Okay, our last method is exceptionally simple. But in many ways, it's probably the hardest one to do. As I mentioned before, our brains are designed to release these chemicals and the chemicals are designed to just kind of fade out of our system. Right? They do their job, they disappear. Our tendency, though, is to hold on to the memory.

Right? So this is why when something happens, and I use the analogy before, like someone, you know, cut you off in traffic. Once it's done, instead of letting go of it, you're thinking about it, you, man, that was so and so I wish I had his license number and I'd call the cops. And then you get to work or you get home and you start complaining about it. You start reliving it by telling it to other people, you never believe what happened to me and bla bla bla bla bla, and then you start thinking about it more and more and you go to bed and you maybe have dreams better you wake up in the morning, and yeah, maybe you get to that same spot and you're anticipating the same thing. happen or you see that same car and you anticipate the same thing happen.

Right? So we find ourselves holding on to what happened either as a memory or as a projection into the future. Now, that is the way our system works against us. So how do you use it to work for you? We hold on to a good intention, we hold on to a good memory. So remember I said it takes about 90 seconds for the chemical signatures from anything to start to die away.

And so when something happens, whether it's good or bad, and about 90 seconds, that the chemicals are gone, it's our memories that we're holding on to. So if you can do that with something that you are stressing about, you can do this with something that you're relaxing about. You discover something that makes you angry, you can do this with something that makes you happy. You really live the positive experience and maybe you've experienced this but not consciously thinking about this, you might think about something really exciting, really fun, really enjoyable to happen to you. Maybe you know that the moment you got a promotion or the day you got married to the day your child was born or when you graduated from college or Yep. Any great thing, right?

If you think back and close your eyes and you think about that, you might be able to see yourself there, you might be able to feel it, right and you're going to have these positive experiences. So here's what we're going to do. What I want you to do is I want you to think about the states that you wish you were in more at. So if you're stressed out, maybe you want to feel relaxed. If you're constantly constantly anxious about life, think about time when you've been calm and confident. Right?

So you want to think about the the state the negative states which are in most commonly and you want to find the balancing state okay. Everybody's got them. So let's say that you're the state that you find yourself in the most often that you wish you weren't in, is in a state of anxiousness. Right, you're, you're worried you're worried you're always concerned is not going to work out the things are going to go wrong. Hey, so we find a opposite mind state. Okay, so maybe it's a state of you think about a time when things just absolutely fell in the place where everything to your your benefit worked out, and you just felt so comfortable and you felt so confident.

Everybody's got a moment like that, that you can think back to where you felt like, wow, life is really going good for me. Right? So what you do is you take that memory, you take that emotion and you take it and you Hold it. Now, with holding it, we're not grasping onto it, we're just trying to embrace it, we're trying to wrap around that we're trying to feel ourselves become one with that. So it may be it was a time when you got an unexpected promotion. And you just think back to that moment.

Try to visualize it, try to catch the feeling and then hold on to that feeling. Right, try to hold on to it for 90 seconds, and just keep it and if it starts to go away, come back to the memory. Because remember, the subconscious mind cannot distinguish between what you're thinking and what is physically going on. So it can't it can't differentiate between the past, present and future. It's all occurring at the same time. So if your mind wanders, you find yourself going back to that negative emotion.

Bring yourself back to the memory, the memory will create the emotion hold on to The emotion. If it goes away, bring it back, bring it back to try to do this for 90 seconds, if you have to do a reset every second, okay, you do a reset every second, because each moment is just going to start stacking on each other. And really isn't that what mindfulness is being in the moment, and how long is a moment, right? And life is nothing but a string of moments, right? And the more connected they are, then that creates a feeling of continuity in our life. But if you have to go one second, you lose it.

Another second you lose it, another second you lose it. If you keep doing this process, you're going to start to find then it will be two seconds, and you lose it. Two seconds, you lose it, there may be four seconds you lose it. So that's the way it works. Until eventually you get to a point where you may be able to go 94 seconds holding on. And remember that 90 seconds, you're releasing these hormones, we're releasing these chemicals in your brain.

And the longer you can hold on to it, your body starts to memorize it. So you'll find yourself shifting out of that negative state, you'll not only stop the downward spiral, you'll reset yourself to a baseline, and then you'll move yourself into the positive direction. Okay? So think about the memory, feel the emotion, and just try to hold on to the emotion. Keep repeating for at least 90 seconds, okay. All right.

So I hope that these simple techniques will help you out now. There's no magic, there is no magic. And there doesn't have to be a complicated approach to anything. Simple is best, right? Because if it's simple, it's going to be easy to remember, it's going to be easy to practice, and those two things are going to give you the best benefit. So add these to your project.

Toolbox for mindfulness and I wish you nothing but the best