Thinking Through Adversity – Ben Ahrens – MensGroup Podcast

In this episode, Ben Ahrens and Sean Galla from MensGroup get into how thoughts and feelings contribute to our mental and physical health. We also get into the power of perspective and how to cope with adversity.

Today’s https://mensgroup.com/podcast guest Ben Ahrens is a chronic illness recovery expert, TEDx Speaker, Neuroplasticity coach, and Co-founder of re-origin, and he’s here to talk about emotional management, the importance of perspective, and dealing with adversity. 

CHAPTERS:

00:07:06 CHAPTER I – Emotional Management

00:07:15 Mental & Physical Health 

• Most people can probably identify with the feeling of mental weight or burden, feeling overwhelmed when it comes to dealing with their own personal issues. Even though this sensation takes place in the mind’s realm, it actually translates into physiological changes such as muscle tension, heavy breathing, or rapid heartbeat.    

00:11:46 Feelings & Thoughts Management 

• In and of themselves, thoughts are neutral – they are just what the mind does, the same way that the ears hear, the eyes see and the nose smell and the mind thinks. On that note, it’s key to understand that we don’t need to be that aware of our thoughts at all times since they’re not always telling us something useful. 

00:17:31 Tools for Emotional Management

• Scientific research has proven that our brain is widely plastic, meaning that it has an amazing capacity to change, regardless of our age and our learned patterns. This means that we can mentally train ourselves to manage our feelings and emotions in a way that works to our advantage rather than the other way around.  

00:26:39 CHAPTER II – Perspective

00:26:55 Switching the Negative Bias

• The human brain takes roughly about eleven million bits of information per second, from which around nine million are inherently negative. This is due to our brain’s evolved negativity bias, which is designed to keep us out of danger. However, being aware of this grants us the possibility to re-train our brain, and switch that negativity bias into some sort of positivity bias. 

00:40:16 Positive and Negative Events

• Every situation we go through has a positive and a negative component to it. However, some events will definitely be more positive than negative and the other way around. In that sense, life’s like a pendulum that constantly sways from one side to the other. Nonetheless, if we acknowledge that there’s good and bad in all, we can consciously choose to focus on the positive portion of things, which would be like climbing up that pendulum – the higher we go, the less we’re gonna feel its swaying. 

00:50:13 CHAPTER III – Adversity

00:50:51 Advice on Adversity 

• One good piece of advice that can come in handy when to dealing with unpleasant situations is to think about the future and how much the current context could have a long-lasting impact on our life. For example, if you’re in your thirties, you could ask yourself something like “what advice would the 40 years version of myself give me in these particular times?” Usually, the hypothetical answer to that question is something similar to “Take it easy and don’t worry too much about it”.  

00:55:58 Dealing with Adversity 

• Adversity itself isn’t the problem, but our resistance to adversity and our inability to stay pleasant in the present can have a negative impact on our life. Ultimately, accepting things the way they are while trying to make the best out of each day appears to be the best recipe for happiness and overall wellbeing.