291 How to Heal Your Nervous System By Doing Nothing

David: 00:00

M Recently, there's been an explosion of videos on YouTube around healing your nervous system. And understandably so, because what we're realizing is that effectively your nervous system is everything. Your nervous system is the command and control center of your health. It's the command and control center of your emotional experience of life. It's the command and control center of your thoughts, and therefore it is the command and control center of your entire reality. However, a lot of these nervous system healing conversations start to move into recommending really complex practices and protocols or supplements and strategies. And while I'm sure there's some benefit to those things, I'm going to go against the grain here and share with you why I believe the fastest and most powerful way to heal your nervous system is to actually do nothing, which happens to be one of the hardest things for a human being to do. So in this episode, I'm going to talk to you about five things you're currently doing that, if you would just stop doing them, would give your nervous system an opportunity to down regulate, to heal, to restore itself, whatever you want to call it. Five things to remove from your day so you can give yourself a chance to settle. So let's get into it.

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All right guys, when we get into this conversation of healing or down regulating your nervous system, there's a lot of conversations about what you need to start doing. But I would recommend that the best way to actually downregulate your nervous system is to stop doing the things that are upregulating it. Now, I know it sounds like common sense, but there are five things that we're doing on a daily basis that are preventing us from moving into that rest and relaxation phase. And the number one thing that I want to share with you is, which should come as no surprise, is doom scrolling. Yes, Social Media. And I get it. You know, there are long days that I have and I just want to kick back and relax and do something that's mindless. And I start scrolling through Instagram and flipping through reel after reel after reel. I'm not a big TikTok user, but it's really the same type of behavior. It could even be watching content on YouTube. And I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but like after about five to 10 minutes, it feels like there's some sort of weird tractor beam between you and the screen and it feels uncomfortable, but you keep doing it. Like there's this little voice in our head that says, I should probably stop this. But we don't. And so what I call doom scrolling is one of the biggest reasons why we continue to upregulate our nervous system when it's time to relax. And I want to give you the science behind this. So when you are scrolling, your body might be sitting on the couch, but your brain keeps being asked to change direction. And so a lot of times we think about resting as resting the physical body, but really rest is resting our attention. And when we're scrolling through social media, that attention becomes heightened. Here's a crisis, here's somebody you're comparing yourself to, here's something funny, here's something that makes you angry. Every few seconds, there's another thing pulling at your attention. So you can be physically still, but neurologically hyperactive. So as you scroll, your attention keeps getting pulled towards something new, something exciting, something alarming, something upsetting. And that repeated stimulation keeps your nervous system in an active state even though you think you're relaxing. And again, that's why you put your phone down feeling wired and drained, even though you thought you were resting or unwinding. And what's crazy is that it's not just that doom scrolling stresses your system, it's that doom scrolling prolongs the time it takes you to actually recover. In other words, it stresses you out and makes you less resilient to stress recovery. So in one experiment, people who went on Facebook after a stressful experience had more sustained and longer levels of cortisol, which is the stress hormone, than people who quietly read. But removing that input completely can make a difference surprisingly quickly. So one study found significantly lower cortisol levels after just a few days of social media detox. And another randomized study found improvements in well being, anxiety and depression symptoms after one week away from social media. So no complicated eight hour meditation, no brain retraining or complex supplement Protocol, just stop scrolling. Now, I experienced this personally when I was really just feeling like, man, I need a break. And I don't know if you've ever felt that, that just I need a break. I'm working a lot, I'm doing a lot with my family, with my life, with my mission in the world. And so I took a, uh, seven day detox off of social media and man, it was a game changer because I wasn't scrolling. I was allowing my nervous system to resettle, I was allowing my cortisol levels to lower, I was allowing my attention to refocus rather than become fragmented. And I came back feeling unbelievably refreshed just from that 17 day digital detox. Now, number two is to stop caffeine. Now I know, I know you're going to hate me for this, but the truth is caffeine is probably the number one direct input influencer of an upregulated nervous system. In other words, there are very few other things that we can put into our body that can just gas us up and overtax the nervous system than caffeine. There are a lot of chemicals that actually affect your nervous system, but you can't ingest them. But caffeine is one of those things that you have a direct influence over. And I know you can throw a stone and find some argument around whether coffee's good for you or coffee's not good for you. