Tweak your brain chemistry toward happiness, purpose, meaning | Jillian Michaels | Big Think

Tweak your brain chemistry toward happiness, purpose, meaning | Jillian Michaels

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The body influences the mind: physical activity changes our brain chemistry.

More activity in the body, and therefore in the brain, reorients us toward happiness, purpose, and meaning.

Neuroplasticity suggests we can program ourselves to be more optimistic and hopeful.

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JILLIAN MICHAELS:

Jillian Michaels is a fitness expert and wellness coach with over 20 years experience, and is a New York Times bestselling author of numerous books including Master Your Metabolism, Unlimited: How to Build an Exceptional Life, and her most recent

The 6 Keys: Unlock Your Genetic Potential for Ageless Strength, Health, and Beauty. Jillian's passion for fitness training originates from 17 years of martial arts practice in Muay Thai and Akarui-Do, in which she holds a black belt. Her first comprehensive 90-day weight loss system, Jillian Michaels Body Revolution, is available in retail stores across North America, and JILLIAN MICHAELS BODYSHRED, an intense group fitness class based on Jillian's highly-effective 3-2-1 interval system, is taught worldwide.

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TRANSCRIPT:

JILLIAN MICHAELS: There is a definite connection between the physical laws of inertia, a body in motion tends to stay in motion and the psychological components of inertia it's like when we become sedentary it's very difficult to begin moving again and to become motivated once more. And it's not just emotional, it's also physiological. Depression and feeling sedentary and feeling down and engaging once again in being hopeful, because essentially that's what motivation does require, can become a bit like a spider web. So in The Six Keys one of the major pathways we need to travel down is comprehending the connection between the state of our mind and how it very tangibly affects our bodies. When you look at something like depression or sadness or tragedy that kind of emotional stress we see that it literally changes our brain, it shrinks the size of our amygdala, our hippocampus, it shifts the ratios between gray matter and white matter, it changes our brain chemistry. And what all of these physiological changes do is essentially gear us to be more impulsive, less emotional regulation, more prone to depression and these thoughts then, of course, leading to our behaviors, which dictate the outcome of our reality.

So, as I mentioned it's a bit of a black hole so to speak so how do we turn it around? And it has to be something in my opinion that is fought on a myriad of fronts. First and foremost we need to establish a why, so we're going to look at the actual psychology of motivation. I believe it was Nietzsche who said, "If you have a why to live for you can tolerate the how." Because anything worth having, be in a healthy marriage, a thriving career, a healthy body, is going to require work and sacrifice. But work with purpose is passion; work without purpose is punishing and a lot of us already feel very punished by the rigors of our daily lives. So forming a very concrete goal, not just health, what does that even mean? How do you emotionally connect to being healthy? Somebody says well don't have that pizza tonight and don't watch How to Make a Murderer season two and you'll be healthy like that's not sexy. However, if it was hey you know what, give me 20 minutes in your living room with a quick exercise routine and get the sauce on the XY or Z meal you just ordered on the side, forgo the soda, get water instead and you're going to fit into those skinny jeans, have sex with the lights on with confidence, although I think that's greatly overrated, it's light at least 12 hours out of your day so why not open up your options? I mean walk your daughter down the aisle or look good in your wedding dress or meet your great, great grandchildren, watch humans land on Mars. I don't care what your reason is. It doesn't matter how profound it is, it doesn't matter how superficial it is, but it has to move you and you have to care because that's what makes that work in order to achieve it more manageable and turns it into passion versus punishment. At the same time how do we make this concept neural plasticity work for us instead of against us? How do we change our brain chemistry and the shape and size of various parts of our brain so that we're more prone to positivity and hopefulness as opposed to nihilism? Well, things like meditation, these mind-body interventions, and for the longest time I ...

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