Ashok Gupta uses a World Cup story to show the difference between having a goal and being attached to a specific outcome. Attachment to results triggers stress in your nervous system and defensive responses when things go wrong. He recommends letting go, gratitude, and retraining your brain to handle setbacks.
Okay, so where do we start today? Well, for those of you who are football fans, you may know that the World cup began yesterday, and it was the first England game this afternoon. So I am a bit of a football fan, and I was watching it this afternoon, and it's an interesting experience because. But certainly when you're supporting the England football team, because historically they've been very up and down, although recently they've not been too bad. And in tournaments, certainly. And it's an interesting awareness of our nervous system. As you watch a football game or things that you may be interested in might be a sports game, it may be something else. And as you're watching because you're attached to a particular result, you want your team to do well. What do we notice about our nervous system? Oh, Esther saying, I'm Dutch and I'm missing the game right now. Esther, that is, I'm very honored and flattered that you're missing the Dutch game to be here. Thank you. You know, it's an attachment we have to our team winning. And whenever there is an attachment, there is stress in the nervous system. Now, what does attachment mean? Attachment means that we are emotionally dependent on a particular result. We want things to go a certain way. And I've given the analogy of a football game here, but it can be anything. A classic example that many of us experience is the attachment to getting better from this condition. And some of you say, whoa, Ashok, come on. That's why I'm here. Of course. I want to get better from this condition. Otherwise, why am I doing the program? Right? So there is a difference between a goal and an attachment. So when we set a goal, we say, I have a direction that I wish to travel in. This is the direction, and this is what I choose for myself. It's health and wellness in my physical body, and I'm heading along that path. And an attachment is, come on, I have to get better. Why isn't this working? Quicker, faster? It should have happened by now. We have made ourselves emotionally dependent and given ourselves a strict timetable as to when it will happen. So what happens is we're going along the right hand path, we're retraining, but then each time the attached part of it says, why hasn't happened quicker? Why aren't I feeling healthy? What's going on? All we've done is retrigger our amygdalas because we've made it think that something is wrong in our nervous system, that there's something wrong with the body, because it should be different to what it is now. And to walk this very subtle path can seem initially tricky, but actually will make perfect sense as you walk this path. And I've mentioned it in the attitudes for Success in chapter 6. The attitudes for success is, I am not retraining to force my body to get well. Because the moment you do that, you create this anxiety, this attachment, this focus on how the body is feeling and that there's something wrong. But instead it's a goal, a vision. I see the goal and vision in front of me each day. I'm moving closer and closer towards that vision. And I accept along that path that there will be ups and downs as I go along that path. And that's okay. So it's that letting go attitude. Thy will be done. Sometimes talked about in spiritual circles. I am not in absolute control. I have influence over this path, and I will do whatever I can. And the body will heal in its own time, in its own space, in its own way. When I remove my anxiety and my attachment out of the way, that's what we're doing here. We are calming the nervous system as much as possible, and we're retraining the specific parts of the brain that think we're in danger. And that danger can be from internal symptoms or that perceived danger can be from external triggers such as mould and foods and various things. And so any further attachment or there's something wrong only fuels the brain's perception that there's something wrong with the body or there's something wrong with those external triggers. It's a very kind of Zen or centered attitude to what's happening. And so this is very analogous to the idea of the glass half full versus the glass half empty. And in a future session, I think, actually the one that I asked you to watch in session nine, we talk about gratitude, that each day it's celebrating what you can do. Even small steps you have made celebrating and feeling grateful for that. Because what that does is tell the mind and tell the amygdala and the insula, hey, maybe we're not in such danger that I had perceived, because now the conscious mind is telling us to celebrate how we feel, to feel grateful for the things we're able to do step by step, even small things. Okay, Perhaps we're not in danger. We can begin to switch off these defensive systems. Yeah. And this is especially true for dips. When we head into dips, which are unexpected, that's where our attachment to results can magnify. Because suddenly we think, well, I was doing better. I was doing well, and out of the blue, this dip has come along and then the attachment can really kick in of. But I want this to work. And why isn't it working now? Maybe I need to go and see another doctor somewhere and figure this out. Right. So we start looking for other solutions outside of the program when we know that actually it got us a certain way. But it's. All that's happened is the brain just got a little excited again and brought back the overstimulation. So it's watching out for that. And we talk about dealing with dips quite regularly in the program. But if you want a kind of in depth dealing with dips. And actually in session 15, at the beginning of session 15, there's a whole section on dealing with dips. And we've put it, you know, a little later in the program at session 15. But I think it's actually a really interesting section, but gets to the heart of it. So if you want, if you're having a dip or you want to understand how to deal dips, just the first module of session 15 can be very useful for that. Okay, good. So that's what football reminded me of today, is that you're sitting there fists clenched. Come on, come on, come on, come on. And in football, you have even less of an influence of what's going to happen. Right. And yet we still perceive that we can influence it through our eng.