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the impact of caffeine. And the reason is this caffeine does not actually give you energy. What caffeine does is it suppresses the tired molecule. Okay? It suppresses adenosine levels. So you have these little receptors where this chemical called adenosine binds. And adenosine is a naturally occurring chemical that shows up when it's time for you to get tired. This is how amazing the human body is. Like when you are ready to rest, your body supports you biochemically by allowing adenosine to bind to adenosine receptors. But when you're not all jacked up on caffeine during the day, for example, it's that cozy, genuinely tired feeling at night that arrives and you think, man, I just want to get into bed and cuddle and relax. Caffeine blocks adenosine. It, ah, binds to the adenosine receptors. And so that feeling at the end of the day when you're exhausted and you just want to crash and start the day over tomorrow, that's what an Absence of adenosine feels like. So you're literally pouring gas onto the fire and burning the candle at both ends. So again, caffeine does not give you energy, it prevents you from getting tired. It's like being in an interrogation room where they don't let you sleep for several days. Or having a two year old that isn't in a sleep rhythm. And moms and dads, you're picking up what I'm laying down. That's caffeine. Again, this is not a conversation around whether coffee is good or coffee is bad. Doing a few things and watch your nervous system recalibrate. Conversation is what we're having. And what I'm saying is that as much as I like my 16 ounce cold brew with milk Adamia every single morning, it's the one thing that is highly likely to move the needle for you. Taking a break from your favorite caffeinated beverage. I did it for a 10 day streak of no coffee earlier this year. By day eight I literally told my wife, oh my God, I found the peace and calm that I've been looking for for the last 20 years. And like anyone who has finally found the peace and calm they've been looking for after decades, I immediately started drinking coffee again on day 10 and lost that feeling. Because it's like peace coffee. It's a toss up. Like I said. You may not want to hear this, but I believe that one of the biggest contributors to nervous system dysregulation and overload is long term sustained caffeine use. Particularly in excess levels. Because a Veinti Starbucks Pike Coffee is already a hundred percent the daily recommended allowance for caffeine by the fda. And the last time I checked, the FDA were not particularly cautious with their recommendations. Two Veinti coffees. You're in jacked up land. And that's not unusual for a lot of people. Number three, stop eating shit. And I don't mean you can never have dessert or enjoy a meal out. I'm talking about what you're feeding yourself day after day. The sugary drinks, the fast food, the packaged snacks that have become breakfast, lunch, sometimes dinner. Because when we talk about the nervous system, we tend to think about the brain inside our skull. But your gut has its own extensive network of neurons. It's called the enteric nervous system and it's often referred to as your second brain. And these two systems are constantly communicating through nerves, through hormones, through signals from your immune system. Your brain influences what happens in your gut, and what happens in your gut can influence how you feel You've experienced one direction of this. Like, you get nervous and your stomach tightens, you get stressed and your digestion changes. But that conversation goes both ways, so the environment you're creating in your digestive system matters. You may have heard that roughly 90% of the body's serotonin is produced by the gut. And that's true. Although that serotonin doesn't travel into your brain and become happiness. The connection is more complex than that. But the point is, your gut is actively participating in the signaling that connects your physical health with your emotional experience. And researchers have found that people who consume more ultra processed foods have higher rates of depression and anxiety and related problems. That doesn't mean a bag of chips causes anxiety. It just means there's a relationship between the pattern of how we eat and the pattern of how we feel. So before you turn healing your nervous system into another complicated project, take an honest look at what you are eating. Start by removing some of the obvious things. The soda that you drink every afternoon, the constant sweets. The fast food that you're relying on because you're rushing through your day. Probably jacked up on coffee as well. Like, you don't need to become obsessive about food. I'm just saying give yourself more actual meals, more whole foods, and less of the stuff you already know. Leaves you feeling lousy. This is another place where supporting your nervous system can begin with subtraction. Give your body a little less to contend with. Number four, stop filling every quiet moment. We're talking about the things that we can stop doing to allow our nervous system to heal. Because I don't know about you, but I get in the car and something has to go on. Go for a walk and maybe you put in your earbuds. You're waiting for someone and you're pulling out your phone and looking at it. You finish one thing and before you've even taken a breath, you're on to the next thing. And look, I get it. I'm not being critical. I'm just saying that these are habits that can be easy for us to change. Sometimes what you're filling that space with is good. It's educational. It's an episode like this, it's inspiring. But have you given yourself any time to just be? No assignment, nothing to learn, nothing to improve? A few minutes where you're not asking anything of yourself? Because I think a lot of us have become uncomfortable with being unoccupied. The moment there's an opening, we fill it. And we do it so automatically that we don't even notice that we're doing it. Then when we finally do sit in silence, we feel restless. We feel the urge to reach for something, and we take that discomfort as evidence that we need more stimulation. But what if you allowed that moment to be uncomfortable without immediately needing something to do about it? Like, you don't have to force your mind to go blank. You don't have to breathe a certain way. You don't even have to feel peaceful. You can just be sitting there with a busy mind and still choose to leave the phone where it is. Your body has a relaxation response. It's a psychological shift that can slow your heart rate and lower your blood pressure. You don't manufacture that response. By turning every quiet moment into another high performance. You can give yourself opportunities to settle without demanding that it can that it happen on command. So leave a little space in your day. Let part of the drive be quiet. Walk around the block without listening to anything for a few minutes. These things