Who doesn’t know it when negative thoughts about yourself have settled in and it#s hard to kick them out of your house.
Luckily there is another way of making them leave. We can use our body and not only our mind. Even though we inevitably use both anyway.
With body-postures, you can influence the increase or decrease of your neurotransmitters testosterone and cortisol. The first one is amongst more things, responsible for feeling confident and relaxed. Cortisol on the other hand, for feeling anxious, stressed or with low self-esteem.
When changing your mind is too difficult for you, just change the posture of your body to a relaxed, confident and open one. Smile about having catched a moment in which you went with negative thoughts unconsciously. Remember your best-of of beautiful and positive memories for example. Then create a thought that represents the ideal opposite and feel into it.
It also helps to sit, stay or walk as you would if you were confident and relaxed. By taking the posture which represents confidence and relaxedness, your brain thinks that you got reasons to feel confident and relaxed and starts to increase your level of testosterone and decreases your level of cortisol.
It takes 2 minutes of another body posture to influence the change of your levels of testosterone and cortisol. Simultaneously you can start to shift your focus on some of your most confident memories.
But just the feeling of your body posture and the resulting increase of testosterone and the decrease of cortisol make it already very difficult for your negative thoughts to stay. The new level of testosterone makes it easier for more confident and positive thoughts to come up.
Putting your hands behind your head creates more confident feelings, as well as laying your arm on the chair or sth. while sitting. Becoming comfortable. A straight back and the chest a bit out, as well as the chin straight at least help the brain to associate rather confident and relaxed associations than postures of low self-esteem as trying to be as small as possible without a straight back and hanging shoulders and chin.
If you manage to smile strongly for over 18 seconds, you even use your friends the neurotransmitters dopamine, endorphins and serotonin to your advantage.
The next time you feel anxious, worried, stressed or with low self-esteem, enjoy getting into your most confident and relaxed body posture and know that you change the way you feel for the better by doing so. Put a satisfied and self-amused smile on your face and enjoy yourself and your surroundings.
