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145: The Hidden Cost Behind Having It All Together: What High-Performers Rarely Admit But Deeply Feel

Listen To My Latest Podcast Episode:145: The Hidden Cost Behind Having It All Together: What High-Performers Rarely Admit But Deeply Feel

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Tag Archive for: resiliency

placebos nocebos

Placebos, Nocebos, and The Power of Your Imagination

placebos nocebos

 

Recently, I’ve been challenged by rotator cuff pain. Truth be told, it’s not recent. It’s been painful for over nine months. I’ve been waiting for it to ‘self-correct.’ Something my body always did when I was young.

If you listened to me talk about it, you’d hear me saying things like, “I’m getting old.” “I don’t think it’s going to heal without surgery.” “This is what happens when you age.”

As I succumbed to the realization that my shoulder was not going to self-correct, I went this week to my first physical therapy session. I was tearfully repeating these very things to my new physical therapist when it occurred to me: I know better.

The mind can create real, measurable changes in the body — and I was overdosing on negative thoughts and wishes.

Stop for a moment. Close your eyes. See a fresh plump lemon. Glossy with bright yellow skin. You pick it up and slice it into the lemon. As you cut into it, you see the juice spray out and drip down your fingers. Now you place a lemon wedge into your mouth and suck all the juice right out of it. Does your mouth pucker or fill with saliva?

You just experienced the mind-body connection. This visualization is a simple but powerful way to show you how the mind and body unite.

Years ago I got really taken with the power of the mind-body connection. When I was just beginning to learn the power of our mind’s ability to impact our body, I became fascinated with stories of spontaneous remission and people overcoming the most debilitating illnesses that seemed impossible without medical intervention.

At the time I soaked it all in, but the healings seemed more like miracles than anything scientifically valid.

Then I learned about the placebo effect which is mainstream science’s recognition of the fact that the mind can create real, measurable changes in the body.

The placebo effect is when patients think they’re getting a new drug, but what they’re really getting is a sugar pill. Then they start to recover from their ailment as though they’d been taking the real deal.

It turns out you don’t even have to be sick for it to have an effect. In a study at the University of Glasgow, researchers told fifteen runners that they were being administered drugs and then asked them to run a race. The runners’ race times increased significantly even though they were getting only saline injections.

The placebo effect provides proof that when we believe we are going to get better or feel better, we often do. It’s a testament to the power of the mind to affect the body with mere suggestion.

But did you know that there is a flip side to this? It’s called the nocebo effect. It’s what happens when you’re given a sugar pill and are told it’s a drug that has terrible side effects. Believing you’re taking a real medication, many people actually begin to experience the warned-about side effects.

A documented case of the nocebo effect occurred when a twenty-six-year-old man who was participating in a clinical trial on antidepressants was rushed to the hospital after an attempted overdose. He took 29 of the pills. When he arrived at the hospital, his blood pressure dropped to dangerously low, near-death levels and he was sweating, shaking, and breathing. When the doctor from the clinical trial arrived at the hospital, he realized that the young man had been in the placebo group. The young man hadn’t overdosed on medication. He had overdosed on his negative thoughts.

Dr. John Kelley, Ph.D., deputy director of Harvard Medical School’s Program in Placebo Studies and Therapeutic Encounter says, “It’s the power of imagination…Just imagining something is happening is enough to activate those portions of the brain associated with that thought, or worry, or pain.”

I bring this topic up not to whine about my rotator cuff, but because I know right now you or someone you love may be worried about something. Maybe it’s health scares or treatments or even an impending surgery.

Any of these can be challenging by themselves. Even to the most resilient, any one of these can feel downright debilitating.

But it’s important to remember —as someone who forgot — that we are actively participating in our mental and physical wellness with every thought.

As for my rotator cuff, after one physical therapy session along with my decision to stop judging, insulting, and expecting the worst from my body, I woke the next day pain-free. I’d slept through the night without waking from pain for the first time in months.

I called it a “miracle” when I saw the therapist two days later.

Whether it was or it was a result of moving my thoughts, imagining something better, or the treatment I’d received, I didn’t care.

My mind and body were connecting, proving my new thought —“Every day I’m getting and feeling better.”

https://www.ritahyland.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/RMJ-Newsletter-06_2023.png 464 440 Joyce Polintan https://www.ritahyland.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Rita-Hyland-1-line-blue-NOTAG-01.svg Joyce Polintan2023-06-27 17:07:212023-06-27 17:10:57Placebos, Nocebos, and The Power of Your Imagination
Shorten the Lag Time Between Discouragement and Getting Back to Your A-Game

Shorten The Lag Time Between Discouragement And Getting Back To Your A-Game

Shorten the Lag Time Between Discouragement and Getting Back to Your A-Game

You can listen to the full podcast episode here:

If you have a heartbeat, you will experience pain and hurt at some point in your life. It’s inevitable. It’s not if you face struggle, but what you do with that pain when it shows up that matters. Will you let it stop you or drive you? This is where your resiliency comes into play. Understanding how to exercise our resiliency muscle is such an important and underrated skill, and yet it is one not taught in schools.

In order to fulfill our purpose in life, we must learn to get through those challenging moments without letting them define us. The first step is acknowledging that we are going through a hardship and allow ourselves to feel it rather than diminishing it. Today I’m going to show you the next steps that follow so you can decrease the lag time between experiencing the struggle and getting back to your A-game. Let’s remember that we are not in control of what happens tomorrow but we can keep discouragement from killing another day, no matter what kind of curveball is thrown our way.

In this episode I share:

  • The #1 mistake most people make when they face hardship at work or life
  • THE question that ensures that YOU–not your hurt– is in the driver’s seat 
  • The ultimate 5- step resilience strategy to overcome adversity every time
  • How to figure out precisely what your next right action

Join the waitlist for the Bold Leader Life School here. You’ll receive first access to details when they are released!

More Resources: 

  • Tune into the previous episode, When Your Intuition Talks, Believe It
  • If you’d like to be notified of when new podcast episodes are released, you can do so here: Playing Full Out
  • Learn more about the Inside Out Method
  • Connect with Rita on LinkedIn

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts for more tips, tools, and inspiration to leading the optimal vision of your life, love, and leadership. Remember, a half version of you is not enough. The world needs the fullest version of you at play.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

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About Rita Hyland

With over 20 years of experience as an executive and leadership coach, Rita helps leaders — emerging and established — excel in corporate and entrepreneurial environments.

Rita believes if leaders were more clear about how transformation really works and more intentional about creating what they want, their impact, success, and influence in the world would be unstoppable.

Through her coaching programs, private coaching, and masterminds, Rita shows leaders how to win consistently and create the impact and legacy they desire.

Central to Rita’s work is the understanding that you will never outperform your current programming, no matter how strong your willpower.

When you learn to use Rita’s proprietary Neuroleadership Growth Code, a technology which uses the best of neuroscience and transformational psychology to hit the brain’s buttons for change, YOU become both the solution and the strategy.

Her mission is to end talented, hard-working, and self-aware leaders spending another day stuck in self-doubt or confusion and not contributing their brilliant work and talent the world so desperately needs.

https://www.ritahyland.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/RH-Podcast-Featured-Graphics-67.png 464 440 Candace Maree https://www.ritahyland.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Rita-Hyland-1-line-blue-NOTAG-01.svg Candace Maree2021-05-07 05:00:482024-03-01 17:15:14Shorten The Lag Time Between Discouragement And Getting Back To Your A-Game

Hi, I’m Rita!

I’ve guided individuals, leaders and teams over the last two decades through 1000’s of challenges —coaching them to build businesses and careers that thrive and lives they love.

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