Dave Wood

Straight away, when you do that, those are conscious processes that require the front part of your brain.

Short-term memory, creativity, decision-making, better response, flexibility, all comes from here.

Where you end up in a reactive state is coming from the amygdala.

So just one of those things, a breath, I'm good, I've got this, brings that part of the brain back online.

And now, again, you can access like wisdom and better creative decision making.

Yeah, your inner voice is everything, man.

Like the story you're telling yourself is everything because it has such a massive bearing on your actions and outcomes.

So if you have self-limiting thoughts and you are leaving them unchecked, that ripples over into emotion, action, and outcome.

So thought control is so important.

So is emotional regulation.

I don't want to be reacting to all the emotions.

Well, then you just end up reacting to everything, right?

And that is really kind of like one of the key things about stress control and mental skill development is learning more about this, understanding more about your inner voice.

Well, why am I having these thoughts?

Well, it's to keep me safe.

Yeah.

If we didn't have more negative thoughts than positive ones, we wouldn't be here today.

You need to know that you're going to get a heightened stress response, and it's easy when you have a heightened stress response to start reacting, to rush in, to overcook the situation, right?

We had a saying in the emergency services, it wasn't even a saying, it was like, we never rushed into a scene, ever.

You walk in, you take the scene in, you use your peripheral vision, you slow your breathing down, you do a body scan, you take things in, right?