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Have you noticed that when you are feeling down, your shoulders are hunched? Or when you are worried, your muscles become tense and your neck feels tight and strained. Our body can physically reflect the emotions we are feeling.

Amy Cuddy in her TED Talk talks about the power pose and how we can ultimately ‘trick’ our brain to serve us better. By adopting some of these wonder-woman like poses before big events (such as a presentation or meeting), we can immediately feel  bigger, stronger and more powerful. It can also benefit us to use this technique when we are feeling on the back foot and anxious.

Generation Panic’ers can influence the signals from our bodies to our minds. In doing so, we can learn to change these messages to positively affect our mood and even reduce our levels of anxiety. There is the physical, external side of how you are holding your body and what it represents, but there is also an internal quality that is worth noting – your gut feeling can be a good indicator of how you are truly feeling.

Always trust your gut

Your gut feeling – your instinct and intuition – holds many messages as it reacts to your environment; it can quite literally speak to us. The nervous system in the gut is as extensive as the brain. They are closely related, and messages go from the gut to the brain just as much as from the brain to the gut.

When we connect with our gut feeling, we can feel more in control and relaxed, as the awareness helps to reduce our anxiety. For Generation Panic, it will help to connect to your intuition so that you know when you feel good and also when things are perhaps not working as well as you would like. For example, accepting an invitation to an event might not be the best thing for you. However, if (before answering), you were to connect and listen to your gut feeling, it will tell you the best route forward and instinctually what you should do…

How can you connect to your gut feeling? This is one way I try to shift my own energy. Have a go:

Toolbox:

  • Think about your gut feeling.
  • Where does it literally sit in your body?
  • How can you tell if it is “happy” or “discontent” with something?
  • How does it react to different experiences and what happens in you?
  • Consider how you can connect to this intuition more easily? Set up a daily routine of taking a couple of minutes each morning to reflect on your gut feeling. How can you feel confident enough to pause before giving an answer to a big decision?
  • Question what needs to happen before you trust your gut feeling; is anything blocking you? Ignore the rules, be flexible and cut out the noise of what you think other people want you to do – trust your gut!  
  • Also watch Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk and practice the power poses she discusses – a great resource to use.

 

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