How “COVID Brain” Could Help You Reduce Stress Right Now

Use this brain power to positively transform your life — even during these stressful times

Contrary to what many people grew up believing about the brain, we are not doomed or hardwired to be the same once we reach a certain age. Our brains are constantly changing. This includes our personality, general attitude and sense of happiness, and our ability to handle life’s challenges — whether that’s COVID or the uncertainty surrounding the elections.

Have you noticed yourself getting stressed out — even about the little things that normally wouldn’t bother you? Or less able to remain focused and calm in situations where it was easy to do so in the past?

You’re not going crazy — it’s just that your brain is responding to how you’re responding to life. Your brain is adapting. These changes run all the way down to the level of your neurons. You are, quite literally , becoming what you practice most.

YOUR BRAIN IS ALWAYS LEARNING FROM YOU

As neuroscientist David Eagleman, author of “Livewired,” explains in a recent article, our brain changes on a daily basis. With 86 billion neurons and a fraction of a quadrillion connections between them, there’s constant electrical activity going on inside our skull.

The brain is resilient, flexible, and adaptable. And it’s always responding to our changing environment — whether that is our outer environment or the internal environment of how we choose to respond to life through our thoughts, words, and actions.

We teach our brain how we want to respond to life by how we choose to respond. We become what we practice.

The term “COVID brain” is meant to describe how our own brains have changed as a result of how we personally have chosen to respond to this global situation. It has nothing to do with the virus itself — it’s about how we are choosing to respond to the situations in our life.

COVID is simply making it easier for us to notice how powerful our minds are.

When we're continually isolated, our brains get used to it - perhaps making it harder to adjust back to a more social environment. Or if we're continually stressed, our brains get used to the constant tension - making it harder to be at peace even in situations where we would've felt peaceful in the past.

Let’s dive a bit further to see how you can take advantage of the brain's high level of adaptability.

USING NEUROPLASTICITY TO OUR ADVANTAGE

One of the most powerful findings in neuroscience is that we can consciously change both the structure and the activity of our brain. This is neuroplasticity in action. I have written about how we can harness this incredible power in many of my posts such as How Thoughts Turn to Things According to Quantum Biology or How Science Can Transform Worry & Stress into Happiness and Peace.

While science has not yet been able to come to an agreement on how our thoughts and feelings are generated, their electromagnetic properties can be measured through devices such as the EEG.

Through this electromagnetic field, our thoughts, feelings, and our resulting responses to life send information to our brain. The brain encodes this information through its trillions of neural connections to strengthen the neural pathways we use most. These become our habitual reactions.

We create a feedback loop: we respond to life, our brains takes the cue, and it then makes it easier for us to respond that same way next time.

CONSCIOUSLY CHOOSING TO RESPOND DIFFERENTLY

So how can we use neuroplasticity to reduce stress and anxiety in these tumultuous times?

By continually practicing the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that we want to exhibit more often. If we want to feel peace and calm more often, we have to make the conscious decision to bring peace and calm into our lives and those of others. We must become the source.

The more often we become the source of that which we want to experience in our lives, the more natural it will feel for the brain to respond in those ways.

The more we respond to life from a place of calm, the more we rewire our brain to respond that way in the future. Yet consciously choosing to respond to life differently isn’t easy. It’s a skill that takes practice. It’s a skill of training our mental attention to focus on what we want.

The more we focus on seeing our own ability to handle challenges and on all that is going right in the world, the more empowered we become. The more empowered we become, the more we can help others help themselves — and this is how we change the world, one by one.

SHIFTING OUR ATTENTION SHIFTS OUR LIFE

When we react to anything in our lives with fear — a fear of the unknown, a fear for our survival — we are stimulating the sympathetic nervous system, triggering the fight-or-flight response, and activating the rush of stress chemicals such as cortisol and adrenaline.

