against their values, causing them to “wake up” and take notice.
- FACT: The Reticular Activating System is compromised during binge drinking
- TAKEAWAY: Therefore when drinking heavily, a person’s value system can be temporarily shutdown and cause their behavior to not match their value system.
DAY 18 MEDITATION
Values Mantra
With the amount of info-toxins in our environment, including the addictive nature of social media, the 24 news cycle, or the non-stop barrage of advertisements in our daily lives it’s no surprise that we lose track of what’s important to us. It seems we always have something trying to distract us and therefore it becomes even more important to remind ourselves repeatedly what makes each of us unique. In today’s meditation, we’re going to take three minutes and remind ourselves of that fact.
- FACT:The brain can only take in 120 bits of information at any one time, reading this sentence takes up about 60 bits of your attention.
- TAKEAWAY: Attention is a limited resource. It’s as if the world is enshrouded in darkness and you only have a small flashlight in which to see where your going. So make sure you point your light (attention) in a direction that is beneficial to you.
DAY 18 MEDITATION
For today’s meditation set the timer for three minutes and repeat internally your top five values you indicated from today’s self reflection. This will communicate to our unconscious mind that these are what matter, not the constant info-toxins that are trying to take up space in our mind. Most likely during this exercise, your mind will wander away from the five words you would like to be repeating. This is perfectly normal and if you find your mind wandering as it most definitely will, smile at your brain which is only doing what brains do, and just pick right back up from where you left off
DAY 18 MOVEMENT
Values Check
So often we forget to check in to see if our behaviors match our values. We zombie walk through most of the day, hoping to just get through it. This causes a tremendous amount of anxiety as we put our values on the back burner. Today, is as good as any day, to start making sure our values see the light of day and get implemented into our daily lives.
- FACT: 90%-95% of all actions in a normal day are completed by our unconscious mind
- TAKEAWAY: Through our daily actions we communicate to our unconscious minds what engrained programs we would like to play out in the future. So be careful what your allowing into your internal software because your unconscious mind is always paying attention.
DAY 18 MOVEMENT
Take a good look at your top five values and try to implement each one of them into your day in some tiny way. For instance, if one of your top values is “connection”, make sure you have at least one meaningful conversation in your day. If “adventure” makes the top of your list, explore someplace you have wanted to check out, like the local farmer’s market. Ok I think you get my point. This exercise will help your self-awareness of whether or not your living within your value system regularly or not at all.