really make a difference. Finish your lunch and sit there for another minute before you get up and notice the impulse to make that time useful. You've spent so much of your life learning how to do more. But give yourself a chance to discover what happens when, for a few ordinary moments, you just let yourself be number five. And this is probably the biggest one. Stop feeding repetitive worry. This is what I mean by this. You have a conversation that doesn't go well, and then you have it another 20 times in your head. You think about something that might happen tomorrow, and you start rehearsing every possible way it could go wrong. And it feels like you're working on the problem. But are you really discovering anything new? Are you really making a new decision? Is there an action that you can take? Or are you going around the same circle, having the same thoughts and feeling worse every single time? So researchers have found that this repetitive thinking can prolong physiological stress activation. Just makes sense. The event may be over, or it may not have happened at all. But the thinking can keep the stress response going. So you're sitting in your kitchen. Nothing is happening in that moment that requires you to defend yourself. But mentally, you're back in an argument, or you're imagining losing your business, or you're trying to figure out how to guarantee that someone will never be disappointed in you. And your body can respond to the stress of what you're imagining. And, uh, one of the great discoveries in neuroscience is the fact that your brain doesn't know the difference between imagination and reality. And so when you're worrying, you're constantly throwing your nervous system into fight or flight. Because when you're sitting in the living room worried about what's in your bank account and not being able to pay your rent and imagining that you're going to end up living under a bridge, your nervous system is experiencing that as real. So it is important to understand this. Frankly, this thing called worry should probably be at the top of the list. It's one of the primary reasons why we're seeing this massive proliferation of what we're calling stress related diseases. The stress and its sustained cadence that is being driven by our worry, our anxiety and our fears is literally crippling society. And so if you want to look at one of the levers that you can control in order to allow the nervous system to relax, it is an awareness of how often we are living in our minds in some sort of future paced fear and trying to become more aware of it. Because as you become more aware of it, you downshift your nervous system by choosing to no longer engage with those obsessive compulsive thoughts. Now I'm not asking you to stop having thoughts. That's impossible. A worried thought can show up without your permission. You don't need to beat yourself up for worrying. I'm, um, suggesting you can notice and control what happens next. Do you follow that thought train? Do you start doing building the argument? Do you go looking for more evidence that something terrible is going to happen? That's the part that you can begin to control. You can say, look, I've already thought about this. If there's something for me to do, I'll do it, but I don't need to keep rehearsing it right now. And the thought might come back. And that's okay. You can let it be there without continuing the conversation. You can get grounded. Feel your feet on the floor, look around the room, bring your attention back. You don't have to resolve every uncertainty before allowing yourself a moment of rest. Sometimes the opportunity to settle begins when you stop asking your mind to solve the same problem for the 21st time. Problem that doesn't even exist right here, right now. So when I say heal your nervous system by doing nothing, these are the things that, I mean, look at how much we're asking of ourselves every single day. The endless scrolling, the caffeine, the food that leaves us feeling lousy, the constant input. And then when everything finally gets quiet, we start running through all the things that we're working, worried about. And somewhere in the middle of all that, we're asking why can't I relax? And we add another thing to our schedule to try to allow us to relax. And I think it's a question worth sitting with. But removing what is upregulating your nervous system must be the logical priority. Asking yourself like, have I given myself an opportunity to settle? Huh? Have I allowed any space in my day where I'm not stimulating myself or distracting myself or mentally working on a problem? So here's my invitation. Pick one of the five things we talked about today. You probably already know which one. You felt it when I mentioned it. Maybe you're still upset with me about the coffee comment and I apologize, but that means you should probably start there, make one manageable change and give yourself a chance to notice what happens if you're a heavy caffeine drinker. Ease up a little bit. If it's scrolling, leave the phone in another room for part of the evening. If it's repetitive, worry, notice the moment you start having the same conversation in your head again and see if you can leave it unfinished. And don't turn this into another thing to beat yourself up about and upregulate your nervous system. You catch yourself scrolling, put the phone down. You've spent 20 minutes worrying. Maybe step away from it. You can begin again where you left off the next day. What I want you to consider is that you may have more influence over how you feel and over the health of your nervous system and than you've realized through some very ordinary choices. So before you go looking for the next thing to add, give yourself a little room. Let a quiet moment Stay quiet. Let one problem wait until there's actually something you can do about it and see what becomes available when you ask a little less of yourself. And if you want some additional support, I got a ton of resources in the description of this episode. One of them is our AI powered Limiting Beliefs assessment. This will actually help you identify a lot of the noise that's going on in the background and give you a phenomenal tool called the Decision Matrix to start transforming those limiting beliefs because they are also sitting on top of your nervous system, contributing to that thing we talked about called worry. 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