Your experiences as a child make a big impact on your own sense of autonomy, and how it affects your relationships. In the excerpt below, we’ll explore how your childhood has impacted your own sense of intimacy.
Experiences of meeting your goals feel good, lower stress, and build positive motivation. They reassure you that you’re making progress, which helps you stay in the Responsive mode – in the green zone – as you go through your day.
Imagine treating yourself like you do a friend. You’d be encouraging, warm, and sympathetic. You wouldn’t pour salt in your wounds, and you’d help yourself heal and grow. Think about what a typical day would be like if you were on your own side. Would you appreciate your good intentions and good heart? Would you be less self-critical?
If you’d like to be more motivated about certain things–such as exercising, eating healthy foods, or pushing through a tough project at work–focusing on what’s enjoyable about them will naturally draw you into doing them.
Fear arises when threats seem bigger than resources. Sometimes this is actually the case, such as getting an unexpected bill that you don’t have the money to pay. But due to “paper tiger paranoia,” threats often look larger than they really are while resources look smaller than they really are.
Going on a long hike, we need to bring food and other supplies. Similarly, on the road of life we need psychological supplies such as compassion and courage. How do we get these supplies into the neural “backpack”? We do it by learning.