Written by: Chandra Zas, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Only a trained brain chooses to feel discomfort and chooses long-term feel goods on purpose. By default, our brains, supported by modern culture and marketers, choose to hit the escape button and short-term feel-goods when we feel uncomfortable. Sad? Have some ice cream. Upset? Munch some snack food. Wanting to feel social? Have a drink. Stressed? Take a smoke break. Exhausted? Watch a movie. Our un-trained brains believe that hitting the escape button works.
Half of the truth is that the escape button does work, at least in the short term. We do feel good when we eat, drink, smoke, shop, watch, etc.
And the other half of the truth is that it is these very escape activities are ‘bad habits that harm our health, steal our time, and drain our energy.
We all know that over-eating, comfort eating, over-drinking, over-watching, and the like are not “good” for us.
But we often lack understanding of the full negative impact and connection to our time, energy, and health. If you think about your life and even more clearly your bucket list, in conjunction with your escape buttons, and you ask yourself the question, “are comfort foods, watching movies, or over-drinking on my bucket list?” I am sure your answer is “no.”
My family has an intentional ‘movie’ thing. When we decide to watch a movie or not, we more often consciously decide to “make a movie” instead of watching a movie. What does that mean? To ‘make a movie’ means putting in the effort to create fun rather than be passively entertained. Some of our ‘make-a-movie' choices are: building a fire, doing a puzzle, going for a family walk, making a dance party, rock climbing, or camping. We have a family joke about “watching” when we are around the fire or looking at a beautiful view, and we call them tv.
We, too, enjoy watching movies, but who doesn’t? Watching a movie feels good, and our human brains like easy feel-goods like movies. But my partner and I are dedicated to the long-term feel goods. It takes more effort upfront, but it also has more positive rewards on the backend, like connection, movement, or fulfillment. Plus, the long-term feel-goods also lack negative health impacts like weight gain, addiction, and sedentary side effects.
Are you with me?
Are you wondering, “What is needed to change my relationship to escape but ‒ tons?”
Glad you asked!
After seeing the negative impact, next is a new way of relating to our uncomfortable feelings... Stay with me, and it sounds harder than it is.
Have you ever had a really “good cry” and then noticed how light and refreshed you feel? That “good cry” is the opposite of hitting the escape button.
That burst of energy and refreshed feeling is available to all of us through engaging in a relationship with our uncomfortable emotions that consists of leaning in and feeling them.
“I don’t have the time to feel my feelings” is a comment I hear often.
My rebuttal: “Feelingemotions takes a minute or two and is a practice that will reward you with both time and energy.”
When we try to escape our uncomfortable feelings, we are simply stuffing them away for our future self to deal with and, in the meantime, to carry around until we do so. As my coaching teacher Brooke Castillo says, “It’s a pain now or pain later” there is no escaping the pain.
When we stuff our uncomfortable feelings away, they build up as “issues in our tissues;” we start to literally feel bogged down and exhausted, and stuffing them chronically leads to states of emotionally induced depression, anxiety, or stress.
What does leaning in and relating our uncomfortable emotions look like?
This is what I teach my clients: an emotion is simply a physical vibration that we can choose to embrace, welcome, be present with, experience, and therefore allow for processing through our body. It means pausing and experiencing the emotion without resistance or judgment, simply allowing yourself to FEEL it. Breathing, walking, and time also help.
If this article resonated with you and you are curious to look at your relationship to your escape buttons because you want more out of your life, then head over to my website and sign up for a free mini-coaching session with me.
Chandra Zas, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Hi, I’m Chandra Zas, I am the health coach who helps humans fall-in-love with healthy. I treat "healthy" as an accumulation of making daily loving decisions that serve our physical, mental, and emotional well-being. The two greatest organs impacting our health, wellness, and performance are our brain and our gut. Our brain and gut are more interconnected than most think.
We have more input than we take responsibility for: diet, stress, and lifestyle habits are what create health or lack of. Did you know that our gut sends more signals to our brain than our brain does to our gut? Our bodies have deep wisdom and an incredible ability to heal itself, I call it being your "Own Body Expert." Every day, in practice with my clients, symptoms that they have been tolerating and or medicating for years, will heal. Simply because they’re responding to life's stressors and feeding their bodies differently by applying the process they learn in my Food and Mood Program. Health is not about restriction, guilt, force, or fear of missing out. Health is falling in love with feeling good. It is a lifestyle that is sustainable because it feels truly and deeply good. As a client, I work with you and your relationship with yourSelf, with your mind, and with your body every step of the way, to get you feeling, being, and radiating healthy.