This is precisely what is happening throughout the world today. Watching the news and being focused on the latest COVID numbers triggers the body’s stress response. This then lowers immunity — which of course increases the odds of one actually becoming infected with a virus.

When we turn our attention to what could go wrong in our lives and we don’t think we have the power to do anything about it, we feel fear. It’s a natural biological response. But we have the power to choose what we do with that response.

REWIRING THE BRAIN FROM FEAR TO PEACE

How do we move past fear and consciously bring more calm and peace into whatever situation we are dealing with in life — whether it’s related to COVID or not?

First, we have to notice that we are not the fear. The fear is happening in our bodies. We can observe and feel its sensations when we allow ourselves to become still. This cuts off the fear’s source of power — our mental identification with it.

Once we realize that there’s a part of us that’s beyond the fear, we can see that there are things in life we CAN control. We can always control how we respond to life — whether with fear or with a sense of ability.

As Wayne Dyer so elegantly puts it, taking responsibility for our life means learning to respond with ability, rather than from our reactive state.

“By taking responsibility for how you choose to respond to anything or anyone, you’re aligning yourself with the beautiful dance of life.” — Wayne Dyer

DECIDE WHAT YOU WANT TO PRACTICE IN LIFE

If feeling good and peaceful is important to you, you have to make it a priority to practice these states consciously. The best place to start cultivating these qualities is when you’re not in the middle of a stressful situation — namely when you can sit quietly with your mind and actually notice its reactive tendencies.

Why do firefighters spend so much time doing drills when there is no fire? Because it prepares them to more effectively deal with a fire when one does arise.

Training your mind on a continual basis makes it much easier to deal with life’s “fires” like COVID or political unrest when they arise.

If a sense of inner peace is important to you, then commit to a set amount of time to practice feeling peace on a daily basis. Need some guidance for training the mind? I’ve written about my personal experience of practicing meditation here: 5 Simple Tips for Training the Mind with Meditation.

REDUCE STRESS BY FOCUSING ON YOUR DREAMS

The more you notice your mind’s initial impulse to react to things with stress, the more you understand that you have the power to intervene. Your awareness and your attention to these thoughts and natural impulses is what allows you to override them and replace them with new ones.

Every time you feel the impulse to worry, you can make a conscious decision to slow down and instead focus on things that you can control — like moving towards your goals and dreams.

By doing this, you teach your brain that instead of being afraid every time something unexpected or “unprecedented” happens, it can pause and respond to the situation consciously in a way that benefits you.

You train your brain to see opportunities amidst obstacles. You show it how to stop that feeling of powerlessness that often leaves you feeling overwhelmed.

When you stress and feel powerless, you are reinforcing those circuits throughout your brain. It then takes an even bigger hit of those stress chemicals in order for you to feel them and to choose to respond to life differently.

Instead, you can train your brain to become used to feelings of resiliency and ability to respond more consciously by using your energy to focus on what you can and want to see more of in your life.

NOTICE ALL THE GOOD WITHIN HUMANITY

Perhaps you’ve noticed a greater sense of compassion during this crazy time? We are all in this together, and a lot of wise souls understand this. When hard times come around, it’s much easier to see all the ways that humanity cooperates.

If you’ve found yourself in a situation where you’ve needed help, perhaps you’ve realized that human kindness is unlimited. Maybe someone has reached out to you or made an exception to do something they normally wouldn’t do…just to help you out.

Noticing the goodness in life — and in humanity — helps you reduce stress because you know you’re not in it alone.

It’s probably not unusual to hear of landlords forgiving rents or being flexible with certain terms. Even while a lot of people are afraid for their own personal well-being, just as many are aware that even the little things they do to help out can be significant. Just like what you do affects everyone else around you.

You are NOT a powerless being on a random planet. You are an essential, important, and powerful creator.

You create not only your personal life experience, but through the living of your life, you affect OUR common experience as humanity.

The more you practice peace in your own life, the more you bring peace to all those whose lives you touch. And that’s how YOU change the world, sweet soul